NetEthics: Building Tools & Training to Advance Responsible Conduct in Complex Research Networks Pioneering Novel Technologies

The NetEthics project will make a major advance in the responsible conduct of large, complex engineering research projects such as NSF-funded Engineering Research Centers (ERCs). Engineering research increasingly involves big, multidisciplinary teams networked across multiple universities and other institutions to develop new technologies. However, tools to help these teams conduct research ethically and develop technologies for societal benefit are lacking. Instead, current research ethics and tools tend to focus either on the responsibilities of individual researchers or the broad societal issues that the new technology will raise. These two ends of the spectrum – the micro level of the individual and the macro level of overall impacts -- leave a troubling gap in the middle by offering little guidance to the leaders of complex research networks. Those leaders regularly face difficult issues such as how to reconcile conflicting ethical approaches across the network, how to ensure ethical and respectful laboratory leadership and mentoring, how to create network-wide processes for resolving disputes, and how to build a network culture valuing inclusion and diversity. Network leaders also face challenges in building community and stakeholder relationships, ensuring responsible commercialization, and making sure that the entire research network fulfills ethical responsibilities such as responsible conduct of research (RCR) with human participants, ethical treatment of animals in research, and avoiding conflicts of interest. The NetEthics project will use a three-part approach, building on the NSF ERC for Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-Bio). Study 1 will identify the roster of key values that should guide ethics and RCR at the level of a complex research network. Methods will include literature review and analysis, plus a modified Delphi process to support consensus among ATP-Bio’s Ethics & Public Policy Panel of leading authorities on ethics and RCR. Study 2 will develop a survey assessment tool to assess the range of approaches to key values across a network to reconcile differences. Methods to develop the tool will include semi-structured interviews of ATP-Bio researchers with qualitative analysis of resulting transcripts, pilot testing of the survey, and administration of the survey tool across the ATP-Bio network. Study 3 will develop educational case studies for use by complex research networks to advance ethics and RCR at the network level. To develop those case studies the NetEthics team will collect candidate cases from Study 2 inputs and embedded ethics engagement in the research network. The team will select cases that illuminate the key network ethics and RCR values identified in Studies 1 and 2, and pilot the cases in ATP-Bio workshops to refine them.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.