Whilst the preoccupations of Information Science have in the past been largely technical, centring on the development and use of metadata, it can be argued that currently the focus is broadly on ethical matters. These include a range of questions concerning ownership and rights to use and exploit research data. This presentation will look at the essential nature of data as a means to throw some light on the rights of human data-subjects, researchers, funders, publishers, commercial exploiters of big data and other players. More questions will be raised than answers will be offered.

On the author:

Paul Sturges was academic adviser in 2012 to the JoRD Project at Nottingham University which looked at journal policies on research data sharing (see Sturges et al. JASIST, 2015). He has 40 years experience as a researcher, writer (over 200 publications) and speaker (in over 60 countries) on a broad range of topics within Information Science, clustering in the areas of access to information and intellectual freedom. He was Chair of the International Federation of Library Association (IFLA)'s Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) Committee 2003-9. He received the UK honour the OBE in 2010 and the IFLA Medal in 2011. He is Professor Extraordinary at the Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria (South Africa).