Abstract
Digital innovation is ever more present and increasingly integrated into citizen science research. However, smartphones and other connected devices come with specific features and characteristics and, in consequence, raise particular ethical issues. This article addresses this important intersection of citizen science and the Internet of Things by focusing on how such ethical issues are communicated in scholarly literature. To answer this research question, this article presents a scoping review of published scientific studies or case studies of scientific studies that utilize both citizen scientists and Internet of Things devices. Specifically, this scoping review protocol retrieved studies where the authors had included at least a short discussion of the ethical issues encountered during the research process. A full text analysis of relevant articles conducted inductively and deductively identified three main categories of ethical issues being communicated: autonomy and data privacy, data quality, and intellectual property. Based on these categories, this review offers an overview of the legal and social innovation implications raised. This review also provides recommendations for researchers who wish to innovatively integrate citizen scientists and Internet of Things devices into their research based on the strategies researchers took to resolve these ethical issues.
Highlights
This review seeks to identify and address the ethical issues arising from a collision between two innovation trends in scientific research
We address the ethical, legal and social factors raised by the articles identified via this scoping review
This review identifies ethical issues that may sit outside the realm of a specific field of legislative regulation
Summary
This review seeks to identify and address the ethical issues arising from a collision between two innovation trends in scientific research. The widespread availability of these Internet of Things tools increases the capacity of researchers to collect and process enormous amounts of data (Rothstein et al, 2015; Auffray et al, 2016). Scientific projects involving citizen participants may carry a number of ethical complications, including those that may not be immediately apparent to the research team (Cooper et al, 2019). These ethical considerations may be further exacerbated by the ubiquity and massive
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