Speaker 1: Hello, everyone. I'm Janet Salmons, and I'm happy to be joined here today by Kate Chatfield who is editor-in-chief of the Research Ethics Journal. But before we get started, I'd like to tell you a little bit about MethodSpace. If you are new to MethodSpace.com, this is a blog that is sponsored by Sage Publications. And we are interested in everything to do with designing, planning, conducting, analyzing research, writing about it, and sharing results in all different kinds of ways. And you can see at the center of this Venn diagram we have teaching and learning, because we think that whether you are a new researcher, a student researcher, or an experienced researcher, we all have something to learn. So let's get started and Kate, why don't you begin by introducing yourself and telling us about the research ethics journal.

Speaker 2: Okay, thanks, Janet, and thank you for inviting me to speak today. So, as Janet said I'm Kate Chatfield and an empirical ethicist which means that I do conduct empirical research, but from an ethical perspective, and I'm the editor in chief of this this journal called Research Ethics which I've been editing now for about two years, so thanks for inviting me. Just to say a little bit about the journal then, Janet, just to start off with. So Research Ethics covers a very wide variety of topics to do with research ethics. It invites papers from people in all different disciplines to do with research at all different stages, from the design of research, the conduct of research, through to dissemination, the impacts of research, teaching research, research ethics approval, research ethics theory, so we receive a very very wide variety of submissions and if you just like to nip onto the next one. I just wanted to show this slide really to show that we have the support of a really fantastic editorial team with members from all over the world because what we're trying to do is have to be globally relevant with research ethics to invite research manuscripts from researchers in in all corners of the globe to express their sort of challenges or the benefits or the ways that they've found to overcome challenges in research ethics in their types of research wherever they may be because research ethics can vary the sort of the guidelines the principles can vary from country to country. We've also got lots of different disciplines here you'll be able to see if you look closely that two of our board members have pictures of animals there with them and that's because they are specialists in animal research ethics so I think from that you can get the idea that we cover a massive variety of topics. And we should note that this

Speaker 1: is an entirely open access journal so you can read the articles and search the archives from anywhere so that's a terrific asset when you've got a journal that deals with such important topics and with the global multidisciplinary perspective. But you mentioned the word relevance and that's our focus on MethodSpace for the entire year of 2022. We want to look at, you know, what kinds of issues are of greatest scholarly concern, you know, how those problems are defined, who defines them, how they're studied, and, you know, what readers, you know, need to learn, you know, at this point. So given the focus of your journal, could you tell us a little bit about, you know, what kinds of problems and issues readers are looking to your journal, you know,

Speaker 2: to find answers and resources? If you just move on for me, Janet, maybe the next slide would touch on a little bit. So if I just give you an idea of the breadth and then I'll tell you you kind of the top things that we're finding at the moment and what is kind of unique about research ethics when you compare it to other single discipline journals. So as I said previously we cover ethics matters for all different disciplines so health, social science, IT, environmental, animals, all sorts of things to do with research ethics review processes, with vulnerable populations, research ethics training, and every different kind of method you can imagine. So we're not exclusive to any particular method. So when you're asking about methods, research ethics is completely open to all different research ethics issues with all different methods. But in terms of the things that we're seeing, it's quite a good touchstone for what's happening in the ethics world, this journal, because the topical issues vary from time to time, like so when we saw the pandemic, all of a sudden people wanted to know about pandemic ethics, researching pandemic times because research suddenly had to be done a lot faster. So what are the ethical implications of that? We need to have expedited review, we need to have vaccine research speeded up. So that means, does that mean cutting corners compromising safety what does that mean all of those implications and then you've got all the the publication sort of side of it when you're trying to speed things up does that mean you you skip peer review or you speed up peer review or what what does it mean and we do know that from our experience during the COVID times that we've got to be able to trust the findings from research. And research integrity is a really massive hot topic at the moment. How do we trust the findings? How do we know that they're truthful, that they are grounded in good research, that people have taken the care over? So I mean, implications of problems with research integrity when you're certainly when you're working in healthcare research, particularly COVID times can mean that people are given drugs that don't work. It can be very, very difficult. So that's just one example. I have many other kinds of examples of things that people are interested in, but I just wanted to see if there's anything you want me to... Well, a couple of things that I would

Speaker 1: like to follow up on. The point about the trust and the review, I think that that we have kind of a dilemma at this time, because on one hand, I mean, we want to be able to say to the public at large, you can trust us in a world of disinformation and somebody's opinion on Twitter, you can trust us because we go through a rigorous process to design and conduct empirical research within you know, a situation where there's some degree of oversight, and we have a rigorous review process on the publication side. But then at the same time that can take a very long time. And right now, I think you know whether you're dealing with the ethics side or with the, you know, kinds of problems that people are studying. we have an urgent need to find out. It's like, if you're learning something that's going to help what I'm dealing with right now, I need to know it now, not three years from now. So we have a real dilemma there. And then at the same time where the people who are doing reviews and all of those stages are generally volunteers who are dealing with their own challenges during this era. So how is your journal dealing with some of that? Like say some journals are doing things like they're including more kind of work in progress or editorials or pieces where people might be sharing. Well, we found this, even though we're still working on the whole, putting the whole articles together and the whole study completion, uh you know or or using social media or other channels to try to get things out you know in a in a quicker fashion uh without sacrificing the integrity so you know how are you wrestling with

