This research strand examines publications on research ethics in the field of political science as a lens to understand how discussions about ethical rules and practices have evolved in recent decades. It includes several strands—first, it uses a large-scale analysis of publications on research ethics across several disciplines to contextualize the current discussion on research ethics in political science. It then examines a subset of articles that discuss research with human subjects in the disciplines of IR and political science to study how this field is emerging and coalescing. Finally, it studies who does the work of thinking and writing about research ethics, finding that it is disproportionately female scholars in the Global North. We consider what these trends mean for how research ethics is valued in the discipline, and pathways forward.