• Staff of the Faculty of Humanities or the Faculty of Archaeology. 
• PhD candidates affiliated to the Faculty Graduate School of the Faculty of Humanities or the Faculty of Archaeology.
• Persons who make use of the facilities of the Faculty of Humanities or the Faculty of Archaeology. 
• Students who are enrolled in a Research Master at the Faculty of Humanities or the Faculty of Archaeology, and who have approval from their supervisor to apply for ethics review.

The committee does not review student research, that is to say: research that is conducted within the scope and for the purpose of that student’s training and education. The supervisor/instructor is responsible for assessing whether their student’s planned research is ethically acceptable.

Unfortunately not. The EC only reviews proposed research, not ongoing or completed research. ‘Ongoing’ means that data collection (including fieldwork but excluding preparatory or ‘scouting’ visits to field sites) has already begun. When in doubt, please contact the secretary.

The questions on the application form are in English, and not all members of the committee are fluent Dutch speakers, so preferably not. If you are very keen on writing your application in Dutch, please check with the secretary if this can be accommodated.

No, the EC does not have its own review manual, guideline, or policy. Broadly speaking, they base their reviews on the codes of conduct of Nethics, the European Association of Archaeologists, and the European Commission. In addition, the Faculty of Archaeology has its own code of conduct for fieldwork, and the Centre for Linguistics has a research ethics code that all its researchers are required to sign.

Increasingly, academic journals require proof of ethics review as part of their submissions process, but sometimes the study was conducted without passing review. There are multiple possible reasons why this might have happened: perhaps your study began before 2018, when the Ethics Committee was instated, or before the EC started reviewing ResMA projects in 2022. Perhaps, at the time, your study was only meant for internal or para-academic purposes, and you changed your mind about publishing later. Perhaps you simply forgot, or something went awry during the application process.

The EC does not review ongoing or completed research, because that would make little sense. Approval or critique after the fact cannot impact the way the study is conducted; at most, it can help you reflect on what you’d do differently next time. The EC will very occasionally help evaluate a completed study and provide a declaration, but only if a) the researcher was not able to access ethics review at the time, and b) the project documentation will reasonably allow for it (i.e., no detective work). In all other cases, the answer is unfortunately: too bad.

No, you don’t have to. The most important thing is that research participants truly understand what it is they are consenting to, and what their rights are. In some settings, an oral or signed explanation is more appropriate than a written text. Consent also does not need to be recorded in the form of a signature: a verbal affirmation or marking of a checkbox is also valid, so long as it is recorded. Discuss your approach to negotiating consent with the Privacy Officer to ensure it is legally valid, and describe it in your application.

No one is against doing research ethically (we hope). The most appropriate way of effecting that in the research community is a recurring topic of debate (as it should be!). However, you cannot be judge in your own cause, and so the common solution is to instate a form of community quality control through volunteer peer review. To facilitate the growing volume of reviews, the desired level of detail in the committee’s feedback, and the need to refer to previously approved projects, a written application mediated by a structured questionnaire is the most practical format for review. Occasionally, an in-person dialogue between the researcher and the committee can be helpful as an addition to the written application. If you have a strong preference for such a dialogue, please indicate (and motivate!) this alongside your application.

The data management plan (DMP) and the PrivacyQuickScan form recent additions to the review process of the Ethics Committee. The DMP is usually already required by the research funder, or by the PhD Training and Supervision Plan. Many of the decisions documented in the DMP, from security measures to data sharing and terms of access, also have ethical implications.

The PrivacyQuickScan (and, when necessary, the DPIA) is a way for Leiden University to document the reasons for, and triage risks associated with, personal data processing. The principle that individuals’ private lives should be respected and not unduly infringed upon has been fundamental to research ethics for some time, but with the adoption of the GDPR this is now also a legal requirement. The GDPR, in fact, shares many of its fundamental principles with those of research ethics. Is a privacy risk assessment, then, not redundant? No: in a continually changing, digitalizing civic and academic landscape, combined with exacerbating digital surveillance by government and commercial parties alike, safeguarding participants’ rights and minimizing privacy risks is a complex task. The goal is not to eliminate all possible risk – that would be highly unrealistic – but to take responsibility.

You certainly can. (The Netherlands Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity does require you to disclose this.) But ought you?

While we appreciate clear, understandable language, we do not judge applications on spelling and grammar, or style. Above all else, we look for evidence that a researcher has thought deeply about the ethical implications of their work. Automatically generated responses suggest the exact opposite. Please don’t do this.