durham university dissertation ethics form

Undergraduate Programme and Module Handbook 2022-2023 (archived)

Module LAW3022: DISSERTATION

Department: law, law3022: dissertation, prerequisites.

• To satisfaction of Chair of the Board of Studies.

Corequisites

• At discretion of Chair of Board of Studies, in the light of the chosen dissertation topic.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• To enable students to pursue a topic of interest to them which does not feature in the taught curriculum, or to pursue a topic already encountered but at greater depth than is possible within the confines of a taught course.
• To significantly enhance students' developing legal research skills.
• A topic chosen by the student.

Learning Outcomes

• Students should be able to:
• Demonstrate a sound understanding of the principles of the topic under investigation.
• Demonstrate a sound understanding of primary and secondary sources in their subject area.
• Critically analyse and evaluate an aspect of current law in the light, where this is appropriate, of internal considerations (such as inherent inconsistencies) and external considerations (social, political, moral and commercial pressures).
• Distinguish between primary and secondary sources in their subject area and to give them appropriate weight in their research.
• Plan and investigate a theory or argument in the context of a particular area of law.
• Organise their exposition of the law in a rational and coherent manner.
• Provide a balanced and succinct discussion.
• Provide a well considered conclusion to the issues presented for discussion.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Teaching will consist of four lectures and supplementary information provided through an online platform.
• Learning will be facilitated by student-supervisor interaction in meetings.
• Students will be given formative feedback on their plan and working bibliography and on a sample chapter in order to assist the student in focusing accurately on the subject under investigation.
• Dissertation supervisors will provide ongoing support and guidance as appropriate.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative assessment, formative assessment:.

Plan (max. 1,000 words) and working bibliography - by week 1 of the final year; First supervision meeting of the final year - in weeks 2-3 of Michaelmas Term; Final title and completed version of the Durham Ethics and Data Protection Form – by week 9 of Michaelmas Term; Sample chapter (max. 4000 words) - by week 1 of Epiphany Term; Final supervision meeting - in weeks 7-9 of Epiphany Term.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University

Library Research Support: Authorship & Acknowledgements

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Authorship & Acknowledgements in Research Publications

This guide collects guidance for all authors on; 

• Authorship: Ensuring credit is appropriately given, and that disputes around authorship can be avoided; 
• Affiliations: Ensuring that a Durham University affiliation is recorded correctly in scholarly publications; 
• Acknowledgements: Guidance on acknowledging funding in scholarly publications; 
• Supplementary Materials: Guidance on ensuring access to material supplementary to a published output;
• Related guidance on copyright, ORCID and author IDs and plagiarism.

Authorship and Affiliation policy and guidance

• Authorship Flowchart
• Author Affiliations
• Acknowledging of Funding and RRS
• Data Access Statements

Authorship Guidance

"[Principal Investigators should] in the case of academic publications, ensure contributors are included as corresponding authors where appropriate."

Durham University Research Integrity Policy and Code of Good Practice [ Section 10.0 ]

The full University Guidance, approved at University Research Committee (January 2020) can be downloaded here .

The guidance covers:

• Why authorship matters?
• Planning for authorship
• What is an author?
• Responsibilities of authorship
• Non-author contributors
• Problems with authorship

How authorship disputes are handled at Durham

• Useful Links and additional resources

Fair Attribution Guidance for Research Technical Professionals (RTP) and other Research-performing & Research-enabling Staff

As a signatory of the Technician's Commitment, Durham University has also provided guidance which advises all Durham staff and students how the contribution of technicians and other staff can be attributed or acknowledged in an appropriate manner.

Please see our full guidance on authorship and appropriate credit above.

Staff are encouraged to try and resolve any disputes on a peer-to-peer level and this guidance is designed to help them to do so. It is recognised that there are occasions where this is not possible and in these cases the escalation process is outlined below. At any point support and advice can be accessed from RIS / Library via the Research Policy email.

Stage one - Informal

It is expected that most disputes can be resolved at this stage.

• Advice should be sought from your designated ethics contact in the first instance. At this stage it is expected that the interaction will still be between members of the research team.
• If the dispute cannot be resolved here then then it should be escalated to the Head of Department. At this point it may be necessary for the HoD to open direct dialogue with their counterparts at the other institution, and it may be useful to discuss the issue with the publishers as well. The onus remains on an amicable / mutually agreeable solution but if a resolution cannot be found here then it is escalated to stage two.

