Research data and methods policy update for the <i>Journal of Human Rights</i>

Carbonetti, Benjamin

doi:10.1080/14754835.2016.1145539

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 18 publications

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“…See Krystalli (2019) for an example of successfully negotiating with a funder over unreasonable blanket policies of data access and research transparency. See Carbonetti (2016) for one model of a journal focused on human rights acknowledging the need for flexibility in data access and transparency practices.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflexivity and Temporality in Researching Violent Settings: Problems with the Replicability and Transparency Regime

Thaler

2019

Geopolitics

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Researchers studying conflict, violence, and human rights in dangerous settings across the globe face a complex set of ethical, personal, and professional dilemmas. Especially in more positivist fields and professions, there is pressure to conduct and present research as 'objective'. Yet the reality of field research in violent and conflict-affected settings is much messier than ideals in methodology textbooks or the polished presentation of field data in much published work. I argue that rather than the imposition of blanket positivist standards of replicability and research transparency, research in violent settings needs to draw lessons from interpretivist ideas and methodologies about the researcher's role in the process of data gathering, analysis, and presentation. I focus on three key issues: reflexivity, temporality, and the geography of research between 'field' and 'home,' drawing on personal experiences conducting research on conflict, violence, and postconflict society in Liberia, Nicaragua, South Africa, and Uganda. I show how these three issues practically, theoretically, and ethically conflict with replicability and transparency demands. Through a practice of reflexive openness, however, positivist-leaning researchers can more honestly and ethically reconcile realities of research with professional expectations in the field and after returning. Beyond the omnipresent ethical imperative to protect human subjects, researchers in violent and conflict-affected settings must engage in various ethical, mental, and professional balancing acts while living in the field, interacting with research participants, recording and analyzing data, and reporting findings. Researchers in more positivist fields must determine how to reconcile their experiences in the field and emotional orientations toward research participants with the 'objectivity' that their disciplines or employers may expect in data gathering and analysis. Balancing these priorities can be a struggle even in more reflexive fields like ethnographic sociology and critical geography (e.g. Nilan 2002; Woon 2013). An

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflexivity and Temporality in Researching Violent Settings: Problems with the Replicability and Transparency Regime

Thaler

2019

Geopolitics

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Leverage, diplomacy, and African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex rights: Malawi and Zambia compared

Wahman

Drury

2018

Journal of Human Rights

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An introduction to JHR’s new Methods Focus series

Buerger

2018

Journal of Human Rights

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Since the 1990s, questions of methodology and how they relate to the work of academic publishing have taken center stage in debates over research integrity and scholarly impact on policy. How can we best ensure that the peer review process fairly advances rigorous scholarship? In what ways can academic journals provide a service beyond assisting their authors in job searches and in gaining promotion and tenure? And how can editorial staff use journals not only to highlight current scholarly trends but also to push conversations about the future of various academic fields and critical intersections with policy? These questions are even more pertinent for interdisciplinary journals, such as the Journal of Human Rights. Our journal has a broad readership, in terms of both geographic representation and disciplinary background. How can we best engage our diverse readers in a common conversation? How do we make methodologies intelligible across disciplines, so readers can scrutinize as well as learn from the practices of disciplines other than their own? Our decision to develop a quantitative Harvard Dataverse portal two years ago was a first effort at addressing these questions. 1 The move was guided by two primary goals. The first was to allow scholars working on quantitative research on human rights to better engage with the data and findings published in the pages of JHR. Second, we wanted to provide a space for collaboration where scholars of varying disciplines could develop new approaches to quantitative human rights data analysis. As Benjamin Carbonetti (former managing editor of JHR and now our journal's data consultant) explained in a research overview introducing the Dataverse site to our readers, "Both of these goals fit with part of our mission statement to 'broaden the study of human rights by fostering the critical re-examination of existing approaches to human rights, as well as developing new perspectives on the theory and practice of human rights'" (2016: 157). Beginning in this issue, we take this effort one step further with the introduction of our new Methods Focus series. The series will be an ongoing initiative, jointly curated by Carbonetti and myself. As scholars trained in distinct fields (political science and anthropology, respectively) and working from different methodological orientations (i.e., quantitative and qualitative, respectively), we reflect a good measure of the diversity of approaches in the field of human rights. Together, our aim is to engage thought leaders in human rights in more critical reflection on the methods currently employed across the field, along with the tradeoffs, limits, and potential of new tools and approaches. Methods Focus authors will explore both practical and ethical issues related to methodology. We envision these pieces serving several purposes. First, we see the Methods Focus series as a vehicle for creating space for focused conversations about methods, ethics, and the challenges and opportunities associated with conducting research on human rights. T...

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Research data and methods policy update for the Journal of Human Rights

Cited by 4 publications

References 18 publications

Reflexivity and Temporality in Researching Violent Settings: Problems with the Replicability and Transparency Regime

Reflexivity and Temporality in Researching Violent Settings: Problems with the Replicability and Transparency Regime

Leverage, diplomacy, and African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex rights: Malawi and Zambia compared

An introduction to JHR’s new Methods Focus series

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