RESPECT

Professional and Ethical Guidelines for Socio-Economic Research in the Information

SocietyAn introduction by Professor Ursula Huws,

RESPECT Project Director

Budapest, June 12, 2003

Why now?

New EU legislation on copyright and data protection

Development of European Research Area EU expansion Need to understand global processes Increasing inter-disciplinarity and

multidisciplinarity Increasing international collaboration Traditional self-regulating communities of

researchers are losing their force

What is the relevance of ISTs?

ISTs effect both the way that research is carried out and research content

New IST-based research tools and multiplication of information sources and delivery media make verification difficult

Digitisation of information facilitates new forms of plagiarism and blurs the boundaries between ‘published’ and non-published research

Speed of change may render traditional peer review processes too slow

Changing role of socio-economic research in EC technology policy development

Evolution of Information Society Technologies

discrete products/processes

systems and

networks

an ‘information

Society’

Discrete products/processes

Typical roles of socio-economic research

ergonomicshuman/machine interfacemarket researchcost-benefit analysisfacilitators/barriers to uptake‘social shaping’

Systems and networks

Typical roles of socio-economic research

organisational impactsinteroperability/harmonisationskill requirementslegal and regulatory issuesprevalence and distributionenvironmental impacts‘socio-technical systems’

An Information Society

Typical roles of socio-economic research Paradigm shift across all socio-economic

disciplines multidisciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity critical re-evaluation of existing modelsacross-the-board review of existing

regulatory frameworksqualitative methodologies to investigate

(e.g.) impacts on identity, family, quality of life

Development of new indicators

RESPECT’S GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Respect for Intellectual PropertyRespect for Research EthicsRespect for Privacy and Data

SecurityRespect for Professional

Qualifications and StandardsRespect for Research Users

RESPECT partners

The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) UK

Social Research Association (SRA) UK

Centre de Recherches Informatique et Droit (CRID) Belgium

Hoger Instituut voor de Arbeid - K. U. Leuven (HIVA) Belgium

Institute of Sociology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (ISB) Hungary

Forschungs- und Beratungsstelle Arbeitswelt (FORBA) Austria

Institut fuer Informations-, Telekommunikations- und Medienrecht - Zivilrechtliche Abeteilung (ITM) Germany

Where we are today

Draft codes of practice (and background reports) on Data protection issues Intellectual property issues Ethical issues Professional Issues

A functional map of a multidisciplinary socio-economic EU research project

Where we go next

This conference marks the launch of a wide consultation process on the draft codes

Taking account of feedback they will be consolidated into a single code of practice

Open debate about how to encourage takeup and enforcement

Publish a User’s Guide to Socio-Economic Research

Widely disseminate the code itself

For more information

Go to: www.respectproject.org