Codevis
Visual data are increasingly central to social research. Photos, videos, screenshots, and other visual materials can offer rich insights into social life, culture, and everyday practices. At the same time, making visual data open raises specific ethical, legal, and methodological challenges that cannot be addressed by applying generic open data principles alone. Visual data raises distinctive challenges for open data practices. They are highly context-dependent and difficult to anonymize. Once shared openly, visual materials can also be easily reinterpreted, reused, or amplified, increasing the risk of misrepresentation or unintended harm. Therefore, visual data cannot be treated like any other research data. Responsible openness requires early, reflexive, and context-sensitive decisions that balance transparency, accessibility, and ethical responsibility.
Use this website to navigate a user-friendly model for open data practices in visual social research. Drawing on the Recommendations for open data practices in visual social research, the site guides you through practical, context-sensitive decisions to be considered at each stage of the research process, from the conceptual phase to data reuse. In addition, the website invites you to contribute to the ongoing development of the model by sharing examples of open data practices from your own visual research or from work you see significant. You may also suggest complementary perspectives that can further enrich and extend the recommendations presented here.
The conceptual phase is where a research idea takes shape. Here, researchers define the scope, approach, and assumptions of the project and reflect on how visual data will be understood, produced, and governed throughout the research lifecycle.
In the research design phase researchers define methods, workflows, and responsibilities for producing, managing, and ethically handling visual data. Click on the phase for more information.
In the empirical phase visual data are generated, collected, or accessed applying the methodological design established in the previous phases. Click on the phase for more information.
In the analytical and interpretation phase images are analyzed, compared, and organized into coherent datasets. Researchers make their assumptions, interpretive choices, and/or analytical models explicit, ensuring that visual findings remain transparent, traceable, and responsibly documented over time.
In the communication and dissemination phase, researchers focus on sharing and circulating their research findings with different audiences. In visual social research, this may involve not only textual publications but also the presentation of visual materials to support, illustrate, or communicate analytical results.
In the archiving and preservation phase researchers prepare visuals for open data practices, which typically includes their deposit in trusted repositories. FAIR-compliant formats and rich metadata are selected, consent is reviewed, and copyright and data-protection conditions are clarified. The Data Management Plan is updated accordingly. Preservation does not mean automatic openness: degrees of openness are decided case by case, with clear licenses and guidelines for future use, and with non-publication remaining a valid ethical option.
In the Re-use phase, visual data may be used again by other researchers in future projects, in line with the clearly defined degrees of openness under which they were published. Data reuse is hoped to become more frequent in the future, as it has the potential to offer many benefits when conducted in accordance with ethical guidelines.
Conceptual Phase
The conceptual phase is the initial stage in which research ideas are defined and translated into a structured research proposal or design. Researchers define the aim of study, articulate its relevance, and situate it within existing field of research. This includes identifying research gaps, reviewing prior studies, and considering available resources, such as existing visual materials or open datasets.
In visual social research, this phase also involves clarifying what will be understood as visual data, for example, photographs, videos, screenshots, diagrams, or other image-based materials, and what roles visuals are expected to play in the research.
Crucially, during the conceptual phase researchers also address the project’s ethical and legal aspects. Questions of consent, data protection, authorship, reuse, and degrees of openness should be considered. At this stage, researchers articulate the values and assumptions that will guide later decisions, without yet translating them into concrete procedures.
The first draft of the Data Management Plan (DMP) is typically developed in this phase and becomes a strategic document. It outlines how visual data are expected to be generated, handled, documented, preserved, and reused across the project, aligning data practices with research goals and ethical commitments from the outset. In parallel, researchers may begin consulting Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) or research ethics committees, particularly when the project involves sensitive or personal data. In some cases, ethics applications are initiated during this conceptual phase; in others, formal submission occurs later, once the methodological design is more clearly defined. At the end of the conceptual phase, research projects are typically submitted to funding bodies for evaluation and financial support.
Research Design Phase
During the research design phase, researchers translate the conceptual orientations of a reviewed and funded project into a coherent and structured research plan. Building on feedback from the evaluation process, this phase refines the methodological approach, research context, and analytical strategies, and specifies in detail how visual data will be produced, selected, accessed, and analyzed with respect to the research questions and theoretical framework.
In visual social research, this is the stage at which the ethical and legal principles articulated earlier are translated into concrete procedures. While initial consultations with Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) or research ethics committees may already have occurred during the conceptual phase, formal ethics applications and revisions typically take place at this stage, once the methodological design is sufficiently specified.
The Data Management Plan (DMP) outlined in the conceptual phase is now revised, refined, and operationalized. It is expanded to include concrete workflows, roles and responsibilities, technical choices, and timelines for handling visual data throughout the project. This step ensures that data management responds to both funding requirements and ethical review and is embedded in everyday research practice rather than treated as a formal add-on.
