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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
A checklist to assist a supervisor to check a candidate’s research ethics review application
“Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things” Wilbur Ross 2015 Dr Gary Allen, Prof. Colin Thomson AM and Prof Mark Israel AHRECS Senior Consultants HDR supervisors should, and often do, play an important role in the formulation of a candidate’s research ethics review application. If you talk to an experienced busy research ethics committee member,…
How we interpret the words ‘proportional review’
Dr Gary Allen AHRECS Senior Consultant Over the last decade, AHRECS has worked with institutions of various types, size and maturity. The project brief often refers to fixing or implementing proportional review. When you drill down, the work item will generally owe its origins to calls from researchers, the research ethics review body, the research…
When Research is the treatment: why the research/clinical care divide doesn’t always work
Nik Zeps AHRECS Consultant Health services are often operated by people who strive to improve the way they deliver care. In the public imagination improvements arise from ‘breakthroughs’ such as the discovery of new disease mechanisms and drugs or devices to address these. However, it is not just novel treatments that lead to better outcomes.…
The ethical petri-dish: recommendations for the design of university science curricula
Dr Jo-Anne Kelder, Senior Lecturer, Curriculum Innovation and Development, University of Tasmania, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jokelder/ Professor Sue Jones, Honorary Researcher, School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Professor Liz Johnson, DVC of Education, Deakin University, https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-johnson-24292773/ Associate Professor Tina Acuna, ADL&T College of Sciences and Engineering, University of Tasmania, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-acuna-25a35965/ Ethics (thinking and practice) is intrinsic to…
Worried your researchers might not be treating human research ethics as a core component of good research practice? Concerned they are not seeing it as their responsibility?
All of us might be part of the problem. Dr Gary Allen AHRECS Senior Consultant Consider a hypothetical problem: You find a partially submerged car bobbing in the local harbour. A big problem So, you rush out to hire a crane and pay an operator to lift it out of there. It’s working perfectly. …
Embedding clinical research as part of routine healthcare: Managing the potential for competing interests. (UPDATED).
Nik Zeps AHRECS Consultant Clinical trials are widely accepted as the best method for understanding whether any particular medical intervention is safe, efficacious, acceptable to patients and cost-effective. Almost every Health Service in Australia runs clinical trials of one sort or another. Enrolment of patients (in this instance they are all patients and not…
What are questionable research practices as reported by ECRs in STEMM in Australia?
Katherine Christian, Carolyn Johnstone, Jo-ann Larkins, Wendy Wright and Michael Doran Katherine Christian, Federation University Australia Carolyn Johnstone, Federation University Australia Jo-ann Larkins, Federation University Australia Wendy Wright, Federation University Australia Michael R Doran, Queensland University of Technology Early-career researchers (ECRs) across the world have long reported significant difficulties caused by lack of funding and…
Questionable publishing practice? Are you harmed?
Antony Ley (Information Policy Officer at Griffith University) & Gary Allen When considering whether a journal publisher is legitimate, researchers have in the past often focused on whether the publisher is predatory. While this is important, there is a more important question: is the journal credible or is it junk? Increasingly junk-type publishers clog up…
Updated checklist for HDR Supervisors
Back in May, we published a resource for supervisors of postgraduate research students to assist with evaluating whether a research ethics application is ready to be submitted for review. Thank you everyone who sent in comments and suggestions on the draft. A special thank you to Nicola Pritchard (QUT) who sent us some great notes.…
Reframing Indigenous consultation: engagement and risk management
Lindsey Te Ata o Tu MacDonald and commentary by Mandy Downing As a member and then chair of both a University and a community human research ethics committee in Aotearoa New Zealand, I found often that applicants considered our questions about Māori consultation almost mystical, if not downright mysterious, and had almost no idea what…
Is it time to extend the required membership of research ethics committees?
Dr Gary Allen It doesn’t seem so long ago that all that HRECs in Australia needed to do was consider a project through the frame of four core principles (merit + integrity, beneficence, justice, and respect). Section 1 of the National Statement called upon us to judge whether a project was justified with respect to…
Hong Kong Principles
The publication of the Hong Kong Principles comes at a time when there has never been more scrutiny of research. In this pandemic, the importance of science has been reinforced time and time again, but the importance of efforts to enhance reproducibility and transparency in research has also come to the fore. What the Hong…
A poor call and two missed opportunities, but otherwise not a bad proposed revision to NS s5
In this post, Gary, Mark and Kim refect on the draft update to Section 5 of the Australia's National Statement. "In recent years in Australia, we have seen some painful cases where research ethics review delegated to a non-HREC review body has failed to guard against projects that proved to be embarrassing for their host…
Our work around the world
Close to the bottom of our revamped home page is a world map that tags the places we have been commissioned to conduct Human Research Ethics or Research Integrity work or where we have conducted philanthropic/academic/volunteer/unpaid work. Want to explore if we can do some work for you? Terrific! Drop us a line to enquiry@ahrecs.com…
A new approach to the AHRECS site
In response to community feedback, from 1 November 2020, only papers, books and genuine resources will be posted to the AHRECS Resource Library; news and announcements will be posted to the feeds page. Searches of the site can include searches of the feed. Links to Research Ethics Monthly editions will also be posted to the…
Going video: A chance to change review practice?
In this post, Gary asks when it comes to research ethics review, whether something useful might come from social distancing
If you build it, they will come- 2020 Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) Training Conference (online) 18-20 Nov
Approximately 2.5 months from inception to execution, a veritable cornucopia of Australia’s thought leaders on topics such as consent, voluntary assisted dying (VAD), AI in healthcare, ethical aspects of research involving Indigenous people combined to make a three day phenomenon and one which all attendees will remember. This memory will not simply be for the…
A rose by any other name….?
As both a researcher and a research administrator in healthcare, one of the more vexing issues that I have to deal with on an almost daily basis is how to manage what are termed quality assurance, quality improvement and audit activities. In its 2014 publication entitled “Ethical Considerations in Quality Assurance and Evaluation Activities”, the…
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