Universities should lead the way in relaxing requirements for oversight of social-science and humanities research by institutional review boards, according to a new report prepared for the American Association of University Professors.

Scholars in those fields have long complained that IRB’s tend to overly scrutinize and restrict their work—especially in the collecting of data through surveys, interviews, and observing behavior in public places, techniques that, the report argues, pose low risks to participants. For example, the report says, a campus IRB attempted to deny a master’s student her diploma because she did not obtain board approval before calling newspaper executives to ask for copies of printed material generally available to the public.

Federal regulations already allow IRB’s to waive such studies from oversight—unless the information that leaked out could damage the subjects’ reputation or place them at legal risk. IRB’s tend to err on the side of restrictiveness when interpreting that rule, the report says.

The report also says that prospects appear slim to persuade the federal government to amend the regulations. However, colleges have the discretion to exempt from IRB oversight research that is not federally financed, which includes many campus research projects, the report notes.