Procedure

Research proposals are to be submitted via email to ethics-cf@rug.nl.

Note. The Ethics Committee has had its last meeting of the academic year and will be on hiatus from July up until mid-August. Any incoming applications will be discussed in September.  

For any other business, we endeavour to respond to your email within two weeks, but please note that we may not be able to respond to your message until the end of August.  

Round of review

To ensure impartiality of treatment and to allow researchers to incorporate the feedback, the EC only reviews study proposals if the time between the submission of the proposal and the scheduled start of data collection allows at least one round of review. One round of review takes approximately one month, and the evaluation of a proposal can takes 2 or 3 rounds.

Monthly meeting

Usually, the EC meets on the last Thursday of the month. If your submission is received 6 or more working days before the EC meeting, it will be discussed during the meeting; otherwise, the EC will plan a meeting to discuss the proposal for the following weeks. Please note that due to high demand following the initial formation of the EC, there may be some delays.

Archive

Upon receipt of the submission, the EC will archive the research proposal in a secure location for future reference. All comments and decisions issued by the EC, as well as all updated versions of the proposal and its attachments will be archived, too.

Evaluation

Following a positive evaluation by the EC, and after the completion of the data collection, the EC invites you to send some feedback about problems, strength or improvement points that emerged during the review process and the data collection. You can send your feedback to ethics-cf@rug.nl – it will be valuable for improving our procedures and better informing researchers who will submit new proposals in the future.