Ethical and Responsible Research at the CSMCCouncil meeting approves Ethics Paper

25 November 2021

Photo: CSMC

The council meeting of the Cluster of Excellence has approved a new Ethics Paper that outlines the responsibilities of manuscript researchers and provides guidelines for the appropriate treatment of written artefacts and research data.

People who do research on manuscripts frequently encounter individuals and institutions from different cultures. Often, these cultures adhere to different laws and norms. Even if researchers work exclusively in their own cultural sphere, they constantly interact with colleagues, organisations, and citizens in complex ways. In short, researchers inevitably find themselves in situations that require ethical conduct.   

To provide colleagues at the CSMC (and manuscript researchers more generally) with some practical guidance on how to carry out their research responsibly, the working group ‘Ethics’ has, over the last few months, worked out an overview of basic rules of conduct regarding other people, written artefacts, and research data. Their results are summarised in the paper ‘Ethical and responsible research at the CSMC’, which was approved during the council meeting on 19 November 2021.

The question of ethically correct behaviour in science is explicitly raised in more and more disciplines today. The Ethics working group at the CSMC has conducted an internal survey to find out whether and when scientists have found themselves in challenging situations during their work, in which contexts conflicts occur, and how they should be addressed. Based on these experiences and the discussions about it, they have formulated the guidelines that formulate binding rules of conduct for all those who research manuscripts at the CSMC and represent the Centre elsewhere.