Qualitative data and the ethics of ownership: a proposal for collecting and preserving research from conflict-affected areas

While academic journal policies and funding requirements often stipulate the sharing of data in a push for scientific transparency and in an effort to contribute to the open science movement, in practice, qualitative data is less frequently shared and made available. In this paper, we argue that the principles of transparency, validity and reproducibility do not necessarily provide convincing rationales or ethical imperatives for qualitative data sharing on and in crisis settings such as conflicts, disasters and humanitarian emergencies. Instead, we consider the burden on research subjects of repeated data collection, a responsibility towards future generations and the right of the data itself to formulate a different ethical imperative for why researchers should make efforts to share or archive qualitative research data from crisis-affected contexts. Fundamentally, we query the ethics of data ownership and the capitalistic undertones of notions of trade and exchange when data arises from gifting, trusteeship and utilising social interactions which are often unspoken in ethical terms, and the reasons for research subjects often assumed rather than explicitly discussed. Thus, we suggest that archives should be not only a resource for research but also an output of research.