Participant Information Leaflet

We are Dr Carlos Cámara-Menoyo and Dr Timothy Monteath, both working at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick) and acting as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator of this project, respectively. We are partnering with Geochicas, a collective of feminist women linked to OpenStreetMap who work for women's empowerment and the reduction of the gender gap in OpenStreetMap communities and in communities associated with the world of free software and open data.

You can contact us for any queries about the project and your involvement on it at carlos.camara@warwick.ac.ukand timothy.monteath@warwick.ac.uk

This project has been funded by the ESRC Digital Good Network, in their 2024 Research Fund call, aimed at evaluating digital goods.

This project aims to enquiry how neutrality is understood and implemented in OpenStreetMap by producing data visualisations that are based on lived experiences and resulting from a participatory process.

You can read more about the project in the project’s site or in the Digital Good Network website[2].

We would like to join a workshop aimed at producing alternative cartographies that address particular needs of underrepresented minorities using data that is available in OpenStreetMap (albeit hidden or not displayed at all) in innovative ways.

Taking part in this workshop will involve spending 5 hours with fellow (and potentially, interesting) people interested in maps, data visualizations, and/or EDI issues. You will be critically engaging in discussions based on experiences about neutrality and maps, and you will be learning how OpenStreetMap works and how to use it to create customized maps. Refreshments and food will be served.

No. Participation in this study is completely voluntary and choosing not to take part will not affect you in any way. You can also choose to withdraw your participation without giving a reason by contacting one of the research team. Further details about withdrawing from the study are provided later on in this document.

For us, your participation will be useful in two ways. First, it will provide insights that will contribute to critically enquiry about neutrality as an aspiration and guiding principle in OpenStreetMap. Second, it will provide specific examples of how cartography can be used to address particular needs of underrepresented demographics.

For you, you will be acquiring technical and critical skills to produce your own cartographies using OpenStreetMap data and Free/Libre Open-Source tools that you can use for your own purposes.

We will be collecting the following types of data:

• Maps produced by the groups: these maps will not contain any personal data.
• Maps medatadata describing the map’s aim, their design principles and, optionally, the names/nicknames of their authors.
• Survey evaluating the impact of the workshop and the visualisations. The survey will not be associated with participants, as we are only interested in aggregated results.
• Notes from discussions, only containing what was said, not who said it.
• Occasional pictures of the process. Participants not wanting to appear in pictures will be visually identified and no pictures with them will be taken.

The workshop will be following Chatham House Rules, i.e. anyone attending is free to use information from it, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment. This means that we will not be collecting any personal data (unless the author explicitly agrees on that).

We will use the data to support findings in research-related outputs such as academic papers or blog posts.

Following our commitment for open and impactful research, we will also be creating a repository of the maps produced on the workshops as well as associated metadata, for others to use under an open licence.

We expect to (but can’t commit to) return findings to the OpenStreetMap community, to inform decisions that would make it more inclusive.

This study has been reviewed and given favourable opinion by the University of Warwick’s Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (HSSREC).

If you require further information, please contact Dr Carlos Cámara-Menoyo:

Carlos.camara@warwick.ac.uk

If you wish to make a complaint, this should be addressed to the person below, who is a senior University of Warwick official entirely independent of this study:

Head of Research Governance
Research & Impact Services
University House
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 8UW
Email: researchgovernance@warwick.ac.uk
Tel: 02476 575733

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer who will investigate the matter: DPO@warwick.ac.uk.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data in a way that is not lawful you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).