Challenges to Research Ethics Regulations: Academic Researchers’ Voices in the Arab World

Abstract

The Arab region has recently witnessed widespread financial support for collaborative research involving human subjects. This increase has not been coupled with a rise in the number of research ethics committees and many of those that are in place lack sufficient functionality. Investigating academic researchers’ views regarding conducting research and their subsequent experiences with applying ethics regulation, largely adopted from western countries but applied in non-western countries of the world, has not been sufficiently evaluated in contexts similar to the Arab region. Thus, in order to understand experiences of researchers in conducting research and specifically, how they apply research ethics in the Arab world, we interviewed a sample of 52 academic researchers who conduct research with human subjects in Qatar and Lebanon. We identify the challenges they face and make recommendations at the national and institutional levels that will serve to enhance ethical conduct of research in those countries.