Zusammenfassung

Research integrity is one dimension of scientific quality. It is supported by structural frameworks such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), which thus contribute to the organizational quality of the scientific enterprise. However, research integrity can only succeed if challenges and opportunities of ethical review processes are balanced. This article discusses these issues for the field of media and communication science and proposes solutions for the organization of corresponding ethics committees. The findings are based on extant literature as well as interviews conducted as part of the BMBF-funded project "Research Ethics in Communication and Media Science (FeKoM)".