Empirical Phase
With respect to visuals, during the empirical phase, researchers may produce photographs or videos themselves (researcher-produces visuals), invite participants to generate images (participant-produced visuals), work with co-created visual materials, or select existing visuals for analysis (found visuals). These activities are carried out according to the methodological orientations and ethical commitments defined earlier, but they must also remain responsive to the necessities of the researched individuals and field.
In visual research, the empirical phase involves much more than “capturing images.” Depending on the research paradigm, researchers should, e.g., systematically document the conditions under which visuals are produced or selected. This includes recording when and where a visual was created, who was involved, whether it was researcher-produced, participant-generated, or co-created, and how the situation, interaction, or relationship of trust shaped the visual outcome. Contextual documentation and reflexive accounts are essential, as the meaning of visual data is inseparable from the circumstances of their production and interpretation.
The empirical phase is also a phase of continuous ethical attention. Consent should be understood as an ongoing process rather than a one-time agreement. As visual practices evolve in the field, new situations may arise in which participants’ expectations, sensitivities, or willingness to share change. This is particularly relevant in ethnographic, participatory, or relational research settings, where visuals material might be dense intimate, or extend beyond the original research focus.
At the same time, visual materials must be handled with care from the moment they are produced or collected. This includes secure storage, controlled access within the research team, and attention to the identifiability and context sensitivity of the data. Decisions about what is recorded, retained, or discarded already shape future possibilities for analysis, sharing, and reuse.
The analysis and interpretation phase is where visual data becomes insight. Building on the materials collected during the empirical phase, researchers analyze, compare, and interpret visual data to identify patterns, meanings, or relationships. Visual social research requires careful organization and structuring of materials that depend on the chosen research paradigm.
In all cases, analysis is n needs to be closely linked to ethical reflection. Researchers must, e.g., acknowledge their positionality, document interpretive choices, and explain how conclusions were reached so that analyses remain traceable over time and supported by enriched metadata. This is a prerequisite for enabling future re-uses of the visual data underlying the obtained findings.
Communication and dissemination phase
The communication and dissemination phase is where visual research is shared with academic or general audiences. After analysis, researchers make informed decisions about how, where, and with whom visual findings are shared (through academic publications, illustrated articles, visual essays, films or videos, exhibitions, and web-based outputs). In line with open science principles, publications should, where possible, be connected to the underlying data.
This can be done by linking to a data repository or by providing supplementary materials alongside academic outputs. For this reason, communication and dissemination are closely connected to archiving and preservation, and the two phases may partly overlap.
Archiving and preservation Phase
The archiving and preservation phase ensures that visual research data remain secure, interpretable, and responsibly reusable long after a project ends. Unlike the communication and dissemination phase, which focuses on sharing findings, this phase is about long-term care: maintaining the integrity, context, and ethical conditions under which visual materials may or may not be reused in the future. Communication is inseparable from ethics, and this also applies to preservation. Visuals must always remain contextualized, with clear explanations of how images were produced, selected, transformed, and interpreted, and what meanings they carry.
Before deposit and potential dissemination, visual materials must be cleaned, protected, and made ready for circulation. This may involve anonymization or pseudonymization, balancing participant protection with research insight. Such decisions must always be made contextually and, wherever possible, in dialogue with participants.
Preservation does not imply automatic openness. Researchers must decide, case by case, which visuals can be shared, and at what degrees of openness. In some cases, non-publication is the most responsible choice. Openness is a spectrum, not a mandate, and ethical or safety concerns may justify limiting or withholding access entirely. Dissemination should also be tailored to specific audiences, recognizing that different publics require different levels of access, explanation, and protection.
Visual materials are prepared for deposit in a trusted repository. FAIR-compliant, non-restrictive and sustainable file formats are selected, and rich metadata are finalized at both item-level and dataset-level to ensure that visuals remain interpretable beyond the original project. Clear captions, licensing information, and contextual documentation help prevent misinterpretation and misuse. Repository-ready packages should include mechanisms for layered access and versioning to track redactions or consent updates.
Compliance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) must be ensured, alongside a careful review of copyright and data-protection obligations. Archived visual datasets should include clear licenses and, where necessary, additional guidelines for future data use. These guidelines go beyond legal terms to explain ethical context, consent conditions, and acceptable forms of reuse.
Since communication practices evolve over time, the Data Management Plan (DMP) should be updated to reflect changes in consent conditions, anonymization choices, and resource requirements for metadata creation and archiving.
The re-use phase closes the loop of visual social research: once visual materials are preserved, documented, and made available in online repositories, they can be taken up again, either by you in future projects or by other researchers, educators, communities, or institutions. Re-use is never a neutral download. It is an interpretive, ethical, and legal act that depends on understanding the original context, crediting sources accurately, and honoring the consent conditions attached to each visual.
Data reuse is hoped to become more frequent in the future, as it has the potential to offer many benefits when conducted in accordance with ethical guidelines. Reusing data can reduce redundant data collection, save time and resources, and promote transparency, reproducibility, and the discovery of new insights through secondary analysis.