CARE: Indigenous rights and open data

As academia develops towards open science and increased access to research data and materials, we find ourselves with new possibilities and opportunities to use and reuse research output. Among indigenous people, this development is considered a great progress, as well as a source of tension, as they have worked towards both increased transparency and increased control over application and use of indigenous data and knowledge. In order to bring light to ethical issues regarding indigenous data, the organisation GIDA (Global Indigenous Data Alliance) is presenting the CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) principles – a suggestion for a principal framework to be used as a complement to the established FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles for research data management. In the framework of CARE, the concept "Indigenous data" include all data connected to indigenous peoples and resources, regardless of level. Indigenous data are not limited to data collected within research contexts. The term include qualitative as well as quantitative data, and all types of data – from personal and cultural data to data concerning indigenous resources and environments. In the article Operationalizing the CARE and FAIR principles for Indigenous data futures, published in Nature (2021), Carroll et al. states that "Earth and space science research data is highly relevant to Indigenous communities". In other words, indigenous data occur in a wider range of research domains than one might generally assume. CARE might lead to increased visibility and dissemination of interdiciplinary research. Among other things it is important that descriptive metadata uphold a high quality in the larger, generalist resources and structures for information organisation. If the CARE principles are to be used, they need to operate in line with other existing frameworks for research ethics. The principles are interesting reading for researchers, regardless of level of implementation, as they provide information about aspects of research data management and use that might be ethically important. In a swedish context, the CARE principles are being processed in relation to our seats of learning and governing institutions. The question of whether, and to what extent, CARE might become guidelines for ethical research practices in Sweden is still open. However, that the CARE principles are on the agenda in itself mean that indigenous issues and t