The Ethics of Ownership: Developing Guidelines on Data Ownership in Participatory Researchers

Abstract

Participatory Research, including Citizen Science and other forms of co-created research, have lately been exciting considerable interest; and rightly so. These new additions to the Open Science landscape address a number of institutional and funder concerns around, for example, the impact of scholarly research. Further, collaborations between academic and non-academic researchers have the potential to address many of the deeper concerns of Open Science professionals, around transparency and accessibility, for example. Recognising the importance of this and the need for institutional support, in 2023, the University of Edinburgh created the first library role dedicated to Participatory Research in the UK.

Growing interest and investment in Participatory Research has, inevitably, thrown up challenges for those of us working in Open Science. Among the more ethically and legally complex questions are those concerning intellectual property rights relating to research data. Ownership of research data may be relatively straightforward when the collaborators are professional researchers at recognised research institutions. When those collaborators are themselves the collectors and creators, sometimes the actual subjects, of the data, however, the situation becomes significantly more complicated. We no longer have one seemingly simple question – who owns the data – but rather a cluster of rather more difficult ones. What does ownership mean to non-professional and professional researchers and how does it play out in practice? What are the different motivations and expectations at work here? And how can all this be documented and implemented in a way that is fair to all the parties involved? The contracts commonly employed in ordinary academic collaborations are unlikely to be of use here, not least because legal and quasi-legal instruments tend less towards mitigating power differentials and more to enforcing them. They may also represent a barrier to vulnerable and marginalised communities, thereby discouraging the very involvement that is being sought.

Evidently, then, the question goes beyond legal rights, encompassing a range of important ethical issues around control, access, and re-use of data. Given the complexities of intellectual property rights in general and these issues in particular, the fact that the University of Edinburgh does not, as yet, have any definite guidelines for researchers and their collaborators will come as no surprise.

This presentation aims to lay the groundwork for those guidelines within the context of Open Science: firstly, by identifying and unpacking the ethical issues arising from different understandings of ownership; secondly, by proposing a theoretical foundation; thirdly by considering some practical options for addressing them.