#SRDD2020 Session

Session

Panel 8

Time

14:45-16:15

Title

Learn about which are the most relevant legal issues when managing and archiving data and how to approach them

Speaker(s)

Suzanna Marazza

Yves Bauer

Abstract

Do I own the copyrights of the images I am going to archive on a research data repository? Does my interview data contain personal or even sensitive data and if yes, what can I do to still archive them in a legally compliant way on a repository? How can I anonymize data and what is the difference between anonymization and pseudonymization? What legal aspects do I have to consider if I would like to make my research data available for re-use in open access format?

These are all questions that researchers planning to manage and archive research data on a repository will be confronted with. It is fundamental to start thinking about legal aspects before the moment of archiving, that is, right from the beginning of a research project. Only in this way it is possible to collect necessary permissions also for the future re-use of collected data, and thus favor open access of research data as also requested by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

As the legal liability of the archived data usually lies with the researcher, it is fundamental to make researchers, as well as repositories’ managers, aware of possible legal risks and provide them with possible solutions to address these risks. 

During the DMLawTool project within swissuniversitie’s P-5 program (https://www.swissuniversities.ch/en/topics/digitalisation/p-5-scientific-information), scientists from the Università della Svizzera italiana and the University of Neuchâtel have interviewed the managers of research data archives in the fields of social sciences and humanities in Switzerland about their legal challenges.

This allowed the project team to identify the main legal issues researchers are confronted to when dealing with research data and to develop different possible solution approaches.

During this workshop, the project team would like to share these insights with the research community.

The workshop will have the following structure:

1. Introduction to the main notions of copyright and data protection (ca. 15 min)
2. Overview of the most relevant legal questions related to data management and archiving (ca. 5 min)
3. Presentation of possible solution approaches to the previously identified questions and introduction to the DMLawTool – a guiding Tool for researchers to address legal aspects in data management (ca. 15 min)
4. Application of the learned concepts to cases: in small groups, participants have to do different exercises and elaborate solution approaches to specific cases (ca. 45 min)
5. Discussion of the outcomes in a plenary session (ca. 15 min)

The participants will be able to benefit from the resources explored during the workshop also after the Swiss Research Data Day 2020, as the DMLawTool is going to be accessible to all researchers openly and for free on the CCdigitallaw.ch platform by the end of 2020.