SMEC evaluates research for ethical approval in the humanities and the behavioral or social science research traditions. Also protocols in engineering, natural or life science may be submitted to the SMEC panel. More informatien can be found on the website.
SMEC is authorized to evaluate research proposals involving human participants to ethical review insofar as they do not fall under the Human Subject Experiments Act (i.e., the "Experiments Act" of May 7, 2004), there is no involvement of UZ Leuven patients (data) and/or staff, and the studies do not take place within the campus of UZ Leuven.
A decision tree has been established to help researchers at KU Leuven submit research projects to the appropriate ethics committee (EC) using a decision tree. A number of recommendations are made to assist researchers in their choice and give them an understanding of how the regulatory framework for ECs works.