Security Meets Open Science. An Integrated Self-Assessment Tool for Responsible Research Data Management

“Should I openly share my algorithm on drone navigation?”; “Does my ethnographic research endanger me and my subjects?” Security is increasingly endorsed as a principle that should underpin all research practices. Even if this concept appears to contrast with the core values of Open Science (OS), we argue that security and OS should coexist thanks to proper research data management (RDM). Specifically, adequate RDM increases the researchers’ accountability from both OS and security perspective. Thus, an integrated approach becomes necessary to raise awareness among researchers of the challenges involved in aligning security concerns with OS values. In this poster, we operationalize this approach by providing a tool for researchers’ self-assessment. Namely, we enhance the decision tree for RDM developed by the data stewards at the University of Bologna. The decision tree proved to be a valuable instrument for raising awareness of the balance between FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles with the specific ethical, legal and contractual requirements around new and re-used data. We enrich the tree by adding security-related questions, which we define by thinking through two challenging case studies eliciting security concerns: First, dual-use research in the case of algorithms for drone navigation; Second, anticorruption research in dangerous contexts. In doing so, the decision tree becomes the single – integrated – instrument to lay the foundations of responsible RDM. Similarly, we envision data stewards as single points of contact within research services to strengthen accountability in research practices through responsible RDM.