The uncorrected proofs of a report on a National Research Council workshop held March 21-22, 2013 in Washington DC to obtain perspectives from social and behavioral scientists on the proposed revisions of the "Common Rule" regulations that are intended to protect human subjects are now available for free download at:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18383

I think that this will be of interest to a number of CNI-announce readers involved in data curation, as it is highly relevant to understanding the conflicts and tensions between the goals of data sharing and reuse for data involving human subjects, particularly in the social and behavioral sciences, and the system that has been set up to regulate research involving human subjects with the goal of protecting these subjects.  This already very complicated situation is further unsettled by some very complex revisions that were proposed to the human subjects regulatory framework in 2011; the potential impact of these changes is also discussed.

The workshop is part of an ongoing project that the Academies are conducting in this area; see

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49500

for more information. There is also some additional detail on the March workshop here:

http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bbcss/currentprojects/DBASSE_080452#Workshop


Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI