Whose Responsibility? Research Ethics, Integrity, and Governance in Networked Science

Large, multi-institutional research networks pose genuine challenges for accountability, authorship, data sharing, mentorship, reproducibility, trust, and governance. In responding to the article "Filling the Network Gap in Research Ethics: Analyzing Ethical Issues at Scale in Big Team Science," by Susan Wolf et al., this commentary welcomes attention to those challenges but argues that labeling them as a new domain of research ethics requires more conceptual and normative precision. The article moves unevenly among research ethics, responsible conduct of research, bioethics, organizational theory, and responsible innovation while offering a definition of network ethics that is insufficiently differentiated from existing frameworks. Many examples cited are better understood as responsible conduct of research and research integrity problems amplified by scale, institutional plurality, and network topology. A persuasive account of network ethics must specify its unit of analysis, distinguish ethical from managerial and procedural problems, and identify the principles, duties, and accountability structures that justify a distinct framework. This commentary therefore recommends reframing the agenda as ethical governance and responsible conduct of network research at scale.