Ethical Committees
ECDMM
The Ethical Committee on Dual Technologies, Military Research and Misuse is responsible for:
- Monitoring whether VUB activities comply with the relevant provisions on the export of dual technologies and military goods.
- Ethical evaluation of activities undertaken in collaboration with military or defence partners, or funded by military or defence financing.
- Evaluation of research activities at risk of misuse and providing advice or drawing up measures to mitigate the risks.
- Granting ethical approval for projects involving dual technologies, military research or projects with a risk of misuse of research.
- Giving advice and support to the VUB community with regard to dual technologies, military research and possible misuse of research.
The ECDMM is part of the Legal and Ethics Office within the VUB Research and Data Management department.
CME
If working with patients and/or patient data, conducting research with the aim of developing knowledge specific to the practice of healthcare professions, and/or conducting research within healthcare institutions, an application for ethical approval must be submitted to the Committee for Medical Ethics.
Contact Missing (UZ Brussel)
ECHW
The Ethical Committee for Human Sciences at VUB provides ethical advice for research projects involving human participants that do not require evaluation by the Committee for Medical Ethics (i.e., research with patients or patient data, in healthcare institutions, or aimed at expanding knowledge specific to the practice of health professions).
In its evaluations, the ECHW adheres to the university’s general research policy, which includes promoting a healthy research culture, ensuring high-quality research output, and upholding scientific integrity in research.
The Committee provides ethical advice to VUB researchers, assessing the compatibility of the proposed research with ethical principles and standards. Additionally, it can offer general ethical policy advice regarding developments in the field of research, insofar as these have a clear ethical dimension and are relevant to our university.
ECD
The Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee brings together all figures, research fields, vision, regulations and ethics on the VUB website ‘Animal Experimentation’.
Contact Point for Access & Benefit Sharing
The VUB Contact Point for Access & Benefit Sharing is responsible for:
- Supporting VUB researchers in complying with the Nagoya Protocol.
- Supporting VUB researchers in other aspects of fairness and benefit-sharing in relation to research processes and results.
The Contact Point is part of the VUB Legal & Ethics Office within the VUB Department of Research and Data Management.
Data Protection Office
It is likely that you will work with personal data as part of your research. A broad range of privacy and data protection legislation applies to this. Such things as sending e-mails to colleagues, taking and processing surveys, or analysing publicly available information posted on social media are all covered by privacy legislation (including the well-known ‘GDPR’, General Data Protection Regulation, which has been in force since 25 May 2018).
Fortunately, the Data Protection Office helps researchers meet these high standards and continue to protect the fundamental right to privacy - without making the practice of science suffer.
Do you have questions about privacy legislation (such as the GDPR) and what it means for your research? Log in to the DPO Website
Andries Hofkens
Ethics and International Collaboration Procedure
International collaboration has in recent years been the focus of greater ethical and legal attention. On the one hand, the current geopolitical situation has led to more attention to possible military applications of research results. On the other hand, there has been more attention to the role of non-state actors in promoting human rights, or at least preventing human rights violations.
Internationalisation is becoming more and more important and is reflected, among other things, in staff and student exchanges, jointly organised education programmes, contributions to capacity building in the South, international networking, clustering of research capacity and cross-border research collaboration, collaboration in tech transfer, etc. Respect for human rights is inherent to universities’ social role. Guidelines for human rights policy have been agreed upon by the rectors of the five Flemish universities in 2019.
VUB is committed to ensuring that its activities respect legal and ethical obligations. This procedure is intended to help the VUB’s researchers and administrators identify possible ethical and legal issues that may arise from their international collaborations. The procedure consists of the following elements:
- A definition of the scope of the procedure
- A screening procedure for checking projects
It is essential to complete the procedure accurately and in good time to ensure that projects can proceed smoothly.
The check consists of two simple stages: VUB researchers and administrators are asked to assess whether their international collaboration activities involve ethical or legal obligations, particularly with regard to human rights and/or possible military applications (dual use). If this is the case, or if there is any uncertainty, the second stage is to ask advice from the relevant legal department of VUB (see step 2). Please note that if the advice given by the ECDMM is not followed and or incorporated, no contracts or other relevant documents concerning the project will be signed by VUB.
Full text (Intranet)
Scientific integrity
VUB strives to create an optimal research climate. We recognise and implement the principles of scientific integrity in our policy and governance as stipulated in a number of key documents, such as the European Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity of ALLEA and the European Charter for Researchers.
VUB implements these principles by translating them into its own Charter for Researchers and by collaborating with the Flemish Commission for Scientific Integrity (VCWI) and the Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR).
Researchers take personal responsibility for scientific integrity. They must be aware of and respect standards of scientific integrity and good scientific practice. These standards are the basis for qualitative and socially relevant research.
Breaches of the principles of scientific integrity and against good scientific practice are handled by the VUB's Committee for Scientific Integrity (CWI). The committee issues an opinion on whether or not a breach has occurred. It is supported by the Legal and Ethics Office.
