Increases in research data-sharing practices have highlighted a growing number of ethical challenges related to the sharing and publication of datasets. While ethical best practices, guidelines, and recommendations for addressing ethical issues related to journal articles are well documented, there are currently no established ethics standards, guidelines, or recommendations for data publications. In order to address this gap, this Working Group is formed through a collaboration between a team of professionals across publishing and research data and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), an organization with broad expertise in publication ethics and in the development of resources for editors and publishers.
The Working Group plans to draft documentation outlining categories of data ethics cases, examples and proposed workflows for addressing them, and recommendations for cross-organizational participation and action. The goal of the Group is to distribute this document through FORCE11, COPE and other channels to drive a community conversation leading to an accepted and adoptable framework of suggested workflows, escalation pathways, and resources for handling ethical issues related to research data publication.
Goals
The goal of this Working Group is to develop industry-leading guidance (non prescriptive) and recommended best practices to support repositories, journal publishers, and institutions in handling the ethical responsibilities associated with publishing research data.
Activities
Through a collaboration between a team of professionals in publishing and research data and COPE, the Working Group plans to draft documentation outlining categories of data ethics cases, examples and proposed workflows for addressing them, and recommendations for cross-organizational participation and action. The goal of the Group is to distribute this document through FORCE11, COPE and other channels to drive a community conversation leading to an accepted and adoptable framework of suggested workflows, escalation pathways, and resources for handling ethical issues related to research data publication.
Deliverables
The first set of Recommendations are available at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5391293
Background reading on this first release is available at F11 blogs: https://www.force11.org/post/recommendations-for-the-handling-of-ethical-concerns-relating-to-the-publication-of-research-data/
Engagement
The current members of the group represent government, non profit and commercial publishing organizations, COPE Council and data repository perspectives from across four countries. The goal of this group is to build up broad engagement, globally, across the scholarly communications landscape, to develop community led best practice guidelines. Engagement will be initiated by targeted invitations to a broader group of experts, and then publicly marketed across community listservs and related working groups.
Group Email
data_ethics@force11.org (private list for group members only)