FASEB highlights the negative impacts of inconsistent regulation of the research enterprise

Bethesda, MD - The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) has submitted comments in response to the National Science Board's (NSB) Task Force on Administrative Burdens Request for Information (RFI) on reducing investigators administrative workload for federally funded research. The NSB will use the information collected from the RFI to develop recommendations to reduce administrative workload for researchers and institutions.

In its response (http://bit.ly/117IDix), FASEB identified three major themes of administrative burden and made six broad recommendations to alleviate these burdens. FASEB also provided recommendations pertaining to specific areas of administrative burden as outlined in the RFI, including conflict of interest reporting, research training requirements, effort reporting, select agents, and regulations pertaining to research involving human subjects and laboratory animal care and use.

In addition to its recommendations, FASEB provided the NSB with a summary of findings (http://bit.ly/ZHSUkD) from its online survey of individual investigators on administrative burdens associated with federally funded research. The survey was widely distributed among research and academic organizations and received over 1,300 responses.

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