Étiquette : Ethics

Catégories
EN

What Does Openness Mean for the Humanities? Redefining Ethical and Reflexive Practices in Open Research

Author : Adeola Eze

Notions of openness in research have largely been shaped by scientific principles of transparency, efficiency, and replicability, operationalized through standardized workflows, interoperable infrastructures, and measurable impact. Endorsed by funders and policy frameworks, this model often misfits humanities and social science epistemologies in which knowledge is interpretive, historically situated, and ethically entangled with context.

This article critiques policy-led definitions of openness by tracing how open access and open science have been implemented through compliance regimes, metrics, and author-facing payment models, with uneven consequences across regions, languages, and institutions. Rather than rejecting open research, the article reinterprets it through a humanities lens.

It develops a theory of interpretive openness through Umberto Eco’s concept of the open work and extends it through three historical case studies—the cento, scholastic glossing, and Derrida’s margins—which show how form-bound reuse, annotation, and participatory reading have long operated as infrastructures of public meaning-making.

The article then connects these genealogies to contemporary digital publishing and editorial infrastructures, including preprints, open peer review, and web annotation, and argues for open research designs that value interpretive labor, visible process, and community accountable infrastructures.

URL : What Does Openness Mean for the Humanities? Redefining Ethical and Reflexive Practices in Open Research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.7873

Catégories
EN

Generative AI can and should accelerate research evaluation reform to better recognize ‘distinctly human contributions’

Authors :  Mohammad Hosseini, Brian D Earp, Sebastian Porsdam Mann, Kristi Holmes

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) revolutionizes how research is conducted, it also challenges traditional methods of scholarly evaluation. Productivity metrics such as publication and citation counts are widely understood to be poor proxies for gauging meaningful impact. These metrics are becoming even less reliable as GenAI accelerates text-based and computational work while leaving other forms of research labor (e.g. community engagement, in-person mentorship and team development) largely unaffected. This uneven effect risks exacerbating existing evaluative biases.

We argue that evaluation reforms should be organized around two categories of ‘distinctly human contributions’ that are indispensable to research, but which are inadequately captured by metrics: (1) the epistemic-ethical category, encompassing situated judgment under accountability (e.g. deciding what to trust, justifying that decision, and standing behind it); and (2) the socio-relational category, encompassing sustained forms of valuable human engagement (e.g. mentoring, teaching, community partnership and trust-building).

We suggest practical mechanisms for supporting evaluation reform including modified CRediT (Contributor Role Taxonomy) statements, recognition of a broader array of outputs, and strengthened narrative CVs and third-person testimonies.

However, we acknowledge that these suggestions, particularly those relying on narrative self-presentation, are themselves vulnerable to GenAI manipulation and are insufficient on their own. If distinctly human contributions to research require judgment and relationships that resist automation, then evaluation cannot be reduced to instruments designed to minimize human evaluative effort.

GenAI, therefore, does not require entirely new systems of evaluation. Rather, it increases the cost of avoiding what good and ethically sound performance evaluation has always required.

URL : Generative AI can and should accelerate research evaluation reform to better recognize ‘distinctly human contributions’

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvag020

Catégories
FR

Pour une éthique de l’intelligence artificielle dans le domaine de l’évaluation de la recherche

Authors : Otmane Azeroual, Joachim Schöpfel

L’intelligence artificielle (IA) s’impose aujourd’hui dans de multiples secteurs, de la médecine à la logistique, en passant par la finance et l’éducation. Son intégration croissante dans les systèmes d’information sur la recherche (SI recherche) ouvre de nouvelles perspectives, mais soulève aussi des enjeux éthiques majeurs.

Cet article propose une réflexion sur le rôle de l’IA dans l’évaluation de la recherche, en mettant l’accent sur ses bénéfices, ses limites et la nécessité d’un cadre éthique rigoureux.

URL : Pour une éthique de l’intelligence artificielle dans le domaine de l’évaluation de la recherche

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15gp8

Catégories
EN

The ethics of knowledge sharing: a feminist examination of intellectual property rights and open-source materials in gender transformative methodologies

Authors : Leah Goldmann, Alice Welbourn, Diane Gillespie, Nastnet Ghebrebhran, Lufuno Barro, Sara Siebert, Hawa Kagoya, Lori Michau, Anjalee Kohli, Tina Musuya, Sonia Rebecca Kusiima

Debates on intellectual property rights and open source frequently stem from the business sector and higher education, where goals are typically oriented toward profit, academic status, credit, and/or reputation. What happens if we reconsider the ethics of intellectual property rights and open source when our driving motivation is advancing women’s health and rights? How does this prioritization complicate our assumptions of copyright and open access?

