Research Ethics and Informed Consent Policy

Sustainability Education Review (SuER) requires research involving human participants, animals, communities, personal data, or other ethically sensitive materials to be conducted responsibly and in accordance with applicable ethical principles, institutional requirements, disciplinary standards, and relevant laws and regulations.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that ethical considerations have been addressed throughout the design, conduct, analysis, reporting, and publication of their research.

1. Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants must respect the dignity, rights, safety, privacy, autonomy, and well-being of participants.

This requirement applies to research methods including, but not limited to:

• surveys and questionnaires;
• interviews;
• focus groups;
• classroom observations;
• experiments and interventions;
• educational assessments;
• learning analytics;
• digital ethnography;
• participatory research;
• case studies involving identifiable individuals;
• research using personal, behavioral, educational, or institutional data.

2. Ethics Approval

Where formal ethics review or institutional approval is required, authors must obtain approval before commencing the relevant research activities.

The manuscript should identify, where applicable:

• the name of the approving ethics committee, institutional review board, or equivalent body;
• the institution responsible for ethical oversight;
• the approval or reference number, where one has been issued;
• the date or other relevant details of approval where appropriate.

Ethics approval should not normally be obtained retrospectively for research that required prior approval.

3. Research Not Requiring Formal Ethics Review

SuER recognizes that requirements for formal ethical review vary between countries, institutions, disciplines, and types of research.

The absence of formal ethics committee approval does not automatically make research unethical, provided that formal approval was not required under applicable institutional, national, or disciplinary rules.

Where formal ethics approval was not required, authors may be asked to explain:

• why formal review was not required;
• the institutional, legal, or disciplinary basis for the exemption;
• how participant rights, consent, privacy, confidentiality, and other ethical considerations were protected.

Authors must not state that ethical approval was unnecessary without a reasonable basis.

4. Informed Consent to Participate

Where applicable, participation in research must be based on free and informed consent.

Participants should receive information appropriate to the context concerning:

• the purpose of the research;
• what participation involves;
• reasonably foreseeable risks or burdens;
• relevant benefits, where applicable;
• voluntary participation;
• privacy and confidentiality;
• how research data will be used;
• the right to decline participation or withdraw where applicable.

Consent may be documented in written, electronic, oral, or another ethically appropriate form depending on the research setting and applicable requirements.

5. Students and Educational Power Relationships

Research involving students requires particular attention to potential power imbalances.

Where researchers are also participants' lecturers, teachers, supervisors, assessors, administrators, or otherwise hold authority over potential participants, authors should take reasonable steps to minimize coercion or perceived pressure to participate.

Where feasible, decisions to participate or decline should not affect:

• grades;
• academic evaluation;
• access to instruction;
• scholarships;
• supervision;
• institutional services;
• employment;
• other benefits or opportunities to which individuals are otherwise entitled.

The manuscript should report relevant safeguards when unequal relationships of authority materially affect the ethical design of the study.

6. Children and Minors

Research involving children or minors must comply with applicable legal, institutional, and ethical requirements.

Where required, researchers must obtain:

• permission or informed consent from a parent, legal guardian, or other authorized representative; and
• the child's or minor's assent when appropriate to the individual's age, maturity, capacity, and research context.

Researchers must take additional precautions to minimize risk, protect privacy, and ensure that participation is genuinely voluntary.

7. Vulnerable Participants and Communities

Additional safeguards are required when research involves individuals or communities who may be vulnerable because of age, disability, social or economic circumstances, displacement, emergency conditions, institutional dependence, limited decision-making autonomy, or other relevant factors.

Researchers should ensure that:

• participation is voluntary;
• recruitment is fair and respectful;
• risks are minimized;
• consent procedures are appropriate;
• confidentiality is protected;
• research does not exploit unequal relationships or circumstances of vulnerability.

8. Indigenous, Traditional, and Local Communities

Because SuER welcomes scholarship involving Indigenous, traditional, and local knowledge, researchers must pay particular attention to community rights, cultural protocols, appropriate consent, representation, attribution, ownership, access, and potential misuse of knowledge.

Formal individual consent alone may not always address all relevant ethical responsibilities in community-based research.

Where appropriate, researchers should consider:

• community consultation or authorization;
• local governance and cultural protocols;
• appropriate recognition of community knowledge holders;
• restrictions on disclosure of sacred, confidential, sensitive, or collectively held knowledge;
• fair representation of communities;
• responsible benefit sharing and reciprocity;
• community expectations concerning data access, reuse, and preservation.

