Thousands of research papers and theses are written every year across universities in Nepal, but many of these research’s depicts a troubling pattern i.e. many of these work’s proceeds and gets published without formal ethical review. Ethical approval is not a bureaucratic formality; it exists to protect the research participants’ rights, ensure informed consent, minimise harm and uphold scientific integrity. When it is skipped, research risks becoming extractive rather than responsible.
The most horrifying part of this crisis is the blind spot surrounding its scale: while regulatory records reflect out of how many submitted proposals receive ethical clearance, the country possesses no data or tracking mechanisms to account for countless studies carried out across the nation without any ethical approval whatsoever.
The gap between rules and practice
Nepal does have clear frameworks; the Nepal Health and Research Council (NHRC) and Tribhuvan University’s research ethics policy state that an appropriate level of ethical approval must be secured before research begins only if it involves human and animal participants. In practice, enforcement is uneven, especially at bachelor’s-level theses, and a notable number of faculty papers move forward with little more than a supervisor’s signature and departmental nod. Reports on research ethics compliance in Nepal higher education institutions have identified fake ethical approval, bypassing of ethical reviews and weak oversight as recurring problems.
Many students remain completely unaware that ethical approval is even required; they complete their theses without realising that the absence of formal ethical clearance renders their research incomplete and in many cases invalid. This drought of awareness is not limited to students, and a similar gap exists among faculty members at universities, many of whom supervise research without insisting on proper ethical review or fully recognising its necessity.
What is at stake
The consequences are not abstract. Participants may be interviewed or surveyed without proper consent, data protection, or consideration of vulnerability. The findings from methodologically or ethically compromised studies can misinform policy and further research. Nepal’s academic reputation suffers when international journals or collaborators encounter
papers that lack basic ethical documentation. Over time, this practice quietly erodes public trust in research itself, making it harder for genuine, high-quality studies to be taken seriously both inside the country and abroad. When ethical shortcuts become routine, the entire research ecosystem risks producing knowledge that is not only unreliable but also potentially harmful to the very communities it claims to serve.
The publication loophole
The practice continues largely because the system itself makes ethical compliance easy to ignore i.e. many local and regional journals accept manuscripts without asking for an ethics clearance certificate or a formal statement confirming that approval was obtained. International journals are becoming stricter, but the absence of a consistent enforcement framework in Nepal’s own publication ecosystem creates an easy bypass. Researchers quickly learn that a missing ethical approval rarely prevents a paper from appearing in print, and the very stage that should act as a final safeguard instead becomes one of the weakest links in the system.
Closing the gap
Solutions are already partially in place. Universities can make ethical literacy a required component of research methodology courses at every level, while research supervisors should be trained and held accountable for ensuring ethical approval is obtained when required. Institutional Review Committees (IRC) need clearer mandates, adequate resources and transparent procedures that do not deter legitimate student work. Journals indexed in NepJol should require explicit ethical approval certificate before considering and reject manuscripts that omit them when human and animal participants are involved in the study. The University Grants Commission (UGC) and NHRC can strengthen coordination so that funding and publication all hinge on demonstrated ethical compliance.
None of this requires inventing new rules, but rather treating the existing ones as non-negotiable. Ethical approval is not an obstacle to research; it is the condition which makes research legitimate. Until Nepalese Universities and researchers treat it as such, the papers that fill library shelves and journal pages will continue to rest on an incomplete foundation.
