Sustaining Islamic bioethics research

Abstract

Background: The groundbreaking activities that were enabled and facilitated by an NPRP research grant (Islamic Medical and Scientific Ethics, NPRP No. 08-783-6-017) to build a comprehensive collection of scholarly resources on Islamic bioethics have transformed the original proposal and slowly succeeded in creating a research culture that brought local, regional, and international attention to the project and its resources as an important hub for Islamic bioethics research. These activities include: development of a multilingual collection, which is catalogued, indexed, and maintained by the project team; development of an information retrieval system that enables fast and accurate searching capabilities of the stored bibliographic information; supporting collaborative initiatives with local, regional, and international stakeholders; envisioning further research opportunities that expand the scope of the project beyond bibliographic research into topical research projects and comprehensive reference works, which inspired another three-year research proposal to compile the world's first Encyclopedia of Islamic Bioethics and which has been accepted and awarded at the QNRF's Fifth Cycle in May 2012 (NPRP No. 5-1390-6-043) . These efforts have recently culminated in the successful organization of an international conference on Islamic bioethics, which brought together some of the most prominent experts of Islamic bioethics both in the West and in the Muslim world, which was held in June 2012 in Doha. Objectives: The presentation aims to show the different dimensions of the Islamic bioethics research project with a special focus on the important aspects that ensure smooth and effective transition from one level of the research process to another. More particularly, the presentation seeks to highlight the importance of maintaining a long-term vision, which inspires short-term and periodical objectives. Methods: the presentation will address these dimensions of the project: - Planning and revision - Bibliographic component - Research component - Workflow and team-building component - Dissemination and outreach component Results and Conclusions: The presentation will share the most important results that the project achieved in the first phase as well as preparations for the following phase with a special focus on the challenges that the project team encountered as well as the important lessons gained in the process.