[open-science] Open science, citizen science and 'participation' (was Re: OKF: What shall I say at the Open Science Summit in Berkeley)

Thu Jul 8 11:16:22 UTC 2010

Issues about the properties, standards and expectations of 'involvement' 
or participation in research brings to mind discussion a couple of weeks 
ago on human subjects and privacy - e.g. responses to Libby Bishop's 
question.  I have questions about what seem to be conflicts between 
openness (as in the open knowledge defnition) and the standards and 
expectations that operate in fields with a tradition of participatory 
research, e.g. in health and social sciences. The questions I have 
(please excuse their length) are about:

- The principle of "mutual ownership" of the processes and products of 
the research enterprise. I don't think this necessarily translates to 
these being in the public domain - for example collaborative research 
between academic and user partners is often based on agreements to share 
IP and access rights, at least for a period. I acknowledge some on this 
list would not support that, and my point is that mutual ownership 
logically excludes proprietary ownership by the academic 'lead partner'. 
Does citizen science? My question on this is prompted by some recent 
interviews with researchers on open working in their field- one view was 
that citizen science is primarily about reducing research costs or 
making certain tasks doable with volunteer effort, and is an orthogonal 
issue to ownership of the results. Have any principles of citizen 
science been articulated that do tie involvement to mutual ownership - 
in the moral if not legal sense? If so do they include attribution of 
effort?

- The principle of "informed consent" strongly influences not only 
privacy legislation but also the ethical obligation in human subjects 
research to seek permission for data re-use, whenever this departs from 
the original purpose the data was collected/created for. I know of some 
work on 'open consent' in the area of genomics research, where the 
principle has been challenged by the 'long term public good' argument, 
and the point that genetic data is in any case shared with ones blood 
relatives, so individual consent breaks down. The open consent model 
asks volunteers to acknowledge that the purposes 'their' data may be 
reused for cannot be foreseen. However volunteers retain the right to 
withdraw their consent for further uses of the data at any time. This 
gives citizens/volunteers an informed decision about whether to give up 
some privacy right for a promised public good. Considering the extension 
of open data principles to human subjects data, how is this consistent 
with a right to withdraw consent to data re-use?

It seems to be the key point underlying both of these questions is that 
'involvement' or 'participation' suggests an ongoing relationship 
governed by principles of mutual consent and a shared stake in ownership 
among members of a community - whether defined by contract or social 
norms - but are contrary to the principle of openness to the extent that 
'open' means absence of any restriction or conditions on reuse.

Grateful for thoughts on this or any pointers to discussion elsewhere. I 
should point out I'm writing up results of the interviews I mentioned 
for an article, and will acknowledge any comments I get.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr Angus Whyte
Research Officer
Digital Curation Centre
University of Edinburgh,
Appleton Tower, Crichton Street
Edinburgh EH8 9LE
(+44)131 650 9986
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On 07/07/2010 21:14, William L. Anderson wrote:
>
> Michael Nielsen wrote:
>    
>>
>> On Wed, 7 Jul 2010, Cameron Neylon wrote:
>>
>>      
>>> Of course, as you point out, most projects have no technical return
>>> path at all and that is something that is measurable. What sort of
>>> standards and expectations would be appropriate to build in there?
>>> What is appropriate for different kinds of projects (with different
>>> issues around privacy/security/time availability?). Is there a minimal
>>> standard?
>>>        
>> In many, perhaps most cases a cleaned up version of my question is, I
>> think, clear enough: does the project (1) offer s
>>      

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