Laura Carter

Over on the OLS* slack, the community coordinator came across—and reposted—a blog post that I wrote a couple of years ago: The Human Rights Case for Open Science.**

It prompted a question from another OLS participant, who had had unsatisfying experiences as a citizen scientist:***

If participants in citizen science contribute their labour to support the project, but it only benefits the project organisers, is this a human rights issue?

I've been working in the human rights field for more than a decade now, so I tend to think everything is a human rights issue, in the sense that you can use a human rights lens to look at the question.

The short answer is yes: but the human rights framework might not be the best way to fix the problem.

The bit of human rights law to start with is probably Articles 6-8 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which cover the rights to work, to just and favourable conditions of work, and to form trades unions. It's a bit tricky to apply this to citizen science projects though, where participation ought to be voluntary – not just in the sense of unpaid (though this is often the case!), but also that people can stop being involved at any point.

Citizen scientists who don't like a project should just be able to walk away. It's on the project organiser to set up a project that people want to be involved in, whether because they think the issue is important, they want to learn about doing science, or they want to be part of a community, or any other reason.

Problems arise when project organisers don't deliver on the benefits that they promised, or when citizen scientists can't walk away. If this rises to the level of coercion—for example, withholding services unless someone agrees to do data collection work—then in some circumstances this might rise to the level of a human rights abuse. I’m not aware of any community science projects where this has happened! This kind of abuse is much more common in other industries, for example agriculture or construction: you can read more about this in the work of organisations like Anti-Slavery International.

But more often it's going to look like a project organiser taking credit for the work of others, or reaping the benefits of a successful project (in prestige, citations, or grants) while the citizen scientists don't benefit. Or sometimes, it might look like a bullying project organiser making someone feel guilty if they want to step away. Those kinds of situations don't feel nice for the participants, but they are unlikely to rise to the level of human rights abuses.

So in those kinds of situations, the best recourse probably isn't going to be the human rights system (fond as I am of it). If you want to stay involved with a project,**** your best option for improving it is probably going to be organising.

Unionisation is protected by Article 8 of the ICESCR, but there are lots of other ways to work for change. There's a chapter in the Turing Way***** on activism for researchers: it's written for professional data scientists, but almost all of it is applicable to anyone who wants to change how they do science for the better.

* I've been a participant, and a couple of times a mentor, for OLS's Open Science training, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in science and community building.

** The blog was originally written for Open Heroines who are also worth checking out if you're a women or non-binary person interested in open data.

*** I initially wrote an answer on the OLS slack. But slack messages are private and transient: this is an edited, expanded, and public version!

**** But you don't have to! Volunteer Amnesty Day exists for a reason.

***** The Turing Way is a guide to collaborative, reproducible and ethical research: there's a lot in here about how to do collaborative science well! I was a contributor to the Guide for Ethical Research—in fact, that was my first OLS project!—and wrote some of the Activism content. If you're interested in getting involved, I recommend starting with the contribution guidelines.