[Air-l] electronic signatures

[Alex Halavais]

This document suggests electronic signatures may not be acceptable for
Internet work:

http://www.utexas.edu/research/rsc/humanresearch/special_topics/ehtical_dilemmas_internet.pdf

It reads, in part: 

"""
The federal regulations require signed informed consent from
every research participant unless a waiver of signature is
granted by the IRB, or the research is exempt from federal
oversight. The Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP),
the governmental oversight agency for human subject
protection, has deemed electronic signatures obtained over the
Internet to be invalid even though electronic signatures are
accepted for interstate commerce. Researchers currently
getting electronic signatures do not meet the federal regulatory
requirement. Thus, the investigator must, in most cases,
receive an original or faxed signature from the research
participant.
"""

For what it's worth... I haven't dug into whether this is the standard
employed on my own campus.

Alex


-- 
//
// Alexander Halavais
// Graduate Director of Informatics
// University at Buffalo School of Informatics
// contact info: http://alex.halavais.net
//