The Ethical Label: a tool to identify ethical and social aspects of
research products
Abstract
ENVRIplus is a Horizon2020 project in which ethics applied to
geosciences features as a fundamental issue, at the core of the
scientific research and practice. ENVRIplus brings together
Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures (RIs), projects,
and networks, with technical specialist partners to create a more
coherent, interdisciplinary and interoperable cluster of Environmental
Research Infrastructures across Europe (http://www.envriplus.eu/).
Within the project, an entire work package (WP13) is dedicated to
develop an ethical framework of reference for RIs, able to increase the
awareness of scientists on the importance of ethical aspects in Earth
and Environmental sciences and on the responsibility they have in
conducting research activities. The Ethical Label (EL) is a tool created
by WP13 with the aim to identify and highlight ethical and social
aspects of “activities, products, and data” (deliverables) undertaken
within and/or resulting from the ENVRIplus project
(http://www.envriplus.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/D13.2-Ethical-label-template.pdf).
The specificity of the EL template is to provide additional information
to the description of the technical-scientific characteristics usually
associated to deliverables of a research project. The EL template is
structured as a user-friendly tool, with different tables related to:
“type of product”, “field affected”, “accessibility”,
“end-users”, “potential impact”, “area concerned”, and “potential
misuse”. The final table “summary” groups information selected in the
previous sections of the table into a simple format, useful to tag a
deliverable. Finally, a procedure to approve the EL associated to an
ENVRIplus deliverable is suggested. The adoption of the EL will allow a
more complete characterization of the outcomes of the project. While the
EL was developed within a specific project, it is meant to be applicable
to any research activity leading to published products, with the
long-term goal to improve the way in which (geo)scientists can
communicate their scientific and technological achievements both to
specialist and not-specialist end-users.