Mercari, Inc. (“Mercari”) research and development organization Mercari R4D (“R4D”) and Osaka University’s Research Center on Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (“ELSI Center”) have released an application form and checklist for research and development ethics reviews based on their joint research.
As part of their collaboration on ELSI, R4D and Osaka University’s ELSI Center have worked to advance the sophistication of R&D ethics reviews for new technologies at Mercari. In 2021, the partnership updated its research ethical guidelines, which resulted from collaborative research, and published the full text of the guidelines (see ELSI NOTE No. 12 [available only in Japanese]).
R4D and Osaka University’s ELSI Center jointly created the application form and checklist for use in research and development ethics reviews. The documents are intended to spread the philosophy of the R4D and Osaka University’s ELSI Center to research and development locations while allowing the guidelines to keep their shape and in order to realize efficient and effective research and development ethics reviews.
Access the application form by downloading the following PDF.
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Research_and_Development_Application form for Ethics Review.pdf
- Document used in the application and discussion processes of ethics reviews
- Includes a simple checklist designed for clarifying discussion points based on reviewed matters and description fields for thoroughly examining the viewpoints of ethical considerations shown in the ethical guidelines
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Ethics_Review_Full_Checklist.pdf
- Document containing all of the ethics guidelines formatted as a checklist
- Allows the various people involved in ethics reviews such as the applicant, ethics review committee members, and the ethics review administration to confirm the main viewpoints of ethics reviews where necessary
Prior to creating this application form and checklist, R4D and Osaka University’s ELSI Center reviewed all of the discussions held to date for ethics reviews and discussed the steps from identifying issues to formulating a method for resolving them. For details on the creation of the application form, see the research notes compiled on the ELSI Note blog published on the ELSI Center’s website. R4D hopes that by releasing these documents together with the processes used to create them (instead of simply releasing the application form and checklist), the information will serve as a reference for a range of people involved in ethics reviews.
For more information, also see the following articles:
- Mercari Publishes Proprietary Ethical R&D Guidelines Based on Joint Research with Osaka University’s ELSI Center
- From Research to R&D Ethical Guidelines: Attempting to Integrate ELSI Compliance into Corporate R&D Processes (available only in Japanese)
For inquiries regarding this research, please use the contact form on the R4D website.