The University of Twente has adopted a university-wide research ethics policy. This policy states that an ethical review of non-medical research will be conducted by one of the domain-specific committees.
For information on ethics reviews of medical research and a description of the other domain-specific committees, please visit the page on ethics assessments for research.
Ethics Committee Computer & Information Science
The faculty EEMCS is responsible for the Ethics Committee Computer & Information Science (EC-CIS).
The domain of Computer & Information Sciences (CIS) covers a broad range of research themes such as Human-Computer Interaction and Design, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Human-Robot Interaction, Interactive Devices and Wearables, Signal Processing, Measurement Technology, and Cyber Security.
Procedure
If your research was reviewed by an ethics committee of another institution, please send the request, documents, and review outcome to the secretary of EC-CIS. The secretary will let you know whether a filled-out checklist for a full assessment by this committee is still necessary (or whether they can assess based on those already existing materials).
If you plan to do research with possible ethical issues, please follow the procedure below:
- Check out the different domain committees on where to file your request for assessment.
- Go to the ethics review application and fill out the form. (There is a User manual available.)
- Make sure to select the committee that best fits your research, else you might have to redo the whole application. Choose EC-CIS when your research is part of a project in which new ICT technology is designed or developed. User studies around the design and development of novel ICT technology are part of that, but so are, for example, projects developing novel measurement systems or (data sets for) AI modules.
- Prepare the necessary documents and upload these in the web form. Depending on your research, these could be consent forms, information brochures, research plans or protocols, etc. There is a template for a consent form available.
- If necessary, you could ask an ethics adviser (see below) for help preparing your request. You can save a draft of your application in de app and download it as a PDF.
Students can ask the pre-check team for advice (this is no longer mandatory). - If you are a (Ph.D.-)student, the request will be sent automatically to your supervisor for their consent.
- After submission (and after consent from the supervisor in the case of a (Ph.D.-)student), the request will be referred to a committee member for review. The reviewer might send the request back with comments or requests for more information and, afterward, formulate advice on whether the committee sees any objections to the research going forward.
If you are a bachelor's or master's student and your research is part of a course in your study, your teacher will take care of the ethics assessment.
amendments
If you want to make changes to research that has already received positive advice from the EC-CIS, please follow the procedure below:
Send an e-mail to the ethics committee with a list of the changes you want to make and whether you think this might affect the ethical aspects or raise new ethical concerns.
Depending on whether the changes are trivial, the amendment either will be directly archived with the original request or will be reviewed again. You will be notified about the outcome.
Composition
- Chair Dr.ir. D. Reidsma (Dennis) (EEMCS-HMI)
- Vice-Chair Dr. D. Bucur (Doina) (EEMCS-DMB)
- Member Dr. Ir. A. Continella (Andrea) (EEMCS-SCS)
- Member Dr. J. van der Ham (Jeroen) (EEMCS-DACS/NCSC)
- Member Y. Wang Ph.D. (Ying) (EEMCS-BSS)
- Member Dr. G. Caltais (Georgiana) (EEMCS-FMT)
- Member Dr. D. Babushkina (Dina) (BMS-Philosophy)
- Secretary Drs. P. de Willigen (Petri)
- Administrative support B.G.M. Smellink - Kleisman (Marieke)
Ethics advisers
- For students: the pre-check team
- For HMI researchers: Dennis Reidsma
- For general questions on the procedure and the ethics guidelines: Petri de Willigen