This document suggests electronic signatures may not be acceptable for Internet work: http://www.utexas.edu/research/rsc/humanresearch/special_topics/ehtical_dile... 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 //