Do We Need a Code of Conduct on Research Data Ethics & Integrity? Heidi Laine / International Data Week 2018
What is a code of conduct Codes of conduct are about policy, self-regulation, and soft-law They are about the ”right thing to do” vs. the legal minimum It lays out principles for ethically and morally responsible action for individuals within a specified domain What it isn’t is a manual
What can be achieved by a Coc? Give guidance and advice Raise awareness on an issue Show to society at large, that research community is awake and can be trusted Empower national and local actors to push for action Introduce new concepts Process of drafting a CoC can be equally, if not even more, influential as the final product
Examples of international codes Singapore Statement on Research Integrity (by World Conference on RI) Montréal Statement on Cross-boundary Research Collaboration (by WCRI) European Code of Conduct on Research Integrity (by All European Academies) TOP guidelines (by Open Science Centre) COPE guideline (by COPE) Sanaa code of conduct (by the Sanaa community)
Research integrity and data How to credit and acknowledge creators of data How to share data and data creatorship credits with citizen scientists Data ownership and copyright Data ownership in cross-border reearch co-operation Data management planning practices FAIR principles (making metadata open) Data and reproducibility of research results Long-term preservation: how to make priorizations Workflows: proprietary vs. non-commercial
Research ethics and data Handling of personal information (GDPR, but a hot topic all over) Gathering, using, storing, sharing social media data Principles of informed consent Group privacy (big data about people like me is about me) Pseudonymization and anonymization
What makes a succesful code? Drafting process that is engaging and open Despite co-design, process still has a clear (co-)owner(s) Language is concise, clear and precise Mechanism for updating the code
How to proceed? There is no need for such code. Let’s do nothing. Good idea, but not for DPC/CODATA. Let’s pitch this to someone else > Who? Good idea, and DPC/CODATA could facilitate the process. > What are the next action points, and who do we need onboard?
Stakeholders International Science Council ISC All European Academies ALLEA InterAcademy Panel European Network of Research Ethics and Research Integrity ENERI