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The Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services (AHRECS) team brings extensive experience and expertise to support your research ethics needs. We have collaborated with research ethics committees, regulatory bodies, and professional organisations across Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam, ensuring compliance with international standards, including US OHRPP and ORI requirements.
Our team combines a deep theoretical understanding with a practical knowledge of regulatory frameworks. With over 20 years of collective experience, our senior consultants excel in implementing best practices in research ethics training, systems, and reforms. By partnering with AHRECS, you gain access to trusted advisors who can help you navigate complex requirements, enhance your systems, and ensure ethical excellence in your research practices.
Latest blog entries
Strategies for resolving ethically ambiguous scenarios
During the fall of 2013 and spring of 2014, I traveled to numerous universities across the United States and England to conduct in-depth interviews with physicists as part of the Ethics among Scientists in International Context Study, a project led by my colleague Elaine Howard Ecklund at Rice University(1). The study sought to find out…
Professional Development across the Term of an HREC Committee Member
AHRECS has considerable experience working with universities, hospitals, research institutions, government and non-government organisations to care for and build the capacity of its HREC Committee members across the entire term of their appointment. We start with the needs of our clients and offer support from recruitment all the way through to running an exit interview.…
Professional ethics
As a follow up on Strategies for resolving ethically ambiguous scenarios last month below is a reprint of a discussion piece by AHRECS senior consultant Colin Thomson In the first column in this series, the circumstances in which the ethics of health professionals emerge were identified as being a member of a profession and the context of…
The Research Ethics Adviser Platform is now live
We are delighted to announce that the beta test version of the Research Ethics Adviser Platform (REAP) is now live (https://ahrecs.com/about-this-service). REAP is a peer-to-peer service that puts researchers in touch with experienced Advisers who can offer independent ethics advice on a project's research design, plan or protocol. This service is not meant to replace research ethics review.…
Building beneficial relationships when conducting research with migrant communities
In my experience, projects that involve working with migrant groups and communities reveal a range of complex issues with regards to ethics and the types of the relationships between the researcher and participants. While acknowledging the importance of formal ethical requirements I also believe that the concept of research ethics has a dynamic nature which…
PID Power: Persistent Identifiers as Part of a Trusted Information Infrastructure
We live in a world where fake news and alternative facts are, unfortunately, part of how we share information. Expertise is becoming less valued and, in some cases, is even seen as a liability. In this environment, how do we engender trust in scholarly communications? Developing a strong and sustainable information infrastructure, which enables reliable…
Terms and conditions apply
Kids tell us that making decisions can sometimes be hard (anyone who has taken a child to an ice cream shop can attest to this). Adults don’t often give children choices and kids tell us that when they do it can be confusing: ‘what am I being asked?’, ‘can I really say no?’, ‘do they…
In a world of hijacked, clone and zombie publishing, where shouldn’t I publish?
When we talk to research higher degree candidates and early career researchers about publication ethics, one question comes up repeatedly. Indeed, it is a question we are frequently asked by experienced researchers, particularly those who wish to publish in a new field – where should I publish? That’s a difficult question to answer in the…
Dealing with “normal” misbehavior in science: Is gossip enough?
As scientists, whether in the natural or social sciences, we tend to be confident in the self-policing abilities of our disciplines to root out unethical behavior. In many countries, we have institutionalized procedures for dealing with egregious forms of misconduct in the forms of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP). But research is increasingly calling attention…
Ethics and the Participation of Indigenous Children and Young People in Research
Indigenous children and young people’s participation in social research raises a range of ethical issues that researchers and participants must grapple with prior to and throughout the research process. These issues include for example, matters to do with protocols for seeking consent, ensuring the research process is culturally respectful and age appropriate, whether the research…
A Model for the Participation of Indigenous Children and Young People in Research
Following my September 2017 piece: Ethics and the Participation of Indigenous Children and Young People in Research, this article briefly overviews the research model I developed in my PhD. The model is based on a children’s rights-based approach (CRBA) to research informed by Indigenous research methodologies. It combines Laura Lundy’s[1] analysis of Article 12 of…
Ethical research with young children: Whose research, whose agenda?
The last decade has seen increased global focus on research with young children within and across a range of disciplines (Farrell, 2016). The period, birth to age eight years, known colloquially as the ‘early years’ or ‘early childhood’, has been conceptualized as pivotal to young children’s current wellbeing and future life chances and, in turn,…
Ethical use of social media as a recruitment tool
Building the ConversationFrom this month we will start including posts about the ethical design of human research. Our intent is not to present these ideas as the definitive or only way to approach a particular challenge/need but instead as prompts to get us all - participants, researchers, reviewers, regulators, administrators and other stakeholders - discussing…
How can we get mentors and trainees talking about ethical challenges?
When it comes to research integrity, the international community often tends to focus on the incidence of research misconduct and the presumption that the remedy is to have more training in responsible conduct of research. Unfortunately, published evidence largely argues that these perceptions are demonstrably wrong. Specifically, formal training in courses and workshops is much…
Magical incantations and the tyranny of the template
Building the ConversationThis month's addition to the Building the Conversation series reflects upon how institutional template consent material can have odd results/ill-suited/nonsensical consequences. It is widely accepted that human research ethics committees (HRECs) devote much of their time to the review of plain language statements or participant information and consent forms (PICFs). It should be…
Use of Imported Human Biospecimens in Research
The use of biospecimens in research is a vital tool in the development of knowledge and innovation in biomedical research. There are a number of established biobanks, local and international, that offer a rich resource of human biospecimens for research purposes[1]. In most cases these resources are linked with genetic and/or other personal health information.…
What’s at risk? Who’s responsible? Moving beyond the physical, the immediate, the proximate, and the individual
Building the ConversationThis month's addition to the Building the Conversation series reflects upon how we approach risks beyond those that are physical, harm people other than a project's participants and harms that are not immediate. To some extent, when researchers reflect upon those harms associated with a project, they may well limit their assessment of…
‘Don’t mention the c word: Covert research and the stifling ethics regime in the social sciences’
Covert research is associated with deliberate deception in social research and equated with harm and risk to the researcher, the researched, the institution and the field. It is a controversial and emotive tradition that runs counter to and violates the received orthodoxy and professional mantra of informed consent enshrined in various ethical committees, institutional review…
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