Ethics, Consent & Accountability (amanthro-transparency-and-data)

At AA, "transparency" is not primarily a reproducibility package — it is research ethics and accountability. The AAA's Principles of Professional Responsibility (do no harm; obtain informed consent; be open and honest; weigh competing obligations to people, communities, scholarship, and the profession) govern the work, and AA practices an explicit ethics of care in its editorial process. The single most important rule: protecting people can override sharing data. Design ethics in from the start (run this skill early and before submission).

When to trigger

• Planning consent, anonymization, and accountability into a project (do this early)
• Working with vulnerable, criminalized, Indigenous, or displaced communities
• Handling human remains, sacred objects, genetic/biological samples, or cultural heritage
• Deciding what materials, transcripts, images, or data can — and cannot — be shared
• Preparing the manuscript's ethics statement before submission

AAA ethics core (anchor every decision here)

1. Do no harm. Anticipate harm to interlocutors and communities — reputational, legal, physical, cultural — and design to prevent it. When sharing would endanger people, do not share.
2. Informed consent is ongoing, not a one-time signature: people understand what participation and publication mean, and can withdraw. For media, consent covers that use of that image/recording.
3. Be open and honest about your role, funders, and purposes with those you study and with readers.
4. Weigh competing obligations transparently — to people studied, to scholarship, to communities, and to the discipline — and explain how you resolved conflicts.

Anonymization & protection of interlocutors

• Anonymize people and often places (pseudonyms, composite or masked details) where exposure could cause harm; state your anonymization strategy and its limits.
• For vulnerable or criminalized communities, treat confidentiality as protective, not optional; consider not collecting or not retaining data that could be subpoenaed or leaked.
• Images: blur/withhold identifiers per consent; some images should not be published at all (see amanthro-tables-figures).

Heritage, repatriation & biological materials

• Cultural heritage & sacred objects: respect community authority; some knowledge/objects should not be reproduced or published. Follow NAGPRA and relevant national/Indigenous protocols.
• Human remains & repatriation: document provenance and descendant-community consent; align with NAGPRA/repatriation obligations; do not present ancestral remains as ungoverned data.
• Genetic / biological data: community consent (incl. group-level harms), benefit-sharing where appropriate; deposit only where consent and protocols permit.

What about data sharing? (open-but-careful)

• AA's Wiley compliance row does not impose a journal-specific data-sharing tier; share what you ethically can (e.g., codebooks, non-sensitive materials, analysis details for quantitative subfields) and document why sensitive data are withheld with an access/contact path where appropriate.
• For biological/archaeological quantitative work, normal reproducibility hygiene applies: documented procedures, pinned versions, seeds — subject to the ethics constraints above. Sharing never trumps consent or community harm. Follow any Research Exchange data-availability prompt at upload.

Anti-patterns

• Treating ethics as IRB paperwork done once, not an ongoing relationship of care
• Publishing identifiable details/images that endanger interlocutors to look more transparent
• Reproducing sacred/heritage materials or ancestral remains against community wishes
• Extractive research: taking knowledge/samples with no consent, benefit, or accountability
• A "view from nowhere" that hides funders, role, or competing obligations
• Sharing sensitive data for reproducibility credit when it exposes people to harm

Output format

【AAA ethics】do-no-harm / consent / honesty / competing-obligations addressed? [Y/N]
【Consent】ongoing + covers publication & media use? [Y/N]
【Anonymization】strategy + limits stated; vulnerable interlocutors protected? [Y/N]
【Heritage/remains/biological】provenance + community authority + repatriation respected? [Y/N/NA]
【Data sharing】what is shared / what is ethically withheld + why
【Next】amanthro-review-process

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — AAA Principles of Professional Responsibility, AA ethics-of-care statement, Wiley data policy
• ../../../shared-resources/empirical-methods/reporting-standards.md — background reporting hygiene for quantitative (biological/archaeological) subfields only