Is This the End of Anthropology as We Know It? Some Implication of FAIR Principles on Tales in Ethnological and Anthropological Qualitative Research

Open science, accessibility and knowledge sharing, especially of articles and monographs stemming from publicly funded research, seem to be moving in quite a positive direction toward scientific development and have received almost unanimous approval from the scientific community. However, when it comes to data sharing, the existing practice reveals a different picture, and not exclusively a discipline-dependent one. FAIR principles are developed and promoted as guiding tools for creating contextualized standards. The fact that data obtained by a qualitative methodology deserve special attention and treatment regarding the accessibility principle is recognized. Although FAIR principles provide ways to anonymize the data and interlocutors, individuals coming from smaller communities or even communities of practice can sometimes be easily recognized by members of the same community if data are openly accessed. Sometimes the interlocutors might agree with these terms, but sometimes they do not. According to the disciplinary code of ethics, a researcher is obliged to thoroughly describe the ways of the raw data management and usage, and in the case of mandatory raw data sharing (e.g., for receiving funding), it can inevitably impact the narratives collected. The prerogative to make all data open inevitably leads to autocensorship among interlocutors, i.e., resulting in a kind of FAIRy tale being collected. The article discusses the results obtained from the survey carried out among Croatian ethnologists and cultural anthropologists about the currently practiced data sharing, their attitudes about data sharing and their perceived behavior in hypothetical situations connected with data sharing. The results show mixed opinions about data sharing and a desire to follow the disciplinary code of ethics first, i.e., to follow the interlocutors’ wishes in the case of data management and usage.