[M-GI31] Open Science in Action: Research Data Sharing, Infrastructure, Transparency, and International Cooperation

[MGI31-04] Ethical issues in open science

*Yasuhisa Kondo¹ (1.Research Institute for Humanity and Nature)

Keywords:open science, ethical equity

This paper discusses ethical equity in open science as an emerging issue in promoting civic participatory science for social issues. Open science is understood as a conceptual complex of top-down policies and bottom-up actions. The bottom-up actions are represented by citizen science, wherein non-expert civil actors provide data or participate in fieldwork. Civic participatory science is becoming popular around the world, yet it does have an issue with ethical inequity in it. When holding a civic participatory workshop, such as an ideathonto co-create solutions for a given social issue, organizers, such as research experts or governmen agents, invite civic participants so that they can exploit their labor, knowledge, and ideas. Organizers give low, fixed-rate rewards and some entertainment in exchange. In my actual experience, some participants found this to be unbalanced and unfair. A detailed investigation revealed that incentives for researchers, including academic publication and promotion, would not be applicable to civic volunteers because they have different motivations. Even though it is voluntary, this work should be properly acknowledged. I would like to explore and discuss this ethical issue with participants in the Open Science international session.