Responsibility in research: The relationship between open science, research ethics, and responsible assessment

Presentation at the ENRIO2025 Congress 23 September 2025. Despite their centrality, research ethics and open science are often discussed separately. Sometimes research ethics may even be seen as unnecessarily preventing open science from being realized – or open science may be seen as a threat to the ethical implementation of research. In a responsible research culture, ethics and openness support each other. The close relationship between scientific openness and ethics becomes concrete when a responsible research culture is viewed as good scientific practices. Moreover, currently responsible assessment frameworks are evolving to better recognize and incentivize these ethical and open practices, ensuring that research is conducted and evaluated in a manner that upholds the highest standards of integrity and responsibility. To understand the relationship between open science, research ethics, and responsible assessment, it is essential to explore how these concepts intersect and support each other. The link between open science, research ethics, and responsible research assessment lies in their shared commitment to transparency, accountability, and integrity in research. By integrating these elements there is an opportunity to enhance the quality and impact of research while adhering to ethical standards and fostering a culture of responsibility within the scientific community. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the conceptual alignment between research ethics, open science and responsible assessment. In this presentation we also compare the goals and agendas set for research ethics, open science, and responsible assessment through analysis of the key documents such as The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, UNESCO Recommendation of Open Science, and the Agreement of reforming Research Assessment. Moreover, we note that recently the term ‘research security’ has come to be widely used and in this presentation, we take this emerging approach under our scrutiny and discuss also how it relates to research ethics, open science and responsible assessment.