Introduction: Archiving Qualitative Data in Practice: Ethical Feedback

Abstract

Over the past twenty years the normative framework that underpins social science research has undergone major shifts. Among the most salient changes is the growing incentive to archive, share and reuse research data. Today, many governments, funding agencies, research infrastructures and editors are pushing what is commonly known as Open Research Data (ORD). By reflecting on concrete experiences of data sharing, the different contributions to this issue point to the ethical challenges posed by this new trend. Through a fine objectivation of the archiving work, they call to take distance from the bureaucratic framework imposed by the new ethics and ORD policies and to think of data sharing as a situated, contextual and dynamic process. The cost of the exercise as well as the sensitivity of certain data and subjects suggest opting for flexible approaches that leave a certain autonomy and freedom of appraisal to researchers.

Re-use of research data in the social sciences. Use and users of digital data archive

“…There is little evidence about the re-use of qualitative datasets and further studies are needed to understand the potential and pitfalls of open data policies for qualitative studies [53,58]. The lack of data sharing, and re-use has certainly several reasons but ethical issues play an important role [59].…”