In the US, researchers at academic institutions who do work with human research participants must obtain the approval of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that looks to assure that research protocols do not violate ethical requirements for such research. Washington University of St. Louis’s Institutional Review Board will now charge fees to review proposals for research. According to one Wash U researcher, they were notified of the policy in a letter dated May 1, 2018.

IMAGE SOURCE: Nature (the journal)

IRB members–from within the institution and the community–typically are not paid for their work and perform their duties as a service. Without IRB approval, researchers are essentially unable to work with participants. For one thing, funding agencies usually require IRB approval. For another, peer-reviewed scholarly journals typically will not publish research with human participants that has not been done under the oversight of an IRB. And aside from practical issues, IRBs serve a very important ethical function in checking the assumptions and authority of researchers, ideally to protect research participants from exploitation*. WUSTL’s fees range as high as $2,500 for private non-profit groups and for-profit groups. For other entities, fees may be as low as $0 for departments within the university but as high as some unknown number depending on criteria which are not entirely clear at this time; the fee schedule says only to contact the IRB for the departmental fee schedule at the time of grant/research proposal.

Other academic IRBs also charge for their services to various users, some just for industry-sponsored research but others for a wide range of users. Here are some links to IRB fee policies at Northwestern University, University of California-Irvine, University of Illinois – Chicago, and Georgetown University.

Should IRBs charge for their services? What does the money cover? Free labor under the guise of service requirements is a real problem in universities, especially for very demanding service like IRBs. Will IRB members now be paid? And if so, does this introduce a conflict of interest of any kind?

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In a tweet this morning, bioscience researcher Dr. Danielle Lee asks, how will this affect pilot, tentative, or exploratory research? And she raises concerns about how this will effect new or emerging scholars as well as cash-poor students, labs, and principal investigators. Lee contends that “charging for IRB dramatically contracts WHO does human-population research, types of studies, etc.”

In a Twitter thread this morning on WUSTL’s new system, a  PhD candidate at WUSTL asks some other serious questions and suggests a better fee scheme. Click through to check out the whole thought-provoking thread.

IRBs watch over the ethics of researchers. Who watches the watcher? Let’s have a discussion. Is this a good idea? If implemented well, could it be? What would that look like? Or is there no way to implement this well enough?

*For more on the history of IRBs, check out Brandeis University’s handy short guide.