{"doi":"10.1017/cts.2021.848","title":"A snapshot of U.S. IRB review of COVID-19 research in the early pandemic","abstract":"Abstract Background/Objective: Along with the greater research enterprise, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) had to quickly adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. IRBs had to review and oversee COVID-related research, while navigating strict public health measures and a workforce largely relegated to working from home. Our objectives were to measure adjustments to standard IRB review processes, IRB turnaround time and document and any novel ethical issues encountered. Methods: Structured data requests were sent to members of the Consortium to Advance Effective Research Ethics Oversight directing Human Research Protection Programs (HRPP). Results: Fourteen of the 32 HRPP director members responded to a questionnaire about their approach to review and oversight during COVID-19. Eleven of the 14 provided summary data on COVID-19-specific protocols and six of the 11 provided protocol-related documents for our review. All respondents adopted at least one additional COVID-19-specific step to their usual review process. The average turnaround time for convened and expedited IRB reviews was 15 calendar days. In our review of the documents from 194 COVID-19-specific protocols ( n = 302 documents), we identified only a single review that raised ethical concerns unique to COVID-19. Conclusions: Our data provide a snapshot of how HRPPs approached the review of COVID-19-specific protocols at the start of the pandemic in the USA. While not generalizable to all HRPPs, these data indicate that HRPPs can adapt and respond quickly response to a pandemic and likely need little novel expertise in the review and oversight of COVID-19-specific protocols.","journal":"Journal of Clinical and Translational Science","year":2021,"id":197621,"datarank":0.38474240361923057,"base_score":2.5649493574615367,"endowment":2.5649493574615367,"self_citation_contribution":0.38474240361923057,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.38474240361923057,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9482,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":771650,"name":"Kimberley Serpico","orcid":"0000-0002-0755-2233","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":331188,"name":"Holly Fernandez Lynch","orcid":"0000-0001-7813-9879","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":772143,"name":"John C. Baumann","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":602097,"name":"Emily E. Anderson","orcid":"0000-0003-2197-1239","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":330805,"name":"Holly A. Taylor","orcid":"0000-0001-6811-9356","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":13,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:50:23.532351Z","pmid":"34956653","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}