This article is part of the Iris Ethics Knowledge Base; you can find a directory of all articles here.
If you have received feedback from our committee or a reviewer, the first thing to know is that this is a normal and expected part of ethical review. It is not a sign that something has gone wrong with your application. In most cases, feedback is simply how a sound application becomes an approved one.
At Iris Ethics, review is designed to be a collaborative process. Our reviews are conducted against the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research 2025 (the National Statement), which supports a model of review that is proportionate to risk and that treats review as a considered process rather than a single pass or fail verdict. Giving you the opportunity to clarify, amend, or respond during the review, rather than rejecting an application and asking you to start again, saves everyone time and keeps our decision-making transparent.
This post explains how feedback works in our process and, more usefully, how to respond in a way that gets you to a decision faster.
How feedback reaches you
Our review process (set out in our review process flow chart) includes several points where the committee or a reviewer may pause to seek more information. When that happens, we notify you in your account portal. The portal also sends an email automatically, and any emails you send in reply are captured against your project. You therefore have a single, complete record of the exchange, which supports your own audit trail as well as ours.
You do not need to choose between the portal and email. They are the same conversation. We do, however, recommend keeping substantive responses and documents within the portal, under your project, so that nothing relevant lives only in someone's inbox.
What feedback can look like
Feedback varies with the nature of the project. It might be:
- A request for clarification (e.g. we have understood your recruitment approach, but we want to confirm one detail).
- A request for more information (e.g. the methodology is sound, but the data management arrangements are not yet clear).
- A request to supply or amend a document (e.g. the participant information sheet needs a clearer complaints pathway).
Sometimes, where a matter is easier to talk through than to write out, we may invite you to an online discussion. This is often the quickest way to resolve a cluster of related questions, and you are welcome to upload further material during or after that conversation.
How to respond well
A few habits make responses faster to review, which in turn gets you to a decision sooner.
Address each point directly. For full HREC reviews, we provide a template for responding to feedback, which we encourage you to use. A structured, point-by-point response clarifies your own thinking and lets the reviewer see at a glance how each item has been dealt with.
Provide amendments in both clean and tracked-changes versions. This is the single most helpful thing you can do (if it’s feasible). The tracked version lets the reviewer confirm exactly what changed without re-reading the whole document, and the clean version becomes your approved file.
You are allowed to disagree. Feedback is not a set of instructions you must follow to the letter. If you think a requested change would harm the project, or rests on a misunderstanding of the context, say so and explain why, with reference to the National Statement where relevant. A reasoned response is exactly what the process is for. The committee would rather understand your reasoning than have you make a change you believe is wrong.
Flag anything else you have changed. If, while amending, you take the opportunity to update something we did not raise, tell us. That way we can take it into account as part of the subsequent review.
Step-by-step
- Read the feedback in full before you start amending, and note each distinct point.
- Open your project in the portal and locate the messaging feature.
- Draft your response point by point, using our template where provided.
- Amend your documents, saving both a tracked-changes and a clean version.
- Upload your response and documents through the portal (or by reply email), and send.
- If we have offered an online discussion and you think it would help, participate in this process.
After approval: amendments
Responding to Panel feedback during review is a different step from submitting an amendment to a project that already has approval. Once a project is approved, any change to the approved protocol, instruments, or consent materials must be submitted for approval before it takes effect; continuing ethics approval is conditional on this (NS 5.4.10). See Amendments for how minor and major amendments are submitted and reviewed.
Summary
Feedback is part of the process, not a verdict on it. Responding through the portal (or by email) ensures the record stays together. Try to answer each point directly, provide clean and tracked versions of anything you amend, and feel free to push back where you disagree. Applications that do this are almost always the ones that reach a final decision quickly.
If you are unsure what a piece of feedback is asking for, ask us. A short clarifying question at this stage can save writing a response aimed at the wrong issue.
Related resources
This page was last updated on 10 September 2026.
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This article makes reference to the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research 2025. It is intended as practical guidance and does not constitute legal advice.
AI Disclosure: Resources in this library were prepared using Large Language Models with input from Iris Ethics staff who guided the scope and design. Subsequent revisions and final versions were developed and approved by Iris Ethics staff.