What is it about?
Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence highlight key challenges and tensions in research ethics, with calls for new research ethics policies addressed in by the study. The study developed a scoping review of existing research ethics publication policies, with the review suggesting around half of all academic journals lack explicit ethics reporting requirements, and even for those with clear policies, it is often a compliance driven “box ticking exercise” rather than a deeper examination of ethical concerns. The expert panel (the authors) used policies identified in the scoping review to develop new policies for the expression of research ethics in scholarly articles across disciplines, with the aim of fostering learning and discussion of ethical issues.
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Why is it important?
Academic journal articles are a primary means of communication with other researchers, policymakers, practitioners and the public. For people to understand the values operating in our research, we need to communicate them. If not in our published works, where do we do this? A failure to address ethical issues that arise from academic research can lead to diminished public trust in science, decreased funding for research, and a reluctance to adopt new technologies or other research insights.
Perspectives
It was a privilege to work on this work with my colleagues who are current editors-in-chief of three respected educational technology journals. Too often ethics consideration in journals is relegated to "Ethics approval was granted by...". It's not a criticism of authors to suggest that this limited coverage does little to support discourse around research ethics and the tensions we must navigate. Being able to work on this with others with expertise in learning and technologies was fantastic, because we play a distinctive dual role: (1) like all fields, education is impacted by emerging tech, so we should care about it because of that; (2) but we also have expertise in learning and this speaks to the core issue, that how we express research ethics should help people (researchers, stakeholders) learn about the challenges faced and values directing our work.
Simon Knight
University of Technology Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Emerging technologies and research ethics: Developing editorial policy using a scoping review and reference panel, PLoS ONE, October 2024, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309715.
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Resources
Data supplement and template policies for the manuscript
Supplementary files contain the data used, alongside template policies for: 1. Editors 2. Reviewers 3. Authors Alongside an overarching Joint Statement regarding research ethics policy.
From compliance to conversation
Media release for article.
From Compliance to Conversation: New Guidelines Push for Ethical Reflection in Research Reporting
Media release.
Summary poster / infographic for article
Overview poster / infographic of article
Contributors
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