The ETHICSWEB project funding by the EC under the 7th FP Programme Sience in Society ceased by end of August 2011. Additional to the achieved, the comprehensive information and documentation portal ETHICSWEB, the members of the former consortium expect ETHICSWEB to become a sustainable part in the European Research Area. ETHICSWEB understands itself as a loose Network of Ethics Documentation Centres (NEDC) and the members of the ETHICSWEB consortium form the core of this informal network.

Documentation of scientific conduct and progress is of utmost importance in regard to opinion formation in democratic and plural societies. ETHICSWEB therefore strives for enhancing documentation practices around Europe in the specific but hetergenous field of ethics in science. This goal is to be realized on the one hand by providing resources and tools to interested institutions, and the interconnection of professionals on the other hand.

Futhermore, such a network can ensure the sustainability of the achieved infrastructure and at the same time serve as the foundation for active improvement and development of ETHICSWEB in the future.

We strive for sustaining the portal and its features and we invite all interested parties engaged in or interested in documentation with regard to ethics and sciences to join us.

The ETHICSWEB network makes the ETHICSWEB documentation standards available to the interested public and provides interested academic institutions with its virtual database tools. These tools can be employed by documentation centres in order to cost-efficiently start with electronic documentation. They comprise the database software together with the corresponding application profile for the ETHICSWEB documentation standards and user manuals which describe in detail how to properly employ these tools and how to begin with a successful documentation enterprise. The manuals comprise the Compendium for Setting-up and Maintain New Ethics Documentation Centres, the ETHICSWEB Primer – A Short Guide to Ethics Documentation, and the Legal Guidelines for ETHICSWEB, which all provide helpful and important advice for the un-experienced as well as the documentation experts.

In addition ETHICSWEB provides a list of selected European ethics documentation centres that gives a first overview of the scene of ethics documentation in the European Research Area.

For more information just contact us: info@ethicsweb.eu