By Evelyn Brister, Erin Shoemaker, Susan M. Wolf and Gillian H. Roehrig.
2. Erin Shoemaker (biography)
3. Susan M. Wolf (biography)
4. Gillian H. Roehrig (biography)
What problems in research ethics arise for research networks that cross disciplines and institutions? How do they differ from the ethical issues affecting individual researchers or society at large? What are the lessons for leaders of large research networks?
Addressing complex, real-world problems requires expertise from multiple disciplines. Large, diverse research teams that address these problems may be organized across multiple universities or other research institutions. The larger scale of this network science creates distinctive ethical responsibilities.
To identify responsibilities that fall on network leaders, it is useful to consider ethical issues at three levels: micro, meso, and macro.
The microlevel primarily focuses on individual investigators and small teams working in a single location. Examples of ethical issues at this level are avoiding research misconduct such as plagiarism, conflicts of interest, and detrimental practices.