Research data protection: FODAHEMM project publishes report on guidance documents for scientists

One aspect of the research project ‘Freedom of Research vs. Data Protection – How Can Obstacles Be Removed (FODAHEMM)?’ conducted by the Institute for Legal Informatics in cooperation with the Institute of Sociology is the analysis of the implementation of data protection regulations by researchers. When handling personal research data, scientists are required to comply with the data protection requirements applicable to this data and to integrate this task into their already complex everyday research work. Various support measures are offered to them for this purpose: In addition to advice from university data protection officers and other specialist departments involved in research data management, guidelines and information documents on how to implement the legal requirements are provided by many parties.

More about the project

But how effective are such documents? What purposes do they serve, what are their limitations, and how can they be used more effectively to communicate data protection issues? Using empirical findings from interviews and discussions with researchers, specialist data protection departments and members of science management teams gathered during the FODAHEMM project, the report examines guidelines in terms of their structure, content and interaction with data protection advice, and analyses these findings. Guidelines cannot be viewed in isolation; rather, considerations for achieving successful research data protection must always include the structural component. With this in mind, the report also develops approaches for further developing current processes so that mutual understanding can be established between researchers and specialist agencies, advice can be provided successfully, and the challenging situation for researchers can be navigated in a data protection-oriented and at the same time practicable manner.

About the report

The report, written by Dr Friederike Knoke and M. A. Tim Albrecht, was published in open access in the community of the Lower Saxony State Initiative for Research Data Management (FDM-NDS) and is available on Zenodo.