As society becomes more aware of the rights of individuals, ethical issues become of increasing importance. Many research funders, including the research councils, increasingly emphasise research governance and ethical review in their consideration of submitted proposals. Little is known, however, about what universities do over ethical scrutiny and in order to find out the authors undertook a national study of all universities in the United Kingdom. The focus of the study was on human volunteers for research outside the remit of (...) the National Health Service. The key questions being: to what extent do universities undertake ethical scrutiny of research and, if so, how? The broad conclusion is that when this survey was carried out in the autumn of 2003, the majority of universities were aware of the need for the ethical scrutiny of research on human subjects although in many of those universities the scrutiny system was being developed at the time of completion of the questionnaire. In some cases practice appeared to lag behind awareness and whilst there were some very good examples there were also some which were below an ‘acceptable’ standard. Recommendations are made concerning structures, coverage and membership for systems of ethical scrutiny within the university sector. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of five papers on the role, remit and function of research ethics committees which are intended to provide for REC members a broad understanding of the most important issues in research ethics and governance. The first considers the rationale for having ethics review by committee at all; seeking to explain why ethics committees, as we currently have them, are so important to the wider system of governing research.