USAID Partnership for Higher Education Reform project and the three partner universities in Vietnam (3Us) endeavor to achieve objectives that lead to an enabling environment in the higher education sector so that other development assistance efforts can thrive. One of these is the World Bank-funded infrastructure initiative in higher education known as the Vietnam University Development Project (VUDP).
A key aim of the collaboration among MOET, the project, and the World Bank is to propel Vietnamese university research so that it consistently meets international standards of excellence. Meeting these standards will ensure that the findings of Vietnamese researchers can be readily published in highly ranked international journals, but as importantly that the results of clinical trials and randomized experiments conducted at Vietnamese universities can be leveraged into innovative goods and services that benefit enterprise and society. One area in which universities seek support is in establishing robust institutional review boards (IRBs) so that university research can meet the stringent ethical standards required at the international level. There are already a range of ethical safeguard practices in place across many member universities, yet these remain fragmented. These often noble, isolated efforts lack a systematic and systemic approach to reviewing and endorsing research methodology and findings – particularly as they pertain to human subjects and animals, both in science and social sciences.
The project seeks to help the 3Us to develop a clear and universal code for researchers (professors, post-docs, and students) with the goal of translating this into the establishment of an internationally authenticated set of Institutional Review Boards. Some of this effort will be focused on identifying the range of existing practices and helping the universities to to transform them into a unified and coherent institutional practice that can be internationally validated. The first step will be in establishing a Committee on Research Ethics at each partner university. To this end the project team met with representatives from the 3Us to discuss the first steps in developing such a system for research ethics. Similar discussions were held at member universities. It was agreed that the project will support experts to assist member universities in the review of their existing guidelines, codes of conduct, and any established research ethics committees. The experts will also support the Da Nang University (at corporate level) and the Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City (at corporate level) to finalize their protocols for the establishment and functioning of their respective Research Ethics Committees with the goal of transforming these into recognized Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). The project support will start with a series of webinars and remote meetings to ascertain existing structures and practices, helping to identify any gaps. Then each university will develop an action plan on its path forward. This will be followed by in-person expert coaching sessions to refine the action plans. The capstone activity will be to have the action plans validated by international experts. The objective of the project activity is to ultimately ensure that the research being conducted at Vietnamese universities meets international ethical norms and standards, ultimately increasing the volume of recognized publications and innovations emerging from research efforts in Vietnam.