Speaker 2: that dilemma? Yeah well um well first of all I'd say that for us at Research Ethics initially it wasn't so much that we were time sensitive for the the papers that we were reviewing because a lot of the ethical issues go way way back and a lot of papers that are already published in the journal are still relevant research ethics matters have been discussed and debated for many, many years going back to the 1970s and even a lot of the old papers, a lot of the old teachings are still still apply. So when you've got you've got to respect human rights you respect human rights and these are the ways you do it. So, the sort of the things you're talking about a more on the practical level, how do we engage people to review the papers much more quickly but still doing it thoroughly when this was a bit tricky certainly during the first wave of the pandemic when a lot of the people we wanted to invite were people with medical responsibilities who were obviously really busy in their perhaps hospital jobs or whatever and then it took a lot of effort. We have a slide coming up later that shows that we at Research Ethics quickly put together a special edition, a special issue for Research Ethics in COVID era, and I, together with this, there you are, showing that some of the papers, these are some of our most widely read and cited papers over the last couple of years, because everybody needed to know quickly. So as soon as we noticed that there was a need for this, Doris Schroeder and I, who are there at the top, who's the other editor of this, we very quickly invited some people from around the world that we knew were working in this area to submit and we worked pretty much day and night with them and other reviewers to produce this in a speedy way, but a way that didn't compromise on quality or integrity. I must say, Janet, there isn't really any kind of alternative to hard work and hours, that's what it took. A lot of work, a lot of effort.

Speaker 1: And to reiterate, the archives are open access, so if you want to go back and look at some earlier materials or this special issue, these are readily available. I want to go back to another question from this slide. So, you know, as you're looking at, you know, aside from the sort of, you know, immediate kind of COVID crisis issues, you know, what kinds of trends are you seeing in terms of the kinds of research that people are doing? And I don't mean so much about discipline, but like, for example, you know, are people interested in the large kind of global issues around research ethics, or are they interested more in the individual, you know, how do I assure that, you know, my, you know, 10 interview participants are consenting, you know, what kind of scale and kind of range, you know, are people interested in at this point?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a mix of both really. So, we found that the, the articles that get widely cited and widely read are those that have some kind of practical application in the main, that is, so they might be about how to improve the consent process, how to ensure for it, that's an example, but that they're also dealing with things that are very topical them perhaps new issues, so social media recruitment, using data from Twitter, online research that throws up research ethics issues that perhaps haven't been widely published on before, that we don't have clear protocols for. For example, how far do we respect the consent process when we're using data that's already in the public domain, perhaps on Facebook or Twitter? it okay to just go through those sites take lots of data and use it in our study without seeking consent because it's been publicly available or should we then go back to people so those sorts of issues to do with new technologies are really hot topics so artificial intelligence it's it's a bit of a nightmare a minefield when it comes to research ethics we're still developing this is going to be ongoing so I think when you're working in research ethics you've got to have an understanding of what's happening at the cutting edge of research methods so that you can kind of keep up with how to review ethics issues that arise as a consequence of those new methods those new technologies it's a constant challenge for ethics reviewers and so that those are the things that we see that are very widely read because there's such a hunger for that kind

Speaker 1: of new information. So you mentioned the social media, so maybe you could just share what research

Speaker 2: ethics is doing so people can find you. Okay, so please for anybody watching this, if you use Twitter, follow us on Twitter. We probably don't use it enough to be honest, Janet, or we do tweet about all of our new publications and we also try to retweet and share information on matters that are related to research ethics and challenging research ethics issues or any new developments in research ethics. So that is kind of the role that we have on social media. It can be a bit challenging at times in research ethics because we do get a lot of queries that ask us about specific research ethics problems in people's projects and we aren't able to give that kind of advice because legally we wouldn't be able to do that right right so it's it's it's not we can't take that kind of stance right so it's more about sharing information about what's happening in the field and and at the cutting edge of research ethics that's what we're trying to do

Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about what you have coming for this year. Do you have any special issues or editorial focus areas that you'd like to share?

Speaker 2: Yes, so what we are trying to do, and we have been trying to do with research ethics for the last 18 months, because previously it was all focused on health research, is to try and cover all disciplines, to open up, to encourage people from different disciplines. One of the special issues we've got coming up, or this year's special issue, will be on, let me just get the name of this right, I've written it down, it's going to be Ethics of Animal Behaviour and Welfare Research. So there's a lot of research ethics in terms of animal experimentation. But what we've noticed is that a lot of a lot of research studies that involve veterinary research, for example, pets or farm research hasn't had ethics approval. Because there's not a great deal of understanding about when there's need for it and how how that should be assessed. So we've got a special issue coming up on that and our two members of the editorial board who are experts in animal ethics will be leading on that one for us. So that is our coming special issue for this year. Aside from that, anything

Speaker 1: really. Well, is there anything else that you would like to add? Just to encourage people to

Speaker 2: to submit the manuscripts to Research Ethics and to say that, I think you asked me a little bit about what advice would I give people when they are submitting to the journal, and one bit of advice I would give is please make sure that your title tells us exactly what paper is about because a clever title it doesn't always attract reviewers so if they don't don't understand what the paper is going to be about and the other thing is that the reviewers when we're inviting people to review a manuscript they only see the abstract and if the abstract is boring or too long or unclear they won't review it so it's come spend the time to to make sure you've got a really good abstract that's written clearly, that's not too long, that tells us exactly what the manuscript's about. That will help us greatly, and it will do wonders for speeding up the process of review through the journal.

Speaker 1: Okay, well, thank you very much, and I hope that for Method Space viewers, you'll take a look at at this journal. We will also have a post with highlights of special issues and most read and most cited articles to just kind of give you a little bit of a sense and introduce you to this journal. So thank you so much for joining me and giving us a little bit of insight about how the Research Ethics Journal works and what is coming up. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me, Janet.