Stage two - Formal

• The Head of Department should provide a summary of the issue to Vice Provost (Research). The VP(R) may engage in dialogue with their counterparts to affect a mutually agreeable solution. However in cases where this is not possible then, taking advice from Legal and other services as required, a unilateral action may be taken.
• The decision of the VP(R) is final.
• Technicians Commitment: Authorship and Acknowledgement: Recognising Contribution and Fair Attribution for Research Technical Professionals (RTP) and other Research-performing & Research-enabling Staff in Research Publications

Authorship Guidance: Flowchart

The Flowchart below builds upon the full authorship guidance presented above, and the guidance on authorship and acknowledgement for Research Technical Professionals (RTP) and other Research-performing and Research-enabling staff, to provide a visual guide of all staff and students. This is designed to aid our community in identifying when an authorship credit, or acknowledgement of contribution, is warranted and to support discussions within research teams.

[Please click on the image below to download a larger, pdf copy]

• Authorship Flowchart (Durham University) Visual guide to determining appropriate credit for authorship or acknowledgement of contributions in publications.

Author Affiliations in Publications

"It is the responsibility of individual authors to ensure that their affiliation to Durham University is correctly recorded. This includes checking the proofs of any publications received."

Policy on Institutional Affiliation in Connection with Durham University Research Publications [ Section 4.0 ]

Authors are strongly advised to standardise how they record their affiliation(s) where applicable. This can:

• Enhance the visibility of research at the University.
• Increase the esteem and reputation of individual researchers, research groups and the University amongst the research community at both national and international level.
• Ensure individual researchers, research groups and the University receive appropriate academic recognition.
• Improve more accurate measuring and recording of publication metrics associated with research outputs (such as citation impact metrics), where they are used in  University League Tables and assessment exercises such as the REF .

Authors should be familiar with the University's Institutional Affiliation Policy, and refer to the examples and guidance included within it.

• Policy on Institutional Affiliation in Connection with Durham University Research Publications

CRediT Guidance

"CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is high-level taxonomy, including 14 roles, that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly output. The roles describe each contributor’s specific contribution to the scholarly output."

CRediT – Contributor Roles Taxonomy  [ NISO ]

Authors are recommended to agree on the form of contribution an author (or other contributor) has made to a research output, in line with the University's guidance on authorship, and that where appropriate this should reflect the roles identified in the CRediT list of contributor roles . This list of contributor roles is increasingly being used by journals as part of the manuscript submission process and other research systems.

Acknowledgement of funding

"[All researchers should] appropriately acknowledge anyone who has directly or indirectly assisted their work. This includes collaborators, funders and participants."

Durham University Research Integrity Policy and Code of Good Practice [ Section 10.1(e) ]

In 2008, major research funders and publishers published guidance for authors to help standardise how research funding should be acknowledged in published research outputs. For some funders, such as the UK Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust, this is a requirement for most research funding awards.

The recommended format is at below:

This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Natural Environment Research Council [grant number zzzz]; and the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number aaaa].

Full guidance has been archived on the Research Information Network .

Rights Retention Statements

In line with the University's Research Publications Policy , author's are expected to ensure that they retain sufficient rights in the published Scholarly Articles to enable them to share any Author Accepted Manuscript resulting from their submission to be shared freely, for the benefit of other researchers and society more widely.

In line with the expectations of research funders, under the policy all authors are strongly recommended that a statement as detailed below is included in all manuscripts submitted for publication. The following text should be included in the funding acknowledgements1 section of the manuscript, and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission, where possible:

Articles acknowledging UKRI funding

For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.

Articles acknowledging Wellcome Trust funding

This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust [Grant number]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

All other Scholarly Articles

For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising." (NOTE: the specific licence applied may be amended with the licence as agreed under 2.3.4 of this policy)

Inclusion of statements for accessing data or supplementary materials

"[Principal Investigators are responsible for] Ensuring that the metadata for data underpinning published research findings is accessible online no later than the first date of publication of the output... ."

Durham University Research Data Management Policy [ Section 4.3.1 ]

Many journals, primarily in STEM subjects, will allow or require authors to also submit data underpinning the published research, or provide information on how data might be accessed.

