What’s trust got to do with research: why not accountability?

Authors : Morẹ́nikẹ́ Oluwátóyìn Foláyan, Bridget Haire

This paper explores the intricate dynamics of trust, power, and vulnerability in the relationship between researchers and study participants/communities in the field of bioethics.

The power and knowledge imbalances between researchers and participants create a structural vulnerability for the latter. While trust-building is important between researchers and study participants/communities, the consenting process can be challenging, often burdening participants with power abrogation.

Trust can be breached. The paper highlights the contractual nature of the research relationship and argues that trust alone cannot prevent exploitation as power imbalances and vulnerabilities persist. To protect participants, bioethics guidance documents promote accountability and ethical compliance.

These documents uphold fairness in the researcher-participant relationship and safeguard the interests of socially vulnerable participants. The paper also highlights the role of shared decision-making and inclusive deliberation with diverse stakeholders and recommends that efforts should be made by researchers to clarify roles and responsibilities, while research regulatory agents should transform the research-participant relationship into a legal-based contract governed by accountability principles.

While trust remains important, alternative mechanisms may be needed to ensure ethical research practices and protect the interests of participants and communities. Striking a balance between trust and accountability is crucial in this regard.

URL : What’s trust got to do with research: why not accountability?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1237742

Science knowledge and trust in science in biodiversity citizen science projects

Authors : Baptiste Bedessem, Anne Dozières, Anne-Caroline Prévot, Romain Julliard

Citizen science projects are valued for their impact on participants’ knowledge, attitude and behavior towards science. In this paper, we explore how participation in biodiversity citizen science projects is correlated to different dimensions of trust in science.

We conduct a quantitative study through an online survey of 1,199 individuals, 586 of them being part of a biodiversity citizen science program in France. Our results suggest that participation-related trust is more exhaustive — it covers more dimensions of the scientific endeavor — than education-related trust.

This exploratory study calls for more empirical research on the links between citizen science and the different dimensions of public trust in science.

URL : Science knowledge and trust in science in biodiversity citizen science projects

DOI : https://doi.org/10.22323/2.22010205

Trust in Digital Repositories

ISO 16363:2012, Space Data and Information Transfer Systems – Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories (ISO TRAC), outlines actions a repository can take to be considered trustworthy, but research examining whether the repository’s designated community of users associates such actions with trustworthiness has been limited. Drawing from this ISO document and the management and information systems literatures, this paper discusses findings from interviews with 66 archaeologists and quantitative social scientists.

We found similarities and differences across the disciplines and among the social scientists. Both disciplinary communities associated trust with a repository’s transparency. However, archaeologists mentioned guarantees of preservation and sustainability more frequently than the social scientists, who talked about institutional reputation. Repository processes were also linked to trust, with archaeologists more frequently citing metadata issues and social scientists discussing data selection and cleaning processes.

Among the social scientists, novices mentioned the influence of colleagues on their trust in repositories almost twice as much as the experts. We discuss the implications our findings have for identifying trustworthy repositories and how they extend the models presented in the management and information systems literatures.

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.1.143

‘Héloïse’: towards a co-ordinated ecosystem approach for the archiving of scientific publications?

Authors : Hans Dillaerts, Ghislaine Chartron

With the continued development of open access policies, it is important to promote consensus-building projects with the various stakeholders. This article gives an account of how such collaboration has facilitated the construction of the project Héloïse.

This project is a French information service dedicated to describing the policies of French publishers on the self-archiving of scientific publications. Héloïse represents a real tool of mediation whose development involved much debate between publishers and research stakeholders.

This article seeks to demonstrate that the development of trust between the actors involved in the project was a major component of its success.

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00834411

Libre accès à la communication scientifique et contexte français : prospective, développement et enjeux pour la créativité et l’interdisciplinarité ?

Auteur/Author : Hans Dillaerts

Dans le cadre du développement international du mouvement du libre accès aux publications scientifiques, cette thèse analyse plus précisément la situation française dans le contexte européen.

Cette analyse a été menée à travers une démarche de recherche-action, au sein d’un groupe d’acteurs du Groupement français des industries de l’information (GFII) concernés par le libre accès.

Nous cherchons tout d’abord à mettre en évidence les forces motrices du développement du libre accès en nous appuyant sur une méthodologie prospective développée au LIPSOR/CNAM.

Les résultats nous ont conduit à contribuer à la conception d’un site d’information dont la finalité est l’affichage des politiques des éditeurs nationaux en matière d’auto-archivage afin d’accompagner les pratiques de dépôts au niveau national.

L’analyse prospective a en effet révélé l’importance des embargos pour les équilibres financiers des éditeurs.De façon plus distanciée, nous amorçons également une réflexion sur l’impact réel du libre accès sur deux moteurs semblant jouer un rôle croissant dans l’économie de la connaissance, à savoir la créativité et l’interdisciplinarité.”

URL : http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00768432/fr/

Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

Building upon a process- and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities.

A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality — primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies — reveals patterns in youth’s information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation.

Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school.

Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure.”

URL : http://ssrn.com/abstract=2005272

Trust and privacy in the future internet…

Trust and privacy in the future internet—a research perspective :
With the proliferation of networked electronic communication came daunting capabilities to collect, process, combine and store data, resulting in hitherto unseen transformational pressure on the concepts of trust, security and privacy as we know them. The Future Internet will bring about a world where real life will integrate physical and digital life. Technology development for data linking and mining, together with unseen data collection, will lead to unwarranted access to personal data, and hence, privacy intrusion. Trust and identity lie at the basis of many human interactions and transactions, and societies have developed legitimate concern for privacy being essential for freedom and creativity. The burgeoning development of the Information Society, particularly during the past fifteen years, transcended the societal readiness to respond to the transformational change evoked by ICT. We have reached the eleventh hour for the preservation of trust and privacy as elements that can be transposed into our digital future. Europe has been at the forefront in recognizing the importance of privacy protection in relation to digital data, witness the advanced European legislation in this domain. The European Commission recognizes that appropriate measures need to combine technology development with legal means, user awareness and tools supporting data controllers to comply with law in an accountable and transparent way, and that empower users with a controlling stake in managing their personal data. Activities are underway at many levels. European RTD programmes play their role in supporting research in trustworthy ICT, privacy enhancing technologies, privacy-by-design in service layers as well as in networks, enabling technologies such as cryptography, and in generalized frameworks for trust and privacy-protective identity management.
URL : http://www.springerlink.com/content/e265088034l198x3/