Indigenous Scholars Establish Guidelines for Governance of Indigenous Data in Scholarly Publishing

A team of Indigenous scholars led by Dartmouth environmental studies professor Lydia Jennings has established new guidelines designed to ensure Indigenous peoples’ rights, knowledge and contributions are recognized in scientific data and scholarly publishing.

The Guidelines for the Governance of Indigenous Peoples’ Data in Scholarly Publishing seek to apply the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance to academic publishing. CARE stands for collective benefit, authority to control data, responsibility and ethics.

The guidelines are intended to help researchers, publishers and others working with Indigenous data do so in ways that support Indigenous peoples’ rights, interests, self-determination, collective benefit and well-being.

Jennings, a citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Huichol, said her experiences as a doctoral student and postdoctoral researcher exposed her to culturally important Indigenous information that was publicly available without the full knowledge, consent or access of the communities involved.

“When I was a PhD student and postdoc, I found that there was a lot of culturally important information available in public places, such as in environmental impact statements, reports, and publications, that are about Indigenous peoples without their full knowledge, consent, or access,” Jennings said.

As a soil scientist working with large soil databases and herbarium collections, Jennings also found that data sometimes identified a sample as culturally significant to Native Americans without identifying the specific tribal nation to which the information pertained.

In some cases, the data credited only the researchers who collected the samples rather than the Indigenous peoples who originally shared and stewarded the knowledge.

“The processes and expectations of how we as scholars communicate information back to the communities was pretty sparse,” Jennings said.

The effort began after the American Geophysical Union expressed interest in establishing standards for Indigenous data governance. AGU’s Shelley Stall contacted Stephanie Russo Carroll, an Ahtna woman and citizen of the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah and an associate professor of public health at the University of Arizona, about potential next steps.

Because Jennings had already been working on issues involving the use and governance of Indigenous data, Carroll invited her to lead the project.

Among the issues identified was the need for journals to provide guidance on crediting Indigenous knowledge and developing a style guide for citing Indigenous communities represented by or working with authors.

Jennings and Carroll determined that the effort needed to be community-driven because the standards would apply across disciplines, including environmental studies, anthropology and health.

They collaborated with Riley Taitingfong, a CHamoru scholar at the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona; Jane Anderson of New York University; and Maui Hudson, who is Whakatōhea, Ngāruahine and Te Māhurehure and is with the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

The project leaders worked with partners at AGU and the National Information Standards Organization and coordinated with more than 125 scholars, publishers, editors and metadata experts from around the world.

“It’s been an honor to be part of this Indigenous-led collective effort to create first-of-its-kind guidelines for the scholarly publishing industry,” said Mia Ricci, director of publications operations at AGU.

From 2023 through 2025, Jennings and the team held four workshops to develop best practices and recommendations for working ethically with Indigenous data throughout the research process, from study design and implementation through publication and post-production.

Among the recommendations are changes to peer review policies so Indigenous community members and Indigenous organizations can be properly attributed and included as reviewers.

The guidelines also recommend providing translated titles and abstracts in Indigenous languages alongside English-language text and, when feasible, publishing research in both English and an Indigenous language.

“In working with Indigenous authors from around the world, I’ve seen that so much can get lost in the English translation,” Jennings said. “So identifying opportunities to expand perspectives and share results in an Indigenous language can deepen reporting and extend reach.”

The guidelines also address barriers to accessing scholarly research. Publishing in peer-reviewed journals can be expensive, while much academic literature remains behind paywalls.

The CARE principles call for reducing economic barriers for Indigenous authors by providing support for publishing fees and making research available through open access so Indigenous communities and others can access the literature.

“By establishing the CARE guidelines, we have outlined more ways for Indigenous communities to be engaged in the publishing process of research and to also be more digitally connected to the data,” Jennings said.

“We’ve created a framework for researchers and academic publishing to be more inclusive, where Indigenous knowledge and the contributions of Indigenous peoples and communities can be better recognized.”

The project was a collaborative effort involving leadership from the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance, the Sovereign Soils Research Collaborative, the Indigenous Data Law Lab at New York University and Te Kotahi Research Institute.

The American Geophysical Union’s Publications and Open Science Leadership teams and the National Information Standards Organization provided programmatic and organizational support.