The Nature of Ethical Problems of Research in Cyberspace

Developing increasingly Internet as a ubiquitous research laboratory and a convenient media to doing research is caused new ethical and variety legal issues and problems. This paper explains and explicates the nature of ethical problems of research, partly open problems, in cyberspace especially and it is preferred any practical solutions. Firstly, the research ethics is defined as a branch of applied ethics and professional ethics. Then, the research ethics is surveyed under new approach to doing research through introducing to cyberspace. There are presented some information and commutation technology social effects, and also their outcomes on the research ethics in cyberspace. Thus, these include the most main issues and problems on the virtual research ethics field. In continue, there are distinguished the most important ethical principles in conducting virtual research; autonomy, beneficence, justice, and intellectual property. Hence, there are discussed and considered in detail some ethical issues associate with these ethical principles that indicate their completeness and consistency. Implementing and conducting the ethical principles regarding the protection of human subjects participating in virtual research have itself typical complexities. Therefore,there are identified and indexed some of the distinct and critical ethical challenges and problems to doing research in cyberspace, such as: privacy and confidentiality problem, identity non-identifying and anonymity problem, informed consent problem, universal codes of ethics, digital divide problem, and faceless communication problem of virtual research ethics.