EthiKit · library science and research governance · shown in screenshots, 15 September 2026

EthiKit: research ethics from application to clearance, shown in screenshots

EthiKit runs the whole arc of a research ethics application. An applicant submits a protocol with the documents the study type requires. Reviewers are matched to it by expertise, with conflicts of interest flagged, and score it against a six-criterion rubric. A coordinator reaches a decision with the committee, the letter is generated and communicated, and the conditions of a conditional approval are tracked to clearance. Amendments, adverse events and continuing reviews are kept on the same record after approval.

Address ethikit.publon.pressPages sixScreens shown eightCaptured 15 September 2026, on the demonstration board, as the coordinator, a reviewer and an applicant

Purpose and the three people it serves

A research ethics committee carries a load that is mostly clerical and partly judgement: which documents a study type needs, who is qualified and free of conflict to review it, whether the scores add up to a decision, what the letter should say, and which conditions are still outstanding a year later. EthiKit holds that load so the judgement has room. It is built for the applicant who needs a clear path, the reviewer who should see only what fits their competence, and the coordinator who has to assemble a fair panel without doing it from memory.

Three roles, three views of the same record. The applicant sees a guided submission and its readiness. The reviewer sees the queue assigned to them and a rubric workbench. The coordinator sees the pipeline, the review console, the committee console and the compliance calendar. The frameworks the rubric and the letters follow are named on every page: the national health research ethics council's guidelines, the Declaration of Helsinki and good clinical practice.

Sign-in and the overview

Sign-in is through the platform's member service, and the role comes from the member's grant. The overview is the coordinator's command centre: the pipeline as columns from draft to closed, the counts by risk level and study type, the median time to decision and reviewer turnaround, the reviews overdue on open applications, and the latest decisions.

Sign-in
Sign-in. The demonstration board offers a coordinator, a reviewer and an applicant.
Overview, as the coordinator
Overview, as the coordinator. Seven applications on the board, one submitted and waiting for screening, two approved, one rejected. The rail counts them by risk level and study type and lists the latest decisions.

Applications: the guided submission

An application is a stepped form: study, team and setting, protocol, consent, data handling, administration. The study type decides the documents the dossier requires and the readiness gate counts them. Reviews, changes and safety events sit beside the form on the same record, so an amendment or an adverse event reported after approval is filed where the study is.

Applications, as the coordinator
Applications, as the coordinator. An approved survey study with its workflow buttons, the six-step form, the readiness of its dossier, and two adverse events reported after approval.
Applications, as the applicant
Applications, as the applicant. The applicant sees only their own study: a draft observational study, three documents still to attach, and the option to withdraw.

Review: reviewers matched by expertise

Each application derives the competencies it needs from its study type and risk. The review console ranks the reviewer pool by how well their competencies match, shows the matched competencies, the reviewer's current load and their final score history, and flags a conflict of interest before an assignment can be made. An optional pre-screen prompt lets a coordinator run the protocol past a language model of their own choosing, in their own browser, never on the server.

Review console
Review console. A low-risk observational study needing two competencies. Six reviewers ranked by match, from ninety to zero percent, each with their load and an assign action.

The reviewer's workbench

A reviewer scores six criteria on a one-to-five rubric: scientific merit, risk and benefit, consent adequacy, participant selection, privacy protection and data management. The overall score updates as they click, a radar compares their scores with the panel's, and the recommendation is one of approve, approve with conditions, revise or reject, with a narrative beneath. Scores save as they are made.

Reviewer workbench
Reviewer workbench. A high-risk clinical trial under review: the six criteria scored, the overall at fifty-five percent, the radar against the panel, and the four recommendations.

Committee: the decision, the letter and the stewardship

The committee console holds the decision, the generated letter, the act of communicating it to the applicant, the committee's vote and its consensus, and the stewardship after approval, all on one screen. The letter is drafted from the decision and the study's own facts and can be edited before it goes. Conditions attached to a conditional approval are listed with their state, outstanding or met, and the application clears when the last one is met.

Committee console
Committee console. An approved survey study: the decision letter as communicated, no conditions attached, the vote and consensus panels, and two adverse events with their resolution state.

Compliance: the calendar of expiries and continuing reviews

Every approved study has an expiry date and, for the studies that need one, a continuing review. The compliance page is a calendar of both, with the studies expiring within sixty days, the continuing reviews pending and the conditions overdue listed beside it. An expiry sweep moves lapsed approvals to expired in one action.

Compliance calendar
Compliance calendar. September 2026 with no expiries inside the window and nothing overdue on the demonstration board.

Where it runs, and what it is not

EthiKit runs on the Publon platform against its own database, with the ethics service holding applications, reviews, decisions, letters, amendments, adverse events and continuing reviews as tables, and the interface composed from them. The documents attached to a study are files on the same platform, in the institution's own store.

It is not a document management system and not a replacement for the committee's judgement. It keeps the record, routes the work to the qualified people, and holds the decision and its conditions where an audit will find them.

State on 15 September 2026

Every page was captured on the live demonstration board as three people. The board is small by design: seven applications across the lifecycle, three decisions, one review in progress. The applicant's own overview shows no applications because the pipeline counts only submitted studies, and theirs is still a draft. The analytics, letters, reviewers, institutions and team tabs of the committee console exist and are not shown here.