About Us
Who We are
The Arab Academy for Responsible Conduct of Research (AA-RCR) was established as an outcome of the Research Ethics Education program in Jordan funded by Fogarty/NIH USA since 2016. The academy aims to educate about the responsible conduct of research (RCR) in the Arab region and to promote its dissemination. This includes supporting and conducting activities of RCR in the region such as distributing educational materials, holding RCR awareness workshops, conduction of online and face-to-face short courses, online training modules, and organizing conferences in Bioethics. The AA-RCR is independent as an entity but affiliated with the Society for Advancement of Science and Technology in the Arab World (SASTA) as the umbrella organization. The academy will eventually be the home of the online certification program in Arabic for RCR. It will offer consultation services for researchers across the Arab region by capitalizing on the prior training of its members. Additionally, the academy convenes an annual international bioethics conference.
Background
The academy serves as a platform by which education, dissemination, networking, mentoring, professional development and scientific conferences related to research ethics take place in the region. This effort fills in a much-needed gap for the short- and long-term capacity building for the graduates of the current and future trainees in the Jordan-based Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) program . Education about RCR to stakeholders and the public is carried out to sustain the momentum from the academic activities and to establish research and its responsible conduct as a culture among key opinion leaders and policy makers in an effort to further build RCR capacity, and to formalize this capacity into specific rules and regulations to be adopted in all over the region. Related to this education effort will be dissemination of findings and activities of academy members by holding educational workshops, events, and group meetings with stakeholders in the larger community.
This enables higher profile visibility in the scientific community and the general public across the Arab region to disseminate the concepts and importance of RCR for society to begin changing the social norm among the stakeholders, and eventually the general public. These events bring the government officials, university officials, industry CEOs and community leaders with the researchers under the umbrella of the academy to describe and discuss RCR and its relevance to society.
This annual conference on bioethics that we started in the past 6 years has been a success and well attended in terms of becoming a focal point for the program, fellows, and the rest of the research community in the region to meet and listen to presentations on RCR. This conference is being maintained and expanded as a major venue for dissemination of RCR and research bioethics culture through research evidence. It is, now, the primary gathering of researchers, interested persons and those wishing to learn about RCR and research bioethics in the region. The conference can be held inside, and outside Jordan in countries interested in hosting it and providing financial and logistical support for it. In the long-term, moving from one country to another, the conference will serve to push forward the progress of policies and procedures pertaining to RCR in the country where it is being held. It will serve as a major venue to produce yearly recommendations toward directing the progress and capacity building of RCR in the region. Such recommendation will serve to pursue policy makers and opinion leader in each respective country.
The academy serves as the entity for professional development and networking for RCR fellows. It is through continually holding RCR related short-courses, training diplomas, and workshops, fellows of the program will be kept engaged. We will also ensure their professional development via offering after-mentioned activities. The instructors in this application, along with mentors, will all serve as mentors for the junior and new graduates of the Master of Bioethics through networking and exploring career opportunities and promotions within their current jobs by leveraging the Master of Bioethics degree.
The structure of the Academy
The Academy is led by the board of directors’ membership Prof. Wael Al-Delaimy (University of California San Diego), Prof. Karem Alzoubi and Prof. Omar Khabour, both from Jordan University of Science and Technology). The membership are through two tiers: Fellows, who are graduates of the Jordan RCR program and the graduates of the Masters of Bioethics, and Members, who are qualified academics and practitioners involved in RCR from the Arab region, or whose involved in the region.
