Welcome to the IRE Digital Library, Resource Center, and Commons.

The working knowledge, professional and disciplinary norms and practices, and body of Internet Research Ethics literature, is scattered across disciplines and locales, often contributing to uncertainty in ethical and methodological decision making among researchers and ethics boards which review research in academic institutions. This occasionally prevents research from being pursued and unnecessarily lengthens the time and effort that such bodies as Institutional Review Boards put into internet-research based protocols. This uncertainty also contributes to a growing confusion and frustration among researchers, who see an ethical rigidity imposed from extant ethical review models, as more research is conducted across an array of technological and global boundaries.

Directed by Elizabeth Buchanan and Charles Ess this NSF-funded project brings the IRE literature together into a comprehensive digital library and couples it with it an interactive research commons, thus, centralizing and simplifying the task of developing standards, best practices, and guidelines around IRE. It also develops an IRE study group, which will provide professional advice and guidance for researchers, ethics boards, and any research participants.

The project goes beyond traditional research ethics issues while providing sound resources, a solid research base, and expert advice as more researchers and IRBs struggle with the complexities of Internet research. The project promises broad impact for Internet researchers from all disciplines, the foundations of their research ethics practices, and nature of research itself in an ever-connected information environment.

This blog will be updated regularly with news, events, and featured content from the IRE Digital Library, Resource Center, and Commons. Please explore the website and join us!