1 # Open Ethnography License 2 3 The Open Ethnography License aims to provide a tool for informed consent to the 4 use of archived ethnographic records. It aims to protect research participants 5 not through the anonymity and privacy of "hidden" fieldnotes, but through a set 6 of terms that accommodate the redistribution of ethnographic records for the 7 restricted purposes of research and study. Although this license resembles 8 Creative Commons "Share-Alike" and similar "free" licenses, in that it aims to 9 encourage the production of derivative scholarly works, its purpose is to 10 address moral and privacy rights rather than economic rights. 11 12 Opening up ethnographic records to public commentary -- or the simple fact of 13 making them visible to subsequent researchers -- raises a number of important 14 ethical issues. There can be notable challenges in establishing meaningful 15 informed consent, if potential future uses of ethnographic materials are 16 difficult for research participants (or even the researcher) to 17 gauge.[^Zeitlyn2012] 18 19 On the most fundamental level, the ethnographer has a commitment to ensure that 20 the use of non-confidential research records containing personally identifiable 21 information does not bring harm to the individual or to other members of the 22 participant group.[^TriCouncil] Although it can normally be expected that 23 ethnographic descriptions or field recording extracts published in a scholarly 24 context will be subject to fair and respectful treatment by other researchers, 25 the same expectations cannot reasonably be held within a public setting over 26 which the researcher has no control.[^PopSci] The impacts of uncivil or 27 critical interventions may be assumed to be all the more sensitive in the case 28 of public commentary on ethnographic records, which deal with the personal and 29 everyday lives of human subjects. 30 31 The [core license text] is available in this repository; there is also an 32 [annotated version], that provides rationale for the various clauses of the 33 license. 34 35 36 [^Zeitlyn2012]: 37 Zeitlyn, David, "Anthropology in and of the Archives: Possible Futures 38 and Contingent Pasts. Archives as Anthropological Surrogates", Annual 39 Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 461--480. 40 41 [^TriCouncil]: 42 For the Canadian case, see the *Tri-Council Policy on Ethics*, sections 5.1 43 and 10.4. 44 45 [^PopSci]: 46 This is particularly evident from the abusive comments on YouTube and other 47 social media sites; the magazine *Popular Science* decided to remove 48 comments in 2013 in response to comment "trolls" seeking to shape public 49 opinion by discrediting scientific arguments presented in the articles. The 50 editors of Popular Science cited the work of Dominique Brossard, which has 51 demonstrated that readers' judgement of the merits of an article -- or of 52 scientific findings discussed in a newspaper or blog post -- are measurably 53 influenced by the tone of comments published below the article. See Popular 54 Science, September 2013, "Why We are Shutting our Comments Off" 55 <http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/ 56 why-were-shutting-our-comments>. 57 58 [core license text]: 59 license.md 60 61 [annotated version]: 62 license_annotated.md