Authors should avoid treating Indigenous or local knowledge merely as extractable research data without appropriate ethical engagement with the communities from which that knowledge originates.

9. Privacy, Confidentiality, and Anonymity

Researchers must take reasonable measures to protect personal and confidential information obtained during research.

Where participants have been promised anonymity or confidentiality, authors must ensure that published text, quotations, tables, images, supplementary files, datasets, and metadata do not inadvertently reveal participant identities.

Pseudonymization or anonymization should be used where appropriate.

Authors should recognize that combinations of contextual information may sometimes identify an individual or institution even when names have been removed.

10. Consent for Publication of Identifiable Information

Publishing identifiable personal information, photographs, recordings, detailed case descriptions, or quotations that may reasonably identify a participant may require specific consent for publication in addition to consent to participate in the study.

Authors are responsible for obtaining such consent when applicable and must be able to provide evidence of consent to the journal if reasonably requested.

11. Digital, Online, and Social Media Research

Research involving online communities, social media, digital platforms, learning management systems, artificial intelligence systems, or other digital environments must consider reasonable expectations of privacy, platform conditions, data protection, consent, identifiability, and potential harm.

The fact that information is technically accessible online does not automatically mean that unrestricted research use or publication of identifiable content is ethically appropriate.

Authors should explain relevant ethical safeguards for digital research where these materially affect the study.

12. Educational and Institutional Data

Research using educational records, student performance data, learning analytics, administrative databases, institutional records, or other non-public educational information must comply with applicable privacy, confidentiality, data protection, and institutional authorization requirements.

Authors must not publish confidential records or identifiable student or staff information without an appropriate ethical and legal basis.

13. Deception and Incomplete Disclosure

Research involving deception or incomplete disclosure should only be conducted when methodologically justified, ethically permissible, and appropriately approved where required.

Researchers should minimize potential harm and provide appropriate debriefing when required by the research design and ethical framework.

14. Incentives and Compensation

Payments, incentives, gifts, academic credit, or other benefits offered for research participation should not be structured in a manner that creates inappropriate pressure or undue influence.

Particular caution is required when participants have limited economic resources or are in dependent educational or professional relationships with researchers.

15. Research Involving Animals

Although animal research is not a primary focus of SuER, manuscripts involving animals must demonstrate compliance with applicable animal welfare legislation, institutional requirements, and recognized ethical standards.

Relevant ethical approval should be reported where required.

16. Ethical Considerations Statement in Manuscripts

Empirical manuscripts involving human participants or other ethically sensitive research should include an appropriate Ethical Considerations or equivalent statement.

Depending on the study, the statement should address:

• ethical approval or exemption;
• informed consent;
• protection of privacy and confidentiality;
• consent for publication where applicable;
• additional safeguards for children, students, vulnerable groups, or communities where relevant.

17. Example Statement – Ethics Approval Obtained

“Ethical approval for this study was obtained from [name of ethics committee/institution] (Approval No. [number]). All participants provided informed consent prior to participation.”

18. Example Statement – Formal Approval Not Required

“Formal ethics committee approval was not required for this study under the applicable institutional guidelines. Participation was voluntary, informed consent was obtained from participants, and appropriate measures were implemented to protect privacy and confidentiality.”

Authors must adapt these examples to the actual circumstances of their research and must not use a template statement that inaccurately represents the ethical review or consent process.

19. Editorial Verification

Editors may request additional information concerning:

• ethics committee approval;
• institutional authorization;
• participant information and consent procedures;
• data protection;
• community authorization;
• other relevant ethical safeguards.

The existence of an ethics approval letter does not prevent editors from raising additional ethical concerns if the research or reporting appears inconsistent with responsible research practices.

20. Failure to Meet Ethical Requirements

Manuscripts may be rejected when ethical requirements were not adequately met or when serious ethical concerns cannot be resolved.

If an ethical problem is identified after publication, SuER may investigate the matter and take appropriate action, including correction, Expression of Concern, or retraction where warranted.

Where necessary, the journal may communicate with the authors' institution, ethics committee, research-integrity office, funder, or another appropriate body.

21. Author Responsibility

Authors retain primary responsibility for ensuring that their research complies with applicable ethical requirements. Acceptance of a manuscript by SuER does not transfer responsibility for the ethical conduct of the research from the authors or their institutions to the journal.