The committee deals mainly with formal complaints of SAS employees or students, eventually institute management complaints related to presumable breaches of ethics and research integrity. As the first step the Committee has to decide if the complaint could be covered by the Committee and if it is the case, then the case is followed further. The judgements of the Committee are based on the framework of the Ethics code of SAS. The persons implicated are invited to the hearing session during Committee meeting to enable deeper views ensuring objectivity and equally balanced opinions. At the end the Committee decides by voting and the resulting Committee opinion is sent to concerned parties. In specific cases the Committee opinion could be submitted to the Presidium of the Slovak Academy of Sciences enabling thus a regulatory decision of governing body if needed.

The Committee prepared and updated (last change in 2015) the Ethics code of SAS based on The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA) as well as on The European Charter & Code for Researchers. This Code delineates basic principles of ethical conduct and research integrity within the Slovak Academy of Sciences and its institutes. The Code is approved by the Presidium of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and published on the website of the Academy.