Origins & Development of Framework

The Origin and Objectives (2010-2011)

• Based on the pre-existing Institutional Review Board (IRB) in its department of medicine, the school extends the IRB's function, making it an institutional and regional level governance framework for human research ethics. This framework is designed to manage all research projects with human participants.
• Under this governance framework for human research ethics, the school plans to establish two human research ethical review committees. One is responsible for biological and medical research reviews, while the other is responsible for humanities, social/behavioral sciences, engineering and scientific education.
• To provide consultation, reviews, education and other services that uphold the rights of research participants which are relevant to the stakeholders of academic research projects that employ human participants; these services focus on researchers from various institutions in the southern regions of Taiwan, Taitung, Kinmen and Penghu.

Final Stage Establishment (2012)

In 2012, NCKU carried on with "The Governance Framework for Human Research Ethics", funded by the National Science Council in order to sustain the newly established Governance Framework for Human Research Ethics which is expected to reflect social context and local cultural characteristics, facilitate discussion and communication between stakeholders of different human research projects, and support framework practices and research initiatives. In terms of practices, the school is gradually completing the framework, gathering different arguments and training a professional team. In terms of research, regular review of the framework is conducted to maintain accuracy, and feedback on research results is provided to maintain efficiency. Through these efforts, the school aims to achieve the following targets:

• Develop the Governance Framework for Human Research Ethics that will help address academic conditions in Taiwan and represent "Taiwanese Subjectivity".
• Uphold the rights of research participants and promote Taiwan's international academic competitiveness through the Ministry of Science and Technology's Demonstration Project for Ethical Review of Research ("the demonstration project").
• Promote the Southern Taiwan Universities Consortium for Human Research Ethics through cross-institutional communication and collaboration, systematic integration of regional resources, as well as promotion, intensification and support of research ethics.

Missions and Functions (2013 to present)

In order to fulfill its social responsibility, NCKU has established ¨The Governance Framework for Human Research Ethics〃 (¨the framework〃) to protect the rights and welfare of human research participants. The framework also ensures that the related personnel of NCKU and the contracted ethical review schools commits to responsible and ethical research activities when they are conducting human researches. Human research refers to individuals or groups of people as research subjects or participants. A research activity can be a systematic investigation or knowledge discovery activity of any academic discipline, that entails research methods such as observation, intervention, interaction, or non-consensual use of participantsˇ data whether identity cues are delinked or not.