Archives for Science

Research Records and Accountability

Abstract

It is said that archives generated by scientific research are important for the accountability in scientific research, and the implications of that are considered in this paper. The characteristics of scientific research records are explained in the context of the situations which they are created. Then, the issues arising from the handling of observational and experimental data as archival materials are also discussed, and the cases are presented in which the research records were used in the investigation of some alleged perpetrators of fraud in the process of research.