The Ethics Application Repository - coming to Global Health Reviewers soon

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The Ethics Application Repository (TEAR) is an open access, online repository of exemplary research ethics committee and IRB application forms, participant information sheets, consent statements and other related documents donated by international scholars who want to gift some of their expertise and wisdom to novice researchers in the spirit of a public good. The site is funded by a 3-year Marsden Grant (from the New Zealand Government) examining tensions in ethics review and was initially hosted on a server at the University of Otago. We're very pleased to announce that TEAR is currently being relocated to the Global Health Network, where it will be jointly administered by Global Health Reviewers and the Social Research Association.
TEAR addresses a knowledge gap. There is little existing instruction on how to complete ethics applications, producing unnecessary frustrations for both the researcher and the ethics committee. The only resources available are incomplete sets of official guidelines, restricted access to supervisor exemplars and a blank application form forcing applicants to reinvent the wheel. Moreover, given the constantly shifting and developing nature of research and research ethics, as it explores the dynamic world around us, a sharing of knowledge and practice between IRBs and experienced and novice researchers can only be welcomed.
TEAR has a wider audience than just novice researchers facing a blank ethics application. Other audiences include IRB members, research methods teachers and even experienced university lecturers. For example, Ethics committee members unfamiliar with a novel methodology (autoethnography, photo voice, chat room ethnography) or complex topics (i.e. any research involving children or the iterative nature of action research) or obscure jargon (lived experience, saturation and process consent) can read how experts described their intricate ethical pathways. Research methods teachers may mine TEAR allowing undergraduates to experientially follow narratives that blend theory, ethical principles and methodology. Additionally, secondary data researchers may mine the site’s archive itself for secondary analysis, examining the nature of informed consent across IRBs or how consultation with local communities is conducted across countries.
Does TEAR improve the quality of ethics applications, making more applications approved at first review, cutting down the number of applicants who must resubmit their applications and ending unnecessary delays in gaining ethics approval? We do not know, but we hope it will bridge a divide not only between committee and researchers but also between researchers and their participants. Ethics review can become a learning institution, through transparency, knowledge sharing and open dialogue.