Use this form if you are an ACU staff member or student starting a new project at ACU that does not involve ethics approval from other institutions or organisations. This application will be reviewed by the ACU HREC.

Use this form when ACU is not the Primary HREC, and you wish to Register an HREC approved application form from another institution. Answer the preliminary question with ‘yes’ and click ‘continue’ and choose Registration at A.1.4:

Attach all documentation that was approved by the External HREC, including a copy of the approved application, together with relevant information such as your approval letter, participant information documents and any subsequent modifications or progress reports. We require evidence that the ACU personnel are named on the original (external) approval documents, including students. We will accept a modification with these changes. In most cases, ACU HREC will accept the approval of the Primary (External) HREC up until the original end date.

You may be asked to make changes, such as the participant information material, to meet ACU requirements. You will also need to report on your research to ACU HREC at least annually and at the conclusion of your research.

ACU HREC reserves the right not to accept an External HREC's approval, in which case we will ask you to submit a New ACU Project form for full review.

Research can be exempted from ethics review where there is negligible risk (no foreseeable risk of harm or discomfort and any foreseeable risk is no more than inconvenience). Generally exemptions are available for data that is in the public domain and is not identifiable and in some situations where data is in the public domain and it is identifiable eg: public webpages. Data that has the potential to identify participants does NOT qualify for an exemption from ethics review.

You are required to attach a short research proposal and a letter of permission from the owners of the data stating that they have authority to give permission to use the data, that you have permission to use the data for this research project and confirming that the data is non-identifiable.

All comments from the HREC or ethics panels are located within the application form and are marked as ‘Action Comments’ or ‘General Comments’.

A red bubble indicates that you need to respond to one or more comments.

To reveal the comment, click the ‘Comments’ button and then the arrow.

Respond to each question within the application by clicking ‘Reply’.

Once you have completed your response, click ‘Post’ and the red flag/bubble will turn yellow to show it has been actioned.

Ensure that all bubbles have changed from red to yellow, as you cannot re-submit when the status of any comment is still red.

In addition to responding to comments, you must also amend your actual application in the relevant section, to include/clarify the information requested by the HREC/ ERP. The benefit of this change is to ensure the final approved application will reflect the changes requested by the HREC/ERP, AND it will assist your research team members (and NEW team members) to easily identify what has been approved as part of the ethics review process (noting that non approved activities would have been deleted from the application form and a record of changes is kept via the commenting system).

The whole application needs to reflect the changes, so that the final approved version is the most recent iteration.

• All supporting documents should be uploaded with track changes (or highlighting) within Word so that reviewers can easily identify what has been changed. If track changes are not added, the documents will be returned and not reviewed.
• You can upload new/revised attachments on Section M – Attachments. When editing documents ensure to use track changes and rename the documents to indicate the new version. Examples:
  • Protocol - V2 - 01 May 2023
  • Participant information letter and consent form - V2 - 01 May 2023
• Use ZIP files if there is more than 1 document per item.
• For HREC reviewed applications that have been reviewed at the HREC meeting, a Word document will be uploaded into ORION at section M.3. Respond to all queries and upload the response document at M.3 along with track-changed documents and re-submit.
• Add all new documents before responding to the last comment at section M, as Orion will close off the ‘add’ button in the documents section once all comments are responded to and you won’t be able to upload any documents.

Once all comments have been responded to and all red flags/bubbles have changed to yellow, and new or altered documents have been uploaded, click on the ‘toolbar’ on the right-hand side of the page and click ‘submit application’.

Note, you can also click on ‘Reports’ to save a copy of the application or run a comment report.

What happens next?

Your responses will be reviewed by the ethics panel or HREC, and will either be returned with further comments, or forwarded to the Chair for final approval. This process may take up to 2 weeks.