Digital technologies have profoundly changed the research process. Researchers are required to deal with questions of research ethics as early as possible. The requirements of the ethics standards in the professional societies, which must be met, play an important role. All scientific quality criteria and the principles of "good scientific practice" (DFG) in relation to the scientific community must be adhered to in every research project.

The DFG's guidelines for safeguarding good scientific practice state: "Scientists and academics treat the constitutionally granted freedom of research responsibly. They take into account rights and obligations, in particular those resulting from legal requirements, but also from contracts with third parties, and obtain and submit approvals and ethics votes where necessary. With regard to research projects, a thorough assessment of the research consequences and the evaluation of the respective ethical aspects should be carried out. The legal framework of a research project also includes documented agreements on the rights of use of the resulting research data and research results." (Guideline 10)

The protection of particularly vulnerable groups is especially important here (e.g. in medical research/health and care). Researchers are always called upon to reduce the risks associated with projects for others and to give careful consideration to this in advance. Standards and regulations on research ethics should ensure that harm is avoided and that freedom of research can be guaranteed at the same time. The aim is always to handle scientific freedom responsibly.

Research ethics in projects must therefore be taken into account as early as the application stage or when writing the data management plan (DMP).

Other topics in research data management relating to research ethics are often

• the voluntary nature of participation as a prerequisite of a study,
• the principle of informed consent in educational and social science studies
• the protection of participants by ensuring anonymity,
• privacy,
• the avoidance of risks and
• legal issues, in particular personal rights (of third parties).

Informed consent must be obtained before conducting field research. It should also be ensured that no comparable data is available that could be used secondarily.

In the course of a research project, all legal questions must be answered, in particular

• Under what conditions may research data be reused?
• What must be observed when sharing and archiving data?

The rules on data protection and copyright provide answers to these questions.