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Conflict of Interest/Conflict of Commitment – An Issues Paper
1. Introduction
The three Federal Granting Agencies (Tri-Agency, Agencies), Canadian
Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada (NSERC), have developed a Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) on Expectations/Roles and Responsibilities. This MOU aims at codifying,
clarifying and harmonizing the roles and responsibilities of the Agencies
and of recipient Institutions in the management of federal grants and
awards. Institutions must sign the MOU to remain eligible for Agency
funding. Eight Schedules have been developed already, which define issues,
such as the ethical review of research involving humans, the ethical
review of research involving animals, and integrity in research. The
Agencies want to add a Schedule dealing with Conflict of Interest and
Conflict of Commitment (COI/COC) to the series.
Prior to drafting the issues paper, the COI/COC policies of a number of institutions (associations, government agencies and universities) in Canada, the USA and the UK were reviewed (see Appendix 1). An issues paper was drafted and a Working Group composed of Agency staff and academics (see Appendix 2) was convened to discuss the various issues raised, raise additional ones and propose the Framework for a Schedule on COI. The first draft of a COI Schedule was discussed by the Working Group to arrive at a final version to be distributed to the broad community for comments.
The present paper reflects this process and it is distributed to the research community as a means to inform and to provide models to institutions in setting or revising their own COI/COC policies.
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