How can we embark on a journey that validates the complex realities of multiple stakeholders who have good intent, but do not always consider the unintended impacts and the broader power dynamics at play? This paper explores the tensions and nuances of sharing methodologies that aim to transform harmful gender norms in an ecosystem that does not always consider the complex challenges behind intellectual property and open-source material.

As a thought-collective dedicated to using a feminist approach to unpack and promote the principles of ethical, effective, and sustainable scale, we hope to underscore how the current research and debates on intellectual property rights and open-source material have good aims but may also fall short in encompassing the realities of gendered social norms change in and with communities around the world.

We conclude with key recommendations for donors, researchers, International Development Corporations, International Non-Governmental Organizations, and those interested in using or adapting dynamic, gender transformative materials created by others.

URL : The ethics of knowledge sharing: a feminist examination of intellectual property rights and open-source materials in gender transformative methodologies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2024.1321302

Catégories
EN

How do journals publishing palliative and end-of-life care research report ethical approval and informed consent?

Authors : Tove Godskesen, Knut Jørgen Vie, William Bülow, Bodil Holmberg, Gert Helgesson, Stefan Eriksson

This study explores how papers published in international journals in palliative and end-of-life care report ethical approval and informed consent. A literature search following PRISMA guidelines was conducted in PubMed, the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, the ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection, PsycINFO, and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). A total of 169 empirical studies from 101 journals were deductively coded and analysed.

The results showed that 5% of publications provided no information on ethical approval, 12% reported minimal information, 56% reported rudimentary information, and 27% reported comprehensive details. We also found that 13% did not report any information on informed consent, 17% reported minimal information, 50% reported rudimentary information, and 19% reported comprehensive details.

The prevalence of missing and incomplete ethical statements and inadequate reporting of informed consent processes in recent publications raises concerns and highlights the need for improvement. We suggest that journals advocate high reporting standards and potentially reject papers that do not meet ethical requirements, as this is the quickest path to improvement.

URL : How do journals publishing palliative and end-of-life care research report ethical approval and informed consent?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1580

Catégories
EN

Academia should stop using beall’s lists and review their use in previous studies

Authors : Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, Graham Kendall

Academics (should) strive to submit to journals which are academically sound and scholarly. To achieve this, they could either submit to journals that appear exclusively on safelists (occasionally referred to as whitelists, although this term tends to be avoided), or avoid submitting to journals on watchlists (occasionally referred to as blacklists, although this term tends to be avoided).

The most well-known of these lists was curated by Jeffrey Beall. Beall’s Lists (there are two, one for stand-alone journals and one for publishers) were taken offline by Beall himself in January 2017.

Prior to 2017, Beall’s Lists were widely cited and utilized, including to make quantitative claims about scholarly publishing. Even after Beall’s Lists became obsolete (they have not been maintained for the past six years), they continue to be widely cited and used. This paper argues that the use of Beall’s Lists, pre- and post-2017, may constitute a methodological error and, even if papers carry a disclaimer or limitations section noting this weakness, their conclusions cannot always be relied upon.

This paper also argues for the need to conduct a detailed post-publication assessment of reports in the literature that used Beall’s Lists to validate their findings and conclusions, assuming that it becomes accepted that Beall’s Lists are not a reliable resource for scientific investigation.

Finally, this paper contends that any papers that have identified methodological errors should be corrected. Several lists that were cloned from Beall’s Lists have also emerged and are also being cited. These should also be included in any post-publication investigation that is conducted.

URL : Academia should stop using beall’s lists and review their use in previous studies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.47316/cajmhe.2023.4.1.04

Catégories
EN

Open science in Sámi research: Researchers’ dilemmas

Author : Coppélie Cocq

This article discusses the challenges of Indigenous research in relation to open science, more particularly in relation to Sámi research in Sweden. Based on interviews with active scholars in the multidisciplinary field of Sámi studies, and on policy documents by Sámi organizations, this article points at the challenges that can be identified, and the practices and strategies adopted or suggested by researchers.

Topics addressed include ownership, control, sensitivity and accessibility of data, the consequences of experienced limitations, the role of the historical context, and community-groundedness.

This article has the ambition to contribute with a discussion about the tensions between standards of data management/open science and data sovereignty in Indigenous contexts. This is done by bringing in perspectives from Indigenous methodologies (the 4 R) and by contextualizing research practices and forms of data colonialism in relation to our contemporary context of surveillance culture.

Research—in relation to ethics and social sustainability—is an arena where tensions between various agendas becomes obvious. This is illustrated in this article by researchers’ dilemmas when working with open science and the advancement of Indigenous research.

Efforts toward ethically valid and cultural-sensitive modes of data use are taking shape in Indigenous research, calling for an increased awareness about the topic. In the context of Sámi research, the role of academia in such a transformation is also essential.

URL : Open science in Sámi research: Researchers’ dilemmas

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1095169