Many of us will recall the so-called “climategate” scandal. While accusations that the researchers misleadingly manipulated data were found to be false, an inquiry did find that their “failure to accede to freedom of information requests” was questionable. Perhaps in response to this the UK JISC has recently released a QnA on Freedom of Information and research data. Definitely worth a read.
As Universities in Australia are statutory bodies they come under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). So your research data and records might be requested! Some aspects of this are explained in the OAK Law report “Building the Infrastructure for Data Access and Reuse in Collaborative Research : An Analysis of the Legal Context“. For Universities, there is generally a proper channel and process for FOI requests. So if you’re a researcher and you receive a request for information that you’re not happy to give out, it should be treated as a FOI request and the appropriate channels contacted immediately. There are exemptions in the Act including internal working documents, privacy information, in confidence material, and anything contrary to public interest. Requests might be refused if they unreasonably divert the organisation from normal operation. There also seems to be an exemption for incomplete research results where this could lead to an unreasonable disadvantage (patent, funding, publication perhaps). See section S34(4)(b) of the Victorian Government FOI Act.
JISC suggest that having a data management plan can help you track and maintain you research data, and ultimately archive or destroy any information appropriately. Having a good data management system is not only useful for long term data management and retrieval, but could also help facilitate a FOI request appropriately. Which data is relevant to the request? Are we the owners of the data or do we just hold a copy? Are there ethics, commercial, or privacy concerns around the data? Answers should be found in the contextual metadata of any well managed data management system.
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