ABSTRACT
Research guidelines provide details on current standards of best practice in research and are most effectively drafted to deal with what the American Anthropological Association (AAA, 1998) refers to as ‘special context’ research. Thus the Society of Economic Botany (SEB) and the American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP) have issued ‘guidelines’ in an effort to address some of the issues raised by their particular research niches. Guidelines, at their most effective, will provide specific information and guidance on researcher behaviour and practice, such as language employed; social and environmental impacts; sampling methods; prior informed consent; disposition of research results and collections; and publication and entry into databases of information. The more narrow the research area, the more specific the guidelines can be drafted. The ISE, for example, has developed Guidelines for Research, Collections, Databases and Publications and has appended these to its code of ethics. While still quite general, the guidelines offer detail on practical issues associated with acquiring and distributing data not covered in the code.
