Recommendations for open data practices in visual social research. In pursuit of a code of conduct

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These recommendations have been endorsed by the Division "Visual Communication" of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) on November 20, 2025.

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In recent years, open science has gained growing importance in academia, with funding bodies, publishers, and journals increasingly encouraging, or even requiring, researchers to share their data. While such practices enhance transparency, replicability, and accessibility, they also raise significant ethical, legal, and methodological challenges, particularly in visual social research. Images, videos, and other visual materials are often highly sensitive, context- dependent, and difficult to anonymize, making generic open data guidelines insufficient for this field.

Against this backdrop, the CodeVis project (Code of Conduct for Open Data Practices in Visual Social Research), funded by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, set out to develop tailored recommendations addressing the specific challenges of visual data in open science contexts. It aims to explore how data from visual social research can be meaningfully integrated into the open data framework, focusing on the management, sharing, and reuse of visual data in ways that are ethically responsible and legally compliant, while also fostering transparency and collaboration. Rather than presenting openness as a binary choice between full publication and complete non-disclosure, these recommendations stress that decisions are rarely straightforward.

To translate these aims into practice, the project adopted a multi-step process. This involved: 1) a benchmark analysis of existing ethical codes and guidelines; 2) an extensive review of debates on visual ethics, data management, and open science; and 3) three expert workshops held between 2024 and 2025 with scholars in visual communication, media research, and the social sciences.

The outcomes of this process are summarized in the following key aspects for open data practices in visual research:

1. Openness with responsibility: Share visual data as open as possible, as restricted as necessary. Full openness is not automatically the default.

2. Context sensitivity: Adapt openness to the heterogeneous nature of visual data, considering research paradigm, and cultural, social, and methodological contexts.

3. Ethical primacy: ensure harm minimization, prioritizing dignity, privacy, and safety through consent, anonymization, or, where needed, textual substitution.

4. Degrees of openness: Apply a spectrum of sharing options, from fully open to restricted or closed, based on careful ethical, legal, and methodological evaluation.

5. Planning ahead: Open data practices need to be defined at the beginning of a research project within the data management plan.

Building on these principles, this document wants to support researchers in planning and implementing visual open data practices by providing guidelines on issues such as ethical and legal reflections, data management plans, consent processes, and considerations regarding repository and licensing selection. These guidelines are designed to accompany researchers throughout the data lifecycle, from project design to publication and reuse.

The value of these recommendations lies in providing the first dedicated framework for open data practices in visual social research. They offer a reliable point of reference for researchers and scholars, as well as for students and early-career academics. Ultimately, they aim to strengthen trust, enhance the rigor of visual research, and foster a culture of responsible openness that respects both academic integrity and the rights and dignity of research participants.