Purpose

This article explores the ethical and practical complexities of documenting data creation processes using paradata in research documentation. While transparency is essential for making data truly FAIR, the recent paradata literature has acknowledged that radical openness can conflict with legal and ethical obligations, especially when paradata involves personal notes and identifiable individuals.

Design/methodology/approach

The contemporary literature is examined to explore how paradata is framed as both a solution and a challenge in current discourse. Ethical challenges and proposed solutions are then discussed from the perspective of major ethical theories to identify trajectories of problems and solutions.

Findings

It is argued that paradata is best approached not as a static entity but as a process underpinned by a meshwork of trajectories incorporating values, explicit and implicit purposes (questions and answers), ethical theories guiding their operationalisation and the means by which they are put into practice. The ethical disclosure of paradata is context-dependent and must balance openness with sensitivity. Paradata itself can help in the process of deciding what is sensitive and what is disclosable, but forcing such decisions risks obscuring the contextual complexities of the ethical hurdles involved.

Practical implications

Paradata is processual and the (dis)closability of particular aspects of a research process depends on the circumstances, not only of the paradata artefacts and the context of their use, but those of the entire trajectories of processes, data making and use.

Originality/value

A comprehensive discussion on the ethical aspects of paradata making in research documentation has been so far absent from the literature.