1. Be ethical towards each other as organizers and country partners in consulting about complementary projects, seeking feedback about writing, and acknowledging individual and group contributions through open exchange of information about spin-off projects.
2. “Do No Harm” according to the principles we, as a project team, have developed.
3. Hold young mothers’ decision making within the PAR primary to what happens at all steps of participation in the project.
4. Maintain the integrity of the PAR by not prioritizing secondary work that may interfere.
5. Bring research ideas for work complementary to the PAR to the organizing team for discussion and, if there is agreement on its appropriateness, then discuss the research plan with the involved country team and, if appropriate, with girls and community members if the project is planned to take place at a PAR site.
6. Ensure for any work done with the PAR population, whether the participants, their children, or members of the community, that only issues raised by the young mothers are researched at PAR sites and the research is conducted in partnership with them using the same model as the PAR work done in that community.
7. Facilitate and support complementary research prompted by our learning from the PAR at agency-affiliated sites that are not part of the PAR and share the research results with PAR teams and participants. Such research initiatives should be communicated to the organizing team and to the country team members for information-sharing purposes early in the proposed research process.
8. Design and conduct research in PAR or non-PAR agency-affiliated sites with a commitment to action and lasting change, by garnering sufficient resources and giving supports and sharing learning with agencies and young mothers at the PAR sites.
9. Share manuscript ideas in advance with the coordinating team, and call for collaboration [when desired] for papers about the PAR. In sharing ideas, respect will be given to the initiating author’s plans for manuscript development.
10. Be inclusive in crediting authorship and in acknowledging those who have done the primary work. In general, we support two broad principles: (1) shared ownership of academic and other products from the overall project and (2) inclusive authorship or recognition of team members’ contributions. The main author will be listed first with others listed
according to their contributions to the paper. If there are one or two main contributors they are listed first according to the order they decide, and the others are listed in alphabetical order. We each also have the right to request that our name not be on a paper as an author.
11. Acknowledgement will be given to partner agencies/communities (as appropriate) either in the body of the text or in a footnote.
12. Inform our partners through periodic e-letters of our plans for academic outputs and ask partners to contact us if they wish to be involved in some way — such as reviewing the manuscript. We will appropriately acknowledge specific contributions.
13. Recognize that for some papers, such as personal reflections or in a specific area of academic expertise, that shared authorship may not be appropriate although, in all cases, the project itself should be acknowledged — such as in a footnote. In no instance is it ethical for individually-authored papers/works to “scoop” the reporting of larger PAR findings about reintegration of young mothers in war-affected countries. 14. Inform each other when we choose to begin writing a piece independently
to aid transparency and avoid unnecessary duplications and feelings of not being open. This applies only to PAR-related or complementary projects and not to projects in which we are involved that are outside the scope of the PAR.
15. Before submitting a manuscript for publication that is PAR-related
research or research conducted in PAR communities, whether it has been solo or group authored, we will share with each other what we have written for purposes of peer feedback and discussion.
16. Use of raw data from the young mothers (for example, poems, videos, dramas) by project stakeholders can occur only in consultation with the girls and/or representatives of the girls and with their agreement and consent. This entails each country team informing them about the purpose of using the data and the audience, developing and using
procedures for running key points by representatives of the girls [and, when possible, paper drafts], and giving them the opportunity to comment and agree or disagree on how their experiences are represented. Country teams will work with girl mother participants to develop decision-making processes about dissemination of raw data from young mothers for publication and presentations.
17. The young mothers in the PAR project are free to disseminate on their own their experiences, products and learning. For example, they might decide to tell stories on radio interviews, conduct interviews, contribute to the PAR website, or allow themselves to be filmed in regard to their work on the PAR project. For principles of “Do no harm,” representatives of the girls from the field sites should be advised that decisions about what they plan should be shared and decisions on participation should be made in consultation with the Project Coordinators and/or Country Teams.