European Textbook on Ethics in Research

This textbook results from a contract awarded by the European Commission to the Centre for Professional Ethics at Keele University (also known as PEAK). The tender for the contract was written by Jonathan Hughes and Mark Sheehan, and incorporated a provisional outline for the textbook based on PEAK’s experience as a leading provider of training for research ethics committees in the health and university sectors in the UK and Ireland since 2003. In writing the textbook we have been fortunate in being able to draw upon PEAK’s extensive library of teaching resources, developed for its research ethics committee training programmes and its distance learning master’s degree in research ethics. We are grateful to the past and present members of staff who have produced these materials and to the Centre itself for permission to incorporate them into the textbook. The textbook is edited by Jonathan Hughes, who also wrote the Introduction and Chapters 5 and 6. Authorship of the other chapters is as follows (all members of PEAK except where indicated). Chapter 1: David Hunter; Chapter 2: Stephen Wilkinson; Chapters 3 and 4: Anthony Wrigley; Chapters 7 and 8: Mark Sheehan (formerly a member of PEAK but now at Oxford University and the Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre). Allison Ross contributed to the planning of the textbook and Monique Jonas made contributions to the content and editing of several chapters. We also received valuable input from outside Keele. A draft syllabus of the book, incorporating the case studies, was sent out for consultation to a variety of academic experts and research ethics practitioners from across Europe. We are grateful to the individuals and organisations that took the trouble to respond, and we have endeavoured to incorporate their suggestions. Lino Paula, the Scientific Officer at the European Commission responsible for this project, helped to organise the consultation and provided valuable suggestions at various stages in the planning and writing process. Roger Burns, Michelle Cunningham, Celia Diver-Hall and Anne Evans commented on the final draft of the textbook from the perspective of students recently enrolled on courses in professional or research ethics. Andrew Astley commented from the perspective of a lay member of an ethical review panel at Keele. Beverley Sykes provided professional copy editing of the final draft.