Data & Publishing
As a leading scientific publisher, AGU strives for the highest quality standards and actively promotes best practices. The AGU Ethics and Equity Center provides policies and tools to help you adjust your practices to uphold the highest level of scientific integrity and professional ethics and ensure that data is widely accessible and preserved for the future.
Accessible data enhances scientific discoveries, yields economic benefits, improves decision-making, enhances public safety, contributes to global and national security and creates a more informed public.
Policies & Reports
Policies
These policies outline practices for ethical content, as well as the integrity and preservation of scientific data.
- AGU's Scientific Integrity and Professional Ethics Policy takes a strong stance against harassment, discrimination and bullying by including them in the definition of scientific misconduct.
- AGU’s position statement, The Responsibilities and Rights of Scientists, provides supporting ethical principles for the responsible practice of science.
- AGU’s position statement, Supporting Data as a World Heritage, calls for measures to ensure scientific evidence is processed, shared, used ethically and is available, preserved, documented and fairly credited.
- For an example of an ethics policy from another scientific society, please see the American Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics.
- The Baylor University Department of Geosciences' Standards of Geoscience Ethics shows how a code of conduct can be adapted and applied to an academic geoscience department.
- The University of Texas at Austin, Jackson School of Geosciences' Guidelines provide an example of policy language applied for use by faculty, research scientists, staff, teaching and research assistants.
- For a wide selection of ethics codes and policies for reference as you develop your own, please visit the Illinois Institute of Technology's collection of ethics codes and policies
Reports
The following is a list of reports providing guidance on ethical conduct and integrity while conducting research or working in the sciences.
- The AGU and Wiley book titled, Scientific Integrity and Ethics in the Geosciences, describes the fundamental principles of scientific ethics and shows how they apply to everyday work in the classroom, laboratory and field.
- This book from The National Academies Press, Fostering Integrity in Research, outlines how organizations conducting research should encourage those involved to exemplify core values, such as objectivity and accountability, in every step of the research process.
- On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research, a book published by The National Academies Press, describes the foundation of the scientific enterprise being based on ethical and accurate research conducted without bias.
Education, Tools & Surveys
Education
These educational resources provide background information on enabling FAIR data, as well as appropriate data sovereignty and governance.
- The Coalition for Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences' frequently asked questions provides answers to common questions about enabling FAIR data, as well as author guidelines implemented by relevant publishers.
- The Eos article, “Advancing FAIR Data in Earth, Space, and Environmental Science,” describes the Enabling FAIR Data project, which brought together a broad spectrum of science leaders to ensure that data are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.
- The S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network's resource, “What are Indigenous data?,” provides an overview of data that impact Indigenous lives, as well as the right of Indigenous peoples and nations to govern their data. (PDF)
- The National Academy of Engineering's Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science website advances the understanding of responsible research and practice in both engineering and science through ethics literature.
Tools
This list is comprised of tools to guide research authors and reviewers on issues around publishing, including data compliance standards.
- AGU’s guidelines for authors and reviewers provide information on the conduct of scientific research and its submission for publication in AGU journals.
- AGU's guidelines to support author compliance with open data standards provide examples and information for researchers to use when depositing data into a repository that supports the FAIR principles.
- Guidelines for peer reviewers from the Committee on Publication Ethics is a reference for reviewers’ basic principles in upholding and ensuring the integrity of scholarly research. (PDF)
- The Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions' Ethics Education Library is a collection of resources to help develop ethics trainings, as well as instruction programs for students.
Surveys
These surveys can help you implement a study of the environment at the departmental level or the institutional level in order to inform best practices in your workplace.
- The Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative (ARC3) campus climate survey provides guidance for requesting and conducting a campus survey.
- The National Center for Professional & Research Ethics' Survey of Organizational Research Climate (SOURCE) outlines how to implement a departmental survey for academic leadership development.
Workshops & Trainings
Click here to visit data & publishing workshops & trainings.