Ethical committee for research - COMUE Université Bourgogne-Franche-Comté

Ethical committee for research

Missions of the UBFC Ethical Committee for Research (UBFC ECR)

  • Protection of people taking part in research trials

The main mission of the UBFC ECR is to help researchers who include human subjects in their experimental protocols, and to issue ethical recommendations about these protocols on the researchers’ requests.
The UBFC ECR addresses these questions whatever the disciplinary field, and directs project holders to ad hoc bodies if necessary.

  • Promotion of ethical and deontological thinking in research practices

To that end, the UBFC ECR plans to organise one colloquium per year open to all UBFC laboratories, member institutions, and partners. Topics discussed might pertain to methodological principles for transparency in science, good practices in statistics, and conflicts of interest, among others.

On the researchers’ request, the UBFC ECR examines all the research projects involving human beings while not falling under the provisions of decree n°2012-300 of 5th March 2012 (called Jardé decree) modified by ruling n° 2016-800 of 16th June 2016, defining the legal provisions relative to research involving human beings (called RIHB research, or “recherches impliquant la personne humaine” (RIPH) research). These provisions must be submitted to a Committee for the Protection of Human Beings (CPHB) (“Comité de Protection des Personnes”, CPP).

Setting-up of the UBFC Ethical Committee for Research

The UBFC ECR is composed of 40 members distributed in the following way:

  • 28 volunteer PhD holder members and 4 volunteer PhD students, all belonging to a UBFC institution or partner
  • 8 members with skills in or belonging to one of the ethics-related categories, e.g., ethics, scientific integrity/deontology, data protection, the committee for the protection of UBFC persons, the ethical committee of a UBFC partner institution
  • 2 members from the civil society, proposed by both UBFC Academic Council and UBFC ECR members.

The UBFC Academic Council more particularly ensures that:

  • UBFC ECR members have enough experience, expertise and come from a wide enough range of disciplinary fields to make well-informed decisions about the ethical character of a study and about the capacity of participants to give their well-informed consent
  • UBFC ECR members are mostly researchers and lecturers-researchers
  • UBFC institutions and partners on the one hand, and various disciplinary fields and professions on the other are all fairly represented

The UBFC Academic Council is also committed to promoting, insofar as it is possible, equal gender representation among its members.

A president, a vice-president and a secretary are elected among ECR members.

More information on ECR members

Executive Committee of the UBFC ECR

The executive committee manages the activities of the ECR. It is composed of members elected for a renewable term of two years.

Since February 2021, the ECR executive committee is composed of:

  • President : Mr Pascal DUCOURNAU
  • Vice-president : Mr Mathieu LESOURD
  • Secretary : Vacant

Online since 2020/07/16