Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: Ethics and Standards for Using Online Data Sets

Aggregating like data types, spatially and temporally, into open access databases is becoming common place.  While ethical standards for citing/acknowledging previously published data sets/findings have been developed and are applied in the peer review publication process, guidelines/standards for crediting data sources from open access databases containing data from multiple sources are generally lacking.  Guidelines for crediting data collectors contributing data to on-line aggregate databases via authorship, citation, or acknowledgement should be developed by the AFS.  Electronic data sets must include robust meta-data, including an identifier of the data generator.  Potential guidelines informed by existing “guide for authors” and evolving crowdsource data standards will be presented. Data sharing agreements should become a routine part of the data management infrastructure.  Generally, it is better to provide more information about the data source rather than less; focus should be on the data generators, not the website posting data.  An ethic of responsibility on the part of the data user: to bore down to the original data source and to acknowledge same, should be developed.