Handout to accompany Charles Oppenheim's presentation "Research Ethics and Legal Issues" at the DREaM Event 2 workshop. For more information about this event, please visit http://lisresearch.org/dream-project/dream-event-2-workshop-tuesday-25-october-2011/

1. RESEARCH ETHICS AND LEGAL ISSUES
Professor Charles Oppenheim – 25 October 2011
WHAT ARE ETHICS?
 Moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of
an activity
 The “activity” to be focussed on is undertaking a research project
 This handout focuses on some ethical and legal issues associated with
LIS research
 Much may seem like a teaching a grandmother how to suck eggs; but I’m
surprised by the number of student projects/articles I’ve been asked to
referee that break some of the guidelines
ISSUES TO CONSIDER
 Confidentiality
 Questionnaires and interviews
 Plagiarism and other forms of cheating
 Getting published
 Data Protection
 FoI
 Of course, there are lots of other legal and ethical issues that might
arise…….

2. CONFIDENTIALITY/ANONYMITY
 Remind participants that their answers will be kept confidential and will
not be attributed to any individual or organisation (except in those cases
where they explicitly agree to be named)
 Confidentiality doesn’t just apply to individuals but also to organisations
 Unless an organisation has agreed to be named, you should respect its
confidentiality – and don’t make it easy for the reader to identify it (e.g.,
“a well known high street retailer whose trade mark is St. Michael”)
 You may have to sign a confidentiality or a non-disclosure agreement
(NDA).
 Incidentally, it is courteous to send a copy of the final research report to
anyone who participated and who has expressed an interest in it
QUESTIONNAIRES AND INTERVIEWS
 Best not to send out a questionnaire or conduct an interview without
checking contents/interview schedule with someone else first!
 Pilot studies are strongly recommended
 Need to think carefully, and understand, about the pros and cons of
various sampling techniques and analysing the results to draw
conclusions
IT’S IMPORTANT!
 Muck it up, and you’ve wasted your and other people’s time; badly
designed questions, an arrogant style or poor grammar/spelling will
annoy people and may well lead to a low response rate
 Make sure any covering note is polite and appropriate

3. QUESTIONNAIRES & INTERVIEWS
 Stress to participants they can withdraw or refuse to answer specific
questions at any time.
 If you want to tape record, ask for permission first.
 Don’t DEMAND that they see you or that they reply to your
questionnaire.
 In my view – not shared by everyone – it is not appropriate to give them
a deadline to reply by
 Need to think carefully before sending out reminders
ASSESSING KNOWLEDGE
 Testing people (“what is the lifetime of copyright for an unpublished
manuscript?”) can insult them
 Asking people to rate their knowledge (“very knowledgeable,
knowledgeable, know a little, I know nothing”) might tempt them to lie.
 Overall, difficult to get a totally reliable way of assessing knowledge
 Nonetheless, the questionnaire issued by DREaM tries to do that in
assessing your knowledge of research techniques!
APPOINTMENTS
 Set clear time and date, and venue
 Never be late or fail to keep appointment without warning them
 Switch off your mobile when you enter the organisation’s premises
 Dress code is normally formal
 Any discourtesy reflects badly on you, and on your employer

4. VULNERABLE GROUPS
 Your work might involve vulnerable individuals, or school children.
 CRB checks likely if you deal with school kids, or if the research takes
place in a school, whether or not children are being studied. This can
delay start of research, so time elapsed needs to be factored in.
 Special care is needed when dealing with vulnerable people, including
elderly, ill, criminals, drug users, etc.
PLAGIARISM
 Deliberate or accidental presentation of another’s words/images/ideas
as one’s own
 Implication of an intent (perhaps subconscious) to deceive
 It might involve infringement of copyright and of Moral Rights
 Moral Rights include the Paternity Right (the right to be identified as the
author of a piece)
 Infringement of copyright occurs if you copy a substantial part of
someone else’s copyright work without permission
 Infringement of copyright, or of Moral Rights can lead to you being sued
for damages
 So you can get sued for copying the text and sued separately for failing to
provide the original author’s name
HOW TO AVOID PLAGIARISM
 Use quotation marks when quoting directly, together with an
appropriate reference

5.  Paraphrase the text you are using without quotation marks, but still cite
the reference
OTHER TYPES OF CHEATING
 Fabricating results
 Adjusting results to suit your pre-set opinion on how the results should
pan out, e.g., ignoring or amending results that don’t fit in
 A “comprehensive” literature review that ignores contrary evidence
GETTING PUBLISHED
 Give credit where credit is due by means of co-authorship and/or
acknowledgements at end; don’t ignore anyone who gave material
assistance
 If co-authoring, let the co-authors see the draft article/report so they can
comment on it
 Respond promptly and courteously to referees’ comments – even if you
think they are rubbish. Be prepared to stand up for your corner if you
don’t agree with what a referee says.
 Moral Rights – a person has the right to object if their name doesn’t
appear on something they helped write, and to object if something is
written in their name which they did NOT write; they can also object to
derogatory treatment of something they wrote
DATA PROTECTION
 No legal right as such to privacy, though Human Rights Act is nowadays a
powerful weapon – see, e.g., phone hacking cases; in general, though,

