FAQ

 

Background

The EPSRC project on a Framework for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (FRRIICT) includes as a central deliverable the Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (TORRII). The purpose of the Observatory is to serve as a dynamic community resource to exchange experience and good practice and to provide a basis for developing structures and procedures for the governance of responsible research and innovation in ICT. The Observatory is envisaged to be the legacy of the project. It should be open to new developments and needs. It needs to be community owned and self-sustaining at the end of the project.
The Observatoryposes a number of challenges with regards to design and development, as well as community involvement and sustainable business plan. The details of many of these challenges will only become clear during the design and adoption process. It will therefore be important to have a robust system of making decisions concerningthe Observatory. The present document sets out the structure and principles of decisions relevant to the Observatory.

Principles

The Observatory will need to be open to users across the EPSRC ICT portfolio. It seems likely that its content will attract interest of others from other disciplines or geographical locations. The Observatory will only be successful if it can solicit the contributions of members of this community. Its design and decision structures therefore need to be:

• Open to the community
• Transparent
• In the demonstrable interest of the community

Implementation

The following steps will ensure that the principles will be adhered to:

1. Whenever an important question concerning the Observatory arises, a problem statement will be written that summarises the question / problem and the reason why it is relevant to the Observatory. Problem statements can be written by any member of the FRRIICT project office, either on their own initiative or because they were pointed to it by someone with an interest in the project.
2. Choices, alternatives and options will be explored and written up as a discussion document.
3. On the basis of the discussion document, the members of the project office will choose an option.
4. Where relevant, the project office may request other FRRIICT bodies (e.g. core network, Advisory Board) to comment on both the problem statement and the discussion document.
5. The decision will be documented as an addition to the discussion document.
6. All problem statements and discussion documents will be made public in an appropriate form (e.g. a faq page) on the Observatory.

 

 

The FRRIICT project Observatory is an online resource for the ICT research and innovation community. The aim is to host content that relates to ethical and responsibility issues of ICT. Examples of such content include case studies, description of particular technologies, specific ethical issues or solutions to such issues. The purpose of this collection of content is to allow others who work in similar areas or encounter similar problems to quickly find solutions to these issues. The Observatory is a focal point for the development of a community of scholars interested in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in ICT.

The online resource is predicated upon the principle that community members are willing to share their knowledge and experience and allow others to benefit from this. Content in the Observatory will be a community resource that its authors (copyright holders) have made available to the community. Authors should trust that their efforts will not be misused for purposes they are not happy with.

In order to share content, the intellectual property owners (in most cases this will be the authors) will have to indicate their willingness to share it. For this purpose the Observatory will use a creative commons licence where all contributors will agree to share their work under this creative commons licence. Without such a licence, all content would remain with the copyright holder and others would not be able to use the content.

Creative Commons licence options.

Creative Commons (cc) “develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.” Its aim is to develop the mechanisms of intellectual property in a usable way that is appropriate for modern technologies. Very briefly, it provides a standardised and legally viable way of sharing work. It is important to note that the copyright holders retain copyright but allow others to copy, distribute and repurpose their work. This means that in all cases, the copyright holder must be attributed when cc work is being used.

When choosing a creative commons licence, there are three options (commercial, derivatives, and ShareAlike) explained below.

1. Commercial use

CC licences can rule out commercial use of the licensed content. This may appear appropriate for the Observatory because it is primarily aimed at the UK EPSRC ICT research community, which is largely university-based and thus not considered profit-oriented organisations.

However, there are numerous ICT research community members that are based in private organisations who may want to use aspects of Observatory for profit-oriented work, which might be complicated if commercial use was ruled out. 

In addition, the Observatory may provide the possibility for users or other organisations to build commercial services, e.g. consulting on ethical issues in ICT. It may well be desirable for such services to come into existence because they may help promote responsible research and innovation in ICT. 

The CC licence for the Observatory should therefore allow commercial use.

2. Derivatives

A second option in CC licences is whether the use of derivative work is permitted. Ruling out the use of derivative work requires all work to be passed along unchanged and in whole with credit to the author. 

Derivative work may be relevant with regards to Observatory content in several ways. Similar technologies may have similar but slightly different implications that could be captured by slight modification of content. Some input, such as teaching material, may consist of a combination of individual entities (e.g. a description of a technology, an ethical issue, several solutions) which would benefit from modification of content of contributions.

It is therefore recommended to allow the use of derivatives. 

3. ShareAlike

A ShareAlike licence is similar to copyleft in that it requires all new work based on the original contribution to be licensed under the same terms. This will ensure that all work remains open to the public and the community. It does not interfere with commercial work, so it should promote the purposes of the Observatory.

ShareAlike is an option that is relevant to derivative work. Having argued that derivatives of work in the Observatory should be allowed, the use of the ShareAlike option ensures that all work produced for the Observatory and derivative work will remain open and accessible. This supports the overall aim of the Observatory to broaden the discussion of responsible research and innovation in ICT and beyond. 

It is therefore recommended to allow the ShareAlike. 

Implementation in the Observatory

The above discussion indicates that a CC licence of Attribution – ShareAlike  is the best solution. The use of this licence is indicated by the following symbol:

  

This licence is default licence for all work included in the Observatory, unless explicitly stated otherwise. 

Authors who prefer a different licence should contact the Observatory team prior to uploading content.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.