Academic outputs, conference and journal papers, are the primary mode of communication for academics, whether with other researchers, policymakers, or practitioners and the wider public. Scholarly venues also play a key role in the ethics eco-system (Knight et al., 2024a), because publication is incentivised, providing opportunity for editorial policy to set requirements and promote learning. The challenge is to do this in a way that addresses emerging research ethics challenges, and without increasing the overheads of publication. This is important to do because if we want people to understand and engage with the values underpinning our research, we need to communicate those values. The risk of not doing so is a diminished public trust in science.

Emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, highlight key issues in research ethics, through both novel and pre-existing effects. For example, what are the long-range or indirect effects of facial recognition research in understanding classroom engagement? How should we navigate differing notions of fairness in understanding the potential for AI in assessment? As a result, some have called for new editorial and ethics committee policies to address these challenges (see Ada Lovelace Institute et al., 2022; Partnership on AI, 2021; Srikumar et al., 2022). In our recent collaboration, the editors-in-chief of the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET), Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) and Journal of Learning Analytics (JLA) sought to address some of these calls through development of new policies for the expression of research ethics across disciplines. The study, ‘Emerging technologies and research ethics: Developing editorial policy using a scoping review and reference panel’, was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE (see Knight et al., 2024b and 2024c). In the study, we conduct a cross-disciplinary scoping review of existing research ethics publication policies and practice, which we drew on to develop policies that aim to foster learning and discussion of ethical issues.

‘What are the long-range or indirect effects of facial recognition research in understanding classroom engagement? How should we navigate differing notions of fairness in understanding the potential for AI in assessment?’

In the work – summarised in figures 1 and 2 – we identify a ‘compliance’ focus of policies as a key limitation in extant policy, resulting in a relatively narrow set of considerations. This narrow focus makes it difficult to understand the trade-offs navigated by researchers in their work (see for example Kitto & Knight, 2019; Knight et al., 2023; Knight & Kitto, 2020), limiting opportunities for dialogue and learning. Researchers in education play a distinctive role in this context, both because AI and technologies impact learning, but also because our expertise speaks to this concern for dialogue and learning regarding ethics.

Figure 1: Research Poster of ‘Emerging Technologies and Research Ethics. Developing editorial policy using a scoping review and reference panel’

The policies centre learning, providing template guidelines for authors, reviewers and editors, with examples provided in the educational technology context. As the flowchart in figure 2 indicates, we hope that the policy templates provide a means to influence the ethics ecosystem. The intent of the policy templates is that they can inform scholarly communities in considering their practices, and in developing models that centre the role of dialogue and learning in the expression of research ethics.

Figure 2: Research Summary of ‘Emerging Technologies and Research Ethics. Developing editorial policy using a scoping review and reference panel’

Whatever your role, we invite readers to engage with these policies and consider how they share reflections on ethical practice to support learning.

References

Ada Lovelace Institute, CIFAR, & Partnership on AI. (2022). A culture of ethical AI: Report. CIFAR. https://cifar.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CIFAR-AI-Insights-EN-FINAL-AODA.pdf

Kitto, K., & Knight, S. (2019). Practical ethics for building learning analytics. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(6), 2855–2870. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12868

Knight, S., & Kitto, K. (2020). How do educational technology developers ensure that their products have positive impact, and don’t cause harm? British Educational Research Association (BERA) Blog. https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog/how-do-educational-technology-developers-ensure-that-their-products-have-positive-impact-and-dont-cause-harm

Knight, S., Shibani, A., & Buckingham Shum, S. (2023). A reflective design case of practical micro-ethics in learning analytics. British Journal of Educational Technology, 54(6), 1837–1857. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13323

Knight, S., Shibani, A., & Vincent, N. (2024a). Ethical AI governance: Mapping a research ecosystem. AI and Ethics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-023-00416-z

Knight, S., Viberg, O., Mavrikis, M., Kovanović, V., Khosravi, H., Ferguson, R., Corrin, L., Thompson, K., Major, L., Lodge, J., Hennessy, S., & Cukurova, M. (2024b). Emerging technologies and research ethics: Developing editorial policy using a scoping review and reference panel. PLOS ONE, 19(10): e0309715. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309715

Knight, S., Viberg, O., Mavrikis, M., Kovanovic, V., Khosravi, H., Ferguson, R., Corrin, L., Thompson, K., Major, L., Lodge, J., Hennessy, S., & Cukurova, M. (2024c). Supplement to: How do we learn about research ethics from published research? Developing editorial policy for emerging technologies using a scoping review and reference panel. [Dataset and Supplementary Files]. figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26013130

Partnership on AI. (2021). Managing the risks of AI research: Six recommendations for responsible publication. https://partnershiponai.org/workstream/publication-norms-for-responsible-ai/

Srikumar, M., Finlay, R., Abuhamad, G., Ashurst, C., Campbell, R., Campbell-Ratcliffe, E., Hongo, H., Jordan, S. R., Lindley, J., & Ovadya, A. (2022). Advancing ethics review practices in AI research. Nature Machine Intelligence, 4, 1061–1064. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00585-2