The Polish Academy of Sciences is launching an open Call for Ethics Experts to support the evaluation process of the PASIFIC postdoctoral fellowship program. PASIFIC has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Actions. 

Introduction

The aim of the ethics evaluation process is to ensure that all projects retained for funding are in accordance with ethical standards and that all research activities flagged with potential ethical issues will begin only upon receiving a favorable and relevant ethics opinion.

To meet the needs of the ethics evaluation procedure, ethics experts will be selected through this Call. Its purpose is to create a “pool of experts” from which we will choose evaluators whose ethical areas of expertise correspond to the ethics issues identified in the proposals recommended for PASIFIC funding. The number of selected ethics experts will thus largely depend on the presence and character of these issues. Experts coming from the Polish Academy of Sciences are not eligible to participate as evaluators in the programme.

About the PASIFIC ethics evaluation process

In each of the two PASIFIC calls, the proposals on the main and reserve list will have to go through the ethics screening. The proposals with identified ethical issues will require a further in-depth ethics assessment.

The ethics evaluation procedure consists of three stages:

1) Ethics screening: Each project recommended for funding will be read by one expert, who will either a) approve the proposal for funding (if there are no ethical issues to be considered), or b) move the proposal to the second stage of ethics evaluation (if there is at least one ethical issue).
2) Individual ethics assessment: Each proposal with ethical issues will be independently evaluated by three ethics experts
3) Experts jointly issue the ethics report and the final recommendation to: (a) sign the grant agreement as the project contains no ethical issues; (b) sign a grant agreement without modification of the proposal as ethical issues are well explained by the candidate in the ethics self-assessment; (c) sign a grant agreement after introduction of modifications to the proposal requested by the experts; (d) due to serious ethical issues remove the project from the list of proposals retained for funding.

Main tasks

An ethics evaluator for the PASIFIC project is expected to conduct the following tasks

– Carrying out the ethical evaluation of the proposals recommended for funding
– Drafting ethical reports
– Attending the online meetings with other ethics experts in order to issue the final ethics report for each proposals
Due to the pandemic, the ethics evaluation will take place fully remotely via the online evaluation tool.

Requirements

We welcome researchers from all scientific areas who have experience in the evaluation of ethical issues to register in our database via the following link: https://forms.gle/s2rwm5iEX1wcqVKR9

We will select the ethics experts based on the following criteria:

– Experience in evaluation of the ethical issues
– Knowledge of the ethical procedures under EU Framework Programmes (FP7 and Horizon2020)
– Since the ethics evaluation is performed entirely in English, the potential experts must be able to effectively communicate and write in English
– CV and track record

Remuneration

Remuneration for ethics evaluators is set as 115 EUR per proposal

Estimated timeline of the Call

Call closes: 1^st July 2021

Tentative dates of the ethics evaluation:

1^st call: October-November 2021

2^nd call: April-May 2022

Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis so please do not wait with the registration until the deadline. We will contact only selected persons. The notifications will be sent from June to August 2021.

For more information about the PASIFIC Programme, please visit: pasific.pan.pl

Should you have any questions about this Call please contact dr Joanna Błogowska: joanna.blogowska@pan.pl