Excerpt from "Why a Federal Rule Change Has Some Scholars Worried They’ll Be Priced Out of Their Own Research," posted on The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 23, 2018.
A set of new federal rules aims to simplify a process that has long frustrated scholars: getting approval for research that involves human subjects. But the changes could result in universities’ doing inadvertent harm to the careers of young scientists, and could reduce the amount of research that is conducted in the first place.
That’s because the rules could lead universities to charge fees for the use of their institutional review boards, or IRBs, the administrative panels that act as checks on human research. Some scientists worry that any additional expenses will threaten work that does not receive significant financial backing.
The concern isn’t just theoretical. In March, Washington University in St. Louis posted a fee schedule that, for the first time, would have charged some researchers supported by funds from nonprofit sources. The fee was set at $2,500 to have their proposals reviewed, plus more for annual continuing reviews or reviews of proposed revisions.
In May a graduate student there posted the new schedule on Twitter, along with a series of questions and concerns about the impact of the fees and their timing. Colleagues and other researchers chimed in, decrying the university’s move as “harmful,” “awful,” and “absurd.” A day later, the university put the fees “on hold, pending review.”
Why all the concern? Institutional review boards are typically funded through indirect-cost payments, which often come in the form of overhead paid by the government agencies or other entities that award grants. Other research services funded through indirect costs include facility maintenance, library services, and administration.
Still, universities have charged institutional-review-board fees to researchers whose work is funded by for-profit companies since the early 2000s, said Karen Allen, executive director of research protections at the University of California at Irvine.
But assessing fees for the review of research funded by nonprofits may have been a first.
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