Even where this is not already the case, it is good research practice to at the least, provide an indication of if and how underpinning research data, or supplementary materials, can be accessed, where there are not intellectual property or data protection issues.

It is worth noting that some funders are also require such a statement to be included in published outputs , where applicable.

Technicians Commitment: Authorship

Related Guidance

The following guidance may also be useful:

• ORCID and other author IDs
• Copyright Guidance for authors
• Plagiarism guidance
• Publication, Press and Open Access Embargos

• << Previous: Journal selection tools
• Next: ORCID & Author IDs >>
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Dissertation Deadlines

At its meeting of 14th January 2015, QSSC approved proposals to set the institutional deadline for postgraduate dissertations and final projects as the first Friday of September. This was agreed for the academic years 2015/16 to 2021/22.

Unless stated otherwise within individual programme regulations, submission deadlines for taught postgraduate programmes will therefore be on:

Do I Need to Complete an Ethics Form?

The Importance of Ethics and Health and Safety Forms

• First Online: 19 October 2023

Cite this chapter

• Sue Reeves   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3017-0559 3 &
• Bartek Buczkowski   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4146-3664 4  

303 Accesses

This chapter emphasises the importance of ethics, and health and safety and considers the corresponding documentation, including participant consent. Both ethical approval and a health and safety risk assessment need to be completed before embarking on any research project and should be considered an important part of the research process as they are there to guard the quality and integrity of your research, protect you, your participants, and society.

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ASAB Ethical Committee/ABS Animal Care Committee (2023) Guidelines for the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals in behavioural research and teaching. Animal Behaviour 195:I–XI. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.09.006

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Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committee (2023) Does my study need ethical approval? https://www.bio.cam.ac.uk/psyres/approval . Accessed 28 Jan 2023

Coffelt T (2017) The SAGE encyclopaedia of communication research methods, vol 4. SAGE Publications, Inc, Thousand Oaks, CA. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483381411 . Accessed 28 Jan 2023

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Gov.UK (2023) Data protection. https://www.gov.uk/data-protection . Accessed 25 Jan 2023

Harris J (2005) Scientific research is a moral duty. J Med Ethics 31:242

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Health and Safety Executive (2023) Health and safety at work etc Act 1974. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm . Accessed 27 Jan 2023

Home Office (2022) . Guidance on the operation of the U.K. legislation on animals used in research and codes of practice. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/research-and-testing-using-animals

Robson C (2002) Real world research: a resource for social scientists and practitioner researchers, 2nd edn. Blackwell, Oxford

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Tamin J (2010) Beyond the immediate players: do researchers have moral obligations to others? Research Ethics Review 6:76–80

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) (2021) Framework for research ethics. https://www.ukri.org/councils/esrc/guidance-for-applicants/research-ethics-guidance/framework-for-research-ethics/our-core-principles/#:~:text=The%20six%20principles%20of%20ethical%20research&text=the%20rights%20and%20dignity%20of ,accountability%20should%20be%20clearly%20defined. Accessed 24 Jan 2023

UKRI (2023) Consent. https://www.ukri.org/councils/esrc/guidance-for-applicants/research-ethics-guidance/consent/ . Accessed 28 Jan 2023

World Medical Association (2022) WMA Declaration of Helsinki–ethics principals for medical research involving human subjects. https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/ . Accessed 23 Jan 2023

Further Reading

Oliver P (2010) The students guide to research ethics. Open University Press, London

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University of Roehampton, London, UK

Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

Bartek Buczkowski

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About this chapter

Reeves, S., Buczkowski, B. (2023). Do I Need to Complete an Ethics Form?. In: Mastering Your Dissertation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41911-9_5

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What is it?

An ethics form is a document that prompts you to provide information about your research to ensure you are meeting set standards. Readers usually expect to see ethics in a research proposal, or mentioned in your writing, even if there doesn't appear to be any problematic ethical issues to be addressed. 

Why do I need to do it?

When someone embarks on a piece of research there is a chance of doing harm, even if harm isn't intended. Setting ethical guidelines ensures there are set standards for conducting research to ensure the research will not harm people physically or emotionally. 

How do I do it?

You can find more information about completing your ethics form from the research ethics page of the university website ( click here ).

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