Research Ethics

Research

Principles and approval processes (e.g. IRB) governing informed consent, confidentiality, and honest reporting in research involving people or sensitive data.

Sources

1. US HHS, Office for Human Research Protections — The Belmont Report hhs.gov accessed 22 September 2026

The foundational US statement is The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, dated 18 April 1979. It rests on three principles — respect for persons, beneficence, and justice — the first holding that “Individuals should be treated as autonomous agents”, with protection for those whose autonomy is diminished. It then applies them in three requirements: informed consent, assessment of risks and benefits, and fair selection of subjects. The approval processes this entry mentions, such as review boards, are the machinery that grew up to enforce those three applications. Belmont is a US document; other countries’ frameworks overlap with it without being identical.

This entry is sourced to a body with standing over the practice it names, which is tier 1 of this lexicon’s rule for research terms. Where a definition is quoted, it is the body’s own wording; the reading of what it implies is this lexicon’s.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).