This toolkit has been created as part of the Environmental Data Science Summit hosted by the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, February 2023. We thank NCEAS and NSF for their support in the summit!
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Data ethics (encompassing wide range of activities: data collection, community relationships, collaboration logistics; all phases of the data life cycle) are not prioritized/incentivized when conducting data science projects;
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We lack consistent training/guidance in academic, non-profit, and governmental organizations for all stages of researchers;
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There is a lack of clarity in taking general first principles to operational actions in the context of project specific needs.
There is a need to provide researchers and collaborators with an easy to follow process to understand ethics in environmental data science projects.
We acknowledge that one solution will not work for all - we need a suite of solutions and resources that people can choose from to customize to their needs.
Below is the first step of our toolkit: we provide an initial list of links of data ethics resources that we, as a community, have used in our own research or teaching projects.
Our next steps (as of February 2023) is to curate these links into an easy-to-follow workflow.
TO BE FURTHER TIDIED
In order to identify/agree on general principles, it is sometimes important to give operational examples of those principles in action. This motivates us to consider theory to practice in the following framing.
General
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FAIR principles https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/
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Principles of Environmental Justice / Environmental Justice Principles (ejnet.org)
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CARE Principles — Global Indigenous Data Alliance (gida-global.org & https://www.gida-global.org/care )
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Racial Equity Toolkit: An Opportunity to Operationalize Equity | Government Alliance on Race and Equity (racialequityalliance.org)
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Racial Equity | California State Water Resources Control Board
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Racial Equity Information and Resources | California State Water Resources Control Board
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Racial Equity Action Plan 2023-2025 (ca.gov)
Environmental Data Science Specific
General
The Open Data Institute Data Ethics Canvas (available in 5 languages) https://theodi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Data-Ethics-Canvas-English-Colour.pdf
Spectrum of public participation: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/pillars/Spectrum_8.5x11_Print.pdf
Environmental Data Science Specific
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Stanford Centre for Ocean Solutions Diversity / Equity / Inclusion Critical Questions for Research Assessment [Confirm Upload/Link OK]
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Deon is an ethics checklist for data scientists that you can add into a command line prompt https://deon.drivendata.org/
The Todd-Brown Lab’s organization and nodes document: Org template v202206 Governance and operations Who Decides Who Decides: How to start a group so everyone can have a voice! (2021) Ted Rau https://www.sociocracyforall.org/who-decides-who-decides/ Community Rules: Simple Templates for Great Communities (2021) Cassandra Dana, Drew Hornbein, Vincent Russell, and Nathan Schneider. [booklet and citation] https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/2021/07/15/community-rules-simple-templates-great-communities. [website] https://communityrule.info/
How to Cluster in ESIP (2020) Megan Carter https://esip.figshare.com/articles/online_resource/How_to_Cluster_in_ESIP/12827963 https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12827963.v1 The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation (2014) Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz https://www.liberatingstructures.com/bookstore https://www.liberatingstructures.com/
NASA Science Mission Directorate Open Science Guidelines (2022) https://github.com/nasa/smd-open-science-guidelines Mozilla Open Leadership Training Series Openscapes PyOpenSci