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ECIS - Ethics Committee for Information Sciences

UvA-IvI , VU-INF , CWI and ILLC

 http://uva.nl/

Note: This page is for archival purposes. This page is not updated anymore after 2020-01-01.
Please check https://ivi.uva.nl/research/ethical-code/ethical-code.html.

Purpose

This page is to explain the ECIS committee process and required documentations.

Until very recently, ethical discussions were only relevant to fields of research in which research is conducted on humans, such as medicine and some social sciences. However, due to the increased involvement of humans as in (in)direct research objects in the Information Sciences (IS), these ethical discussions are also becoming important in this field. To guarantee the integrity of the researches and their research, a framework within to work is necessary to guarantee the quality and social relevance of research conducted under the umbrella of the Informatics Institute. A framework where the legal and ethical aspects of research need to be examined before, during and after the project. This will be done by the Ethical Committee for Information Sciences (ECIS), which is part of the Institute for Information Sciences of the University of Amsterdam.

Charter

The ECIS - Ethics Committee for Information Sciences advises the directors of the informatics/computer science institutes at UvA, VU and CWI regarding cases in research and education that require ethical evaluation and oversight. Additional info about these functions and requirements can be found here:

Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity:

Additionally contextual information can be found in the KNAW publication:

And Scientific Advisory to the government report on Big Data in a Free and Secure Society: A (Dutch) Leidraad om te komen tot een praktijk van Responsible Disclosure:

Committee

The IvI ECIS core committee consists of:
  • dr. J.R. van Ossenbruggen (CWI) (Interim Chair)
  • J. van Ginkel MSc (UvA) (Secretary)
  • vacant external expert
  • vacant (ILLC)
  • drs. Arjan Vreeken (UvA)
  • dr. P.S. Cesar (CWI)
  • prof.dr. H. Bos (VU)
  • prof.dr. J. Heringa (VU)
  • M. Leenen (UvA, office of Law)
Secretarial support:

    Grace Millerson <secr-sne-science@uva.nl>

    +31205256789

The IvI ECIS has delegated some of its tasks to sub-committees. Here the list of sub-committees and their members:

  1. Ethics Committee of the master Security & Network Engineering (ECOS3).
    • Members:
      • Jaap van Ginkel
      • Becky Kazansky
      • Filiz Yilmaz
    • Web site:
      • https://www.os3.nl/2018-2019/info/ethics

Process

Please see the documentation for the description of the processes. If the case is not described, find a member of the committee and explain the situation. Mail cases to Grace Millerson <secr-sne-science@uva.nl>

Documentation for case evaluation

  1. handboek-ecis-versie-1.2.pdf (Nederlands)
  2. handbook-ethics-version-1.2.pdf (English)
  3. Communication map

Note

In all cases keep personal data under all circumstances encrypted, do not talk to others regarding vulnerabilities, and do not leak data or methods before the original problem can be solved in a reasonable time following procedures.

Previous committee members

  • prof.dr.ir. C.T.A.M. de Laat (UvA) ( chair 2016-09-01 - 2019-12-31 )
  • dr. J. van der Ham (NCSC, U-Twente, guest-UvA)
  • prof.dr.Jan Bergstra (chair)
  • prof.dr. M. Worring
  • prof.dr. Arjen P. de Vries
  • dr. Hans Dijkman
  • prof.dr. F.A.H. van Harmelen (VU)
  • prof.dr. H. Afsarmanesh (UvA)

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