Since 2011 the French working group « Ethique et Droit » has been researching practical solutions toethical and legal questions surrounding the creation, use and edition of digital sources. The group comprises researchers, information managers and legal experts. It aims to write a collective guide on ethical and legal best practices when disseminating social sciences and humanities data. The guide will be published online. Since 2015 the project has benefited from the support of DARIAH (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities).

Several seminars have taken place since 2011 to discuss practical experiences and to start writing the guide. A series of blog posts has also been published on the project blog: https://ethiquedroit.hypotheses.org

The first part of the guide will gather an edited version of these blog posts and seminar presentations. The second part will be made of papers selected as part of this call for written papers. The call is open to anyone interested in the ethical and legal issues surrounding the dissemination of social sciences and humanities data.

CALL FOR PAPERS TO CONTRIBUTE TO A GUIDE TO ETHICAL AND LEGAL BEST PRACTICES:

“How to disseminate social sciences and humanities data: experiences and solutions.”

Objectives

The Open Science movement is part of the scholarship tradition of knowledge sharing. It transforms researchers’ practices and in particular in social sciences and humanities disciplines. Collaborations between researchers enable a better dissemination of findings and an immediate sharing of information. Open Access, Open data and Big Data are now, like social media, embedded in the new academic landscape. At the same time as these technological changes open up new research perspectives, they also trigger both ethical and legal questions facing researchers, lecturers, students, information experts, research institutions’ managers and many more.

Law and ethics provide a framework but also a protection for the anyone involved in the research lifecycle. Yet, we need to acknowledge that copyright laws slow down scholarship development and dissemination. How can we reach a legal and ethical framework that would secure the necessary protection of research activities while enabling the Open Science movement? How can we enable that law and ethics strengthen a wide and shared use of knowledge and research data? How could social sciences and humanities researchers implement the current legal reforms?

Notions such as propriety, confidentiality, sharing, security, validation of sources and publications as well as e-reputation have recently been re-defined in the context of new research practices in social sciences and humanities disciplines. Still, these notions are key to the research process and need to be better comprehended from the legal and ethical viewpoint.

This call for papers has been designed in this context and is open to anyone interested in ethical and legal issues surrounding the dissemination of social sciences and humanities data. Five stages in data dissemination have been identified for this call; each stage raises ethical and legal questions:

1. Preparing the research project and planning ahead for data archiving
2. Collecting data
3. Processing, archiving and describing data
4. Disseminating research findings
5. Re-using data

Paper proposals must deal with one or more of these stages of the data lifecycle. Proposals can focus either on

• a project or experience involving ethical and legal issues in the dissemination of social sciences or humanities data, along with a description of the solutions found or planned; or
• an article on ethical and legal questions and practical solutions that can be used to optimize the dissemination of social sciences or humanities data.

All selected paper will be published with a CC-BY licence.

 

How to submit paper proposals

When submitting a proposal please clearly indicate the title, author(s), their organisation, along with an abstract and a detailed outline of the paper (4,000 characters maximum) Proposals can be written in French, English, Spanish or Italian. Please note that proposals not written in French must be submitted with a short summary in French.

The working group is coordinated by Véronique Ginouvès (USR 3125) and Isabelle Gras (SCD AMU). Proposals must be sent to them : veronique.ginouves@univ-amu.fr and isabelle.gras@univ-amu.fr.

 

How proposals will be evaluated

A scientific committee has been created to supervise this call for papers and to guarantee its scientific rigour. It is composed by

* Florence Descamps, maître de conférences HDR à l’Ecole pratique des hautes études

* Laurent Dousset, anthropologue, Directeur d’étude, EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)

* Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, chargée de recherche au CNRS, Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS-Paris Sorbonne-UPMC

* Lionel Maurel, juriste, conservateur des bibliothèques, responsable de l’information scientifique et technique à l’Université Paris Lumières

* Philippe Mouron, maître de conférences en droit privé à l’Université d’Aix-Marseille, spécialiste en droit de la propriété intellectuelle

* Stéphane Pouyllau, ingénieur de recherche au CNRS, directeur adjoint de la TGIR Huma-Num

Blind peer-review will be used by the editorial committee created within the working group “Ethique et droit”. The editorial committee will submit its propositions of selected papers to the scientific committee.

Key dates

The call for papers opened on the 5^th of September 2016.

Deadline to send the proposals via email to Véronique Ginouvès veronique.ginouves.at.univ-amu.fr and Isabelle Gras isabelle.gras.at.univ-amu.fr: 15th of November 2016

Authors will be notified if they have been selected by the 15^th of December 2016.

Selected authors must send their full paper by the 15^th of February 2017.

The call for papers was published in French at http://calenda.org/376416.

Related scientific blogs:

• Éthique et Droit : https://ethiquedroit.hypotheses.org/1395 (french) and https://ethiquedroit.hypotheses.org/1417 (english)
• Carnets de l’open access à Aix Marseille Université : https://oaamu.hypotheses.org/186
• Carnets de la phonothèque : https://phonotheque.hypotheses.org/20028

Crédits : Gen. Jones –suffragettes (Library of Congress), Bain News Service, ca 1910, No known copyright restrictions.

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