Breaches and complaints
It is a mandatory requirement of University policy that any member Queen Mary staff or student undertaking research involving human participants or their data gains ethics approval prior to commencing their study.
Queen Mary does not provide insurance cover for research which has not received ethics approval and cannot issue a retrospective ethics commitment statement. Where QMREC decides that a breach of research ethics has occurred during a student assessment, they will refer the matter to the Appeals, Complaints & Conduct Office to determine the appropriate outcome or penalty in line with paragraph 87 of the Academic Integrity and Misconduct Policy.
Levels of Breach Severity
While QMERC maintains that any research conducted without ethics approval constitutes a breach of good research practice, it also recognises that the circumstances behind each case will vary from deliberate and/or malicious to ill-advised, accidental or unintentional. QMERC Ethical Breaches procedure v1.0 March 2023.pdf [PDF 1KB].
The Research Ethics team has responsibility for processing cases and will present the details of each case to the QMERC Chair and Deputy Chair for consideration. Cases will be categorised based on the evidence available in each case, the level of intention, and extent of the risk as follows:
There has been a significant failure to follow due process which has resulted in, or may have resulted in, a serious adverse impact on research participants, the researcher or the University.
An appeal will not be considered for a critical breach. For PGR and staff research, the case will be referred to the Research Integrity and Assurance Officer for further action at the earliest possible opportunity.
There has been a failure to follow due process which may have resulted in an adverse impact on research participants, the researcher or the University.
There has been a minor failure to follow due process which is unlikely to have resulted in an adverse effect on research participants, the researcher or the University.
An appeal will be considered for minor or major breaches, the outcome of which is at the QMERC Chair’s discretion. This appeal may only be presented with the support of the researcher’s Head of School or Faculty, or delegated senior member of staff (for example, Dean of Education for undergraduate students).
The research ethics team must be informed immediately of any complaint or unforeseen incident, for any research project.
Documentation provided to research participants for the study (e.g. information sheets and consent forms etc.) should be provided when notifying the Research Ethics team of the complaint.
The acknowledgement of the complaint to the complainant should be sent by the Study PI and should involve the Research Ethics team throughout the process.
The acknowledgement must state that if the complainant is not content with the response, then this can be escalated to the QMERC Chair and Head of responsible research and innovation. The contact details for escalating the complaint should be provided to the complainant.