Research Ethics Committee

Welcome to the webpage of the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society.

At the Faculty of RCS, we are committed to doing research in a responsible manner, as described in the 'Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity'. On this page you will find information about the ethics procedures of the faculty and links to relevant websites for more guidance.

Table of contents

• ^{Tasks of the Ethics Committee}
• ^{Who needs to register their research?}
• ^{Registration of your research}
• ^{Ethics clearance for your research}
• ^{After ethics clearance}
• ^{More information}

Tasks of the Ethics Committee

The Ethics Committee has five core tasks:

1. The ethics committee is tasked with providing approval of research of researchers and PhD candidates appointed at the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society of the University of Groningen.
2. The approval is limited to the quality of reflection and measures taken by the faculty member on matters of research ethics, data protection and data management of the research.
3. The ethics committee provides solicited and unsolicited advice to the Faculty Board and to staff members relating to measures on research ethics, data protection and data management of research by staff and by students.
4. The ethics committee regularly reviews forms and procedures on matters of research ethics, data protection and data management of the Faculty, to ensure new insights with regard to these topics are included. Such insights can come from experience within the Faculty or the University, but also from national and international developments.
5. The ethics committee is available to provide policy advice on education on research ethics.

The committee consists of the following members:

• The ethics committee can seek advice from someone within or outside the Faculty.
• The committee meets every month between September and July.

If you have any questions, after reading the information on this page, please contact the Ethics Committee at ethicscommittee.rcs rug.nl.

Who needs to register their research?

Researchers and PhD candidates appointed at the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society need to register their research through the form on this website (see Registration of your research for more detail).

BA and MA students do NOT have to register their research. However, you can consult the ethics committee if you and your supervisor have questions or concerns about ethics, data management or data protection in your research. For example, if you want to include minors in your research or other people who might have difficulty giving fully informed and voluntary consent to participate in your research; if you want to use AI, very large data sets, tracking devices, social media, or covert observation in your research; or if you want to discuss very sensitive topics such as traumatic experiences with your participants.

Registration of your research

Whenever you want to undertake a new research project, we ask you to register your research using this form. To prepare, you can consult this pdf version of the form.

Please note that you need a Google account to be able to upload your proposal and other documents in the form, so please access this form through your RUG account. If you do not have a Google account, you can email the documents to ethicscommittee.rcs rug.nl using the email address you have indicated in the form.

The form consists of four sections: General information, Impact on stakeholders, Data protection, and Data management plan. Depending on the type of research you will do, you have to fill out specific sections of the form. Please see the decision tree below for more information.

If your project entails the collection of personal data, then we recommend that you discuss your research with the faculty’s Privacy and Security Coordinator, Harrie ten Have (h.a.ten.have rug.nl). You can schedule a meeting with him via his Google calendar.

If you are a PhD student or a junior researcher, we also recommend that you fill out the registration form in consultation with your supervisor or the primary investigator on your project.

Ethics clearance for your research

The ethics committee will review your research proposal for ethics clearance when:

• the research is conducted with living humans
• the research procedures might pose a danger to the researcher(s) and/or assistants.
• the research objectives might cause a conflict of interest

The Privacy and Security Coordinator (Harrie ten Have; h.a.ten.have rug.nl) will always review the sections on data protection and research data management.

Make sure you request ethics clearance well in advance of the commencement of data collection. Data collection may not commence before the ethics committee has communicated its approval of the research to the applicant.

Is approval by an ethics committee a requirement for a research grant application? Then you can submit only the grant application for preliminary approval. When the grant is awarded, you should submit the questionnaire with the full proposal and any additional documents for definitive approval by the ethics committee.

If you have requested ethics clearance, you can expect to receive the review within six weeks. Therefore, please submit your research proposal as soon as possible.

After ethics clearance

After you’ve received ethics clearance, you need to archive the documents:

• Research staff store the completed questionnaire and letter of approval by the ethics committee on the Y-drive (Y:\staff\RCS\Datamanagement) and submit them for their annual R&O interviews.
• PhD candidates submit the completed questionnaire and letter of approval by the ethics committee for the go/no go interview. The supervisor of the PhD candidate stores these files on the Y-drive (Y:\staff\RCS\Datamanagement).

More information