Public involvement and engagement in scientific research and higher education: the only way is ethics?

Involving and engaging the public in scientific research and higher education is slowly becoming the norm for academic institutions in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Driven by a wide range of stakeholders including regulators, funders, research policymakers and charities public involvement and public engagement are increasingly seen as essential in delivering open and transparent activity that is relevant and positively impacts on our society. It is obvious that any activities involving and engaging members of the public should be conducted safely and ethically. However, it is not clear whether conducting activities ethically means they require ethical approval from a research ethics committee.

Although there is some guidance available from government organisations (e.g. the UK Health Research Authority) to suggest ethical approval is not required for such activities, requests from funders and publishers to have ethical approval in place is commonplace in the authors' experience. We explore this using case studies from our own institution.

We conclude that any public-facing activity with the purpose to systemically investigate knowledge, attitudes and experiences of members of the public as research and as human participants requires prior approval from an ethics committee. In contrast, engaging and involving members of the public and drawing on lived experience to inform aspects of research and teaching does not. However, lack of clarity around this distinction often results in the academic community seeking ethical approval 'just in case', leading to wasted time and resources and erecting unnecessary barriers for public involvement and public engagement. Instead, ethical issues and risks should be appropriately considered and mitigated by the relevant staff within their professional roles, be it academic or a professional service. Often this can involve following published guidelines and conducting an activity risk assessment, or similar. Moving forward, it is critical that academic funders and publishers acknowledge the distinction and agree on an accepted approach to avoid further exacerbating the problem.