BackgroundMulti-centre studies generally cost more than single-centre studies because of larger sample sizes and the need for multiple ethical approvals. Multi-centre studies include clinical trials, clinical quality registries, observational studies and implementation studies. We examined the costs of two large Australian multi-centre studies in obtaining ethical and site-specific approvals.MethodsWe collected data on staff time spent on approvals and expressed the overall cost as a percent of the total budget.ResultsThe total costs of gaining approval were 38 % of the budget for (...) a study of 50 centres (mean cost AUD $6960 per site) and 2 % for a study of 11 centres (mean cost AUD $2300 per site). Seventy-five and 90 % of time was spent on repeated tasks, respectively, and many time-consuming tasks, such as reformatting documents, did nothing to improve the study design or participant safety.ConclusionsImprovements have been made to the ethical approval application system, but more gains could be made without increasing risks of harm to research participants. We propose that ethical review bodies and individual sites publish statistics on how long they take to process approvals which could then be nationally benchmarked. (shrink)

This study analyzes the metajournalistic discourse surrounding leaks and whistleblowing crafted by online journalism industry publications since 2004. The goal of the study is to understand how jou...

The whole factual world of human affairs depends for its reality and its continued existence … upon the presence of others who have seen and will remember. … Without remembrance and without the reification which remembrance needs for its own fulfillment … the living activities of action, speech, and thought would lose their reality at the end of each process and disappear as though they never had been.Research on the relationship between public memory and collective identity is varied and extensive, (...) but one fairly prominent scholarly perspective coalesces around Hannah Arendt's idea that the practices of remembrance are the lifeblood of the polis.1 The stakes here are high, for it seems that without remembrance .. (shrink)