- Practical barriers, and suggestions to overcome them;
- 2. The landscape of present rules and requirements regarding to research data, for instance in the recently revised Code of Conduct for Scientific Practice and in the regulations applied by research funding bodies;
- 3. Provisions and pitfalls for/in contract texts.
A selection of the barriers we encountered.
- A private company is willing to make a major investment in your research, but requires unlimited access to all research data in return. Some of the data is privacy sensitive. How to proceed?
- The case of mixed data: commercial data are collected and in the course of public funded research projects enriched. An impressive body of knowledge has been created. Is it allowed to ask a fee to third parties for access to the data bank?
- A researcher stored research data in Dropbox. The researcher passed away. How to gain access to the research data? Where to start? The research group. The relatives?
- Many people volunteer to be interviewed in your research. How to correctly protect their privacy? What if a researcher from another discipline asks permission to use the data for her research? Is this allowed or should the subjects be asked for specific consent?
- Researchers co-operate internationally and use their private email accounts (Gmail for instance) as well as their university email accounts to exchange information and data. How to keep track of the data? And of the versions? And whom it the data forwarded to?
Sharing data that is subject to informed consent and collected in a databank feeded with data from multiple parties. How to avoid cumbersome approval processes that involve many parties? (Ton Smeele, UU)
How do researchers keep their data safe while using software of non-Dutch suppliers? This involves both software for gathering data as well as software for analysing data. Two examples based on reserach support experience during the past six years.One example specific to gathering data: Qualtrix is popular among researchers (Psychology, Communication Sciences) for purposes of gathering structured information from respondents, sometimes containing highly private matters. The surveys and the data are stored on a server of the software provider, an American company. Researchers keep the data stored on the server as a back up service and to have the data available for integrity inquiries. (Qualtrics stores IP addresses of respondents). But then there's the Patriot Act ...
A case related to data analysis. Some software packages for qualitative data analysis allow working on a single dataset by multiple researchers. Provided the data is stored on the server of the software supplier (US in most cases). On the software supplier's website there's usually mention of the data not being shared with third parties, but is it a matter of mere trust or can / should additional agreements be made? And in the case of Australian Nvivo supplier? (Mariëtte van Selm, UVA)- The EU sets higher standards with regards to the ethics of data storage than we are currently used to in the Netherlands. By implication a university should have a data protection controller and is asked to anticipate future policies on privacy and data. How to deal with the situation where there is a gap between norms stated in the EU versus the Netherlands? (Matthijs den Otter, EUR)
‘The default case’: what does the law say when nothing is arranged? The data were collected as a part of a PhD project at a certain university, there are no confidentiality or privacy issues, no university policy. What can a PhD do with the data during the project? And after his project? Can he take the data with him? What is the ‘standard procedure’ if there is one (or should be one). (Marina Noordegraaf)
At present I am working within a research project. We (universities and private companies) are collecting a lot of data. My main issue as project coordinator is to be fair and to manage the data issue properly. There are conflicting interests between (university and private) partners. Right now, we have 3 research groups collecting data, they have to be part of the same database.
The problems I can see are:
- Who is the owner of the collected data (the research unit or all partners)?
- May a partner use for his/her own purpose (not project based) the data collected by the research groups? How?
This leads to the publication issues. Should all partners sign the articles (as co-authors) because they supported the data collecting activity and are belonging to the same consortium?
Right now, I can see that in my consortium made up of 5 partners only two are active in writing. (MV)- ...(your input)...