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Researching Cybercrime in the European Union: Asking the Right Ethics Questions

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Researching Cybercrimes

Abstract

European Union (EU) research is based on the commitment to embed ethics from the first conceptual stage of the proposal through the implementation of the project. Given this background, and while the concern for ethics in crime research has been widely covered by the European Commission, few contributions have yet shifted their interest on this issue with respect to the growing research on cybercrime. Hence, the purpose of the study is threefold: first, to identify the main European Commission research ethics guidelines and their applicability to cybercrime research; second, to conceptually introduce internet research ethics as a potential ethical framework that can serve as a complement to existing European reference documents; and third, to provide support on identifying some of its main challenges through practical key questions applied to cybercrime research.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter has been elaborated within the framework of the project “Criminología, evidencias empíricas y Política criminal. Sobre la incorporación de datos científicos para la toma de decisiones en relación con la criminalización de conductas – Referencia: DER2017-86204-R,” funded by the Spanish State Agency for Research (AEI)/Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund “ERDF- A way to make Europe.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro CRÍMINA para el estudio y prevención de la delincuencia, Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche, Elche, Spain

    Francisco J. Castro-Toledo & Fernando Miró-Llinares

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  1. Francisco J. Castro-Toledo
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  2. Fernando Miró-Llinares
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Correspondence to Francisco J. Castro-Toledo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Anita Lavorgna

  2. School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Thomas J. Holt

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Castro-Toledo, F.J., Miró-Llinares, F. (2021). Researching Cybercrime in the European Union: Asking the Right Ethics Questions. In: Lavorgna, A., Holt, T.J. (eds) Researching Cybercrimes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74837-1_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74837-1_16

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