6. people CAN take CCTV pictures of you, photograph you on the beach,
etc., without having to ask your permission
 Data protection potentially comes into play once they start “processing”,
e.g., storing, publishing, disseminating, amending, the material relating
to an individual in any way
DATA PROTECTION ACT 1998
 The Act ensures that people who handle personal information do so in a
professional and appropriate manner, and that they keep individuals
informed on what they are doing
 Based on the eight Data Protection Principles, which everyone handling
personal data must abide by
DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES
 First – inform each individual that you are collecting information about
the person, unless this involves “disproportionate effort”; in typical
research projects, this exemption is unlikely to apply, so in general,
inform people that you are collecting data about them for your research
 There is an issue with unobtrusive observational studies. People’s
behaviour will be more natural and honest if they don’t know they are
being observed or recorded. You need to balance that against the
requirement that individuals should be informed data is being collected
about them. Best way round is to make all unobtrusive data collection
anonymous. Data Protection Act does not apply if no-one can be
identified.

7.  Second – you must identify the purposes for which you are collecting the
data and let the individuals know this
 Third - data collected must be relevant, not excessive or too little
information.
 Fourth – data must be accurate and where necessary kept up to date
 Fifth – hold the data only for as long as it is needed; thus, unless an
article is planned based on your work, either destroy the personal data
at the end of your research or put anonymised raw data into a data
repository, and/or as an appendix to any report/publication.
 Sixth - must respect individuals’ rights to inspect data collected about
them and/or to object to what is being held about them
 Seventh – adequate technical and organisational measures must be in
place to ensure data is not disclosed to unauthorised people, cannot be
hacked into, and is not amended, destroyed or copied by third parties;
need a judgement on the risks involved and sensitivity of the
information; thus, for example, surveys of library usage by drug abusers
require more control than general surveys of opinions
 Eighth – data must not be transferred outside the EEA if the country it is
transferred to has inadequate data protection laws – this includes the
USA. So do not share data about individuals with overseas colleagues
unless you are sure they will protect it properly and/or are subject to
sufficiently strong Data Protection laws in their own country.
 If you fail to abide by any of these, you are breaking the law! Penalties
vary from civil offences (sued for damage) to criminal (fines and/or
prison

8. DATA
 Covers computerised, manual data, CCTV footage, tape recordings…..
 But must be personal, i.e., is about an identified or identifiable living
individual
 Anonymised data is NOT covered by the Act; data about organisations is
also NOT covered (unless organisation is a one man band)
 Individual can be anywhere in the world; as long as data controller is
based in UK, DPA applies
SENSITIVE PERSONAL DATA
 Racial or ethnic origin; political opinions; religious or similar beliefs; trade
union membership; physical or mental health; sex life; commission or
alleged commission of criminal offences and related proceedings
 Can only be processed if deliberately put into public domain by the
individual, or if you have got explicit written consent to process it
 You should not handle such personal data under any other circumstances
 Could apply, e.g., when looking at provision of LIS services to trade union
members, for ethnic minority groups, or for those in prisons or patients
in hospitals
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
 Applies only to public sector organisations, such as Universities
 Public has a right to demand to see copies of documents held by that
pubic authority

9.  Rather limited exemptions
 Most research data will be subject to FoI unless it is commercial in
confidence (criteria are quite strict for that) or contain personal data
ICO’S ADVICE ON FoI AND RESEARCH DATA
 The public interest test – The guidance highlights the importance of the
public interest test and factors in favour of disclosure that should be
considered by higher education institutions.
 Commercial information - Many universities and research institutes work
in partnership with third parties and will hold commercially sensitive
information. The guidance makes clear that disclosures under FOI should
not undermine their ability to do this. If there is a genuine need to
protect information from disclosure, an FoI request can be refused.
 Free and frank discussion – The guidance acknowledges the importance
of academics and researchers being able to exchange views internally
and to formulate and debate opinions relating to research away from
external scrutiny. Protection for this type of information is provided by
section 36 of the Act (prejudice to the conduct of public affairs).
 Vexatious requests - While most requesters use the legislation
responsibly, there is occasionally some misuse of the rights provided by
the law - or circumstances where requests become overly burdensome;
disrupt a public authority’s ability to perform their core functions, or
appear to be part of an intention to disrupt or attack the public
authority’s performance. The guidance highlights the provisions under
FoI that give exceptions to the duty to answer such requests.

10.  Proactive disclosure - One should willingly accept making research data
available wherever possible
 E-mails which contain personal data, e.g., remarks about data subjects or
researchers, are subject to the DPA.
 SEE http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/latest_news/2011/ico-issues-advice-
on-the-disclosure-of-research-information-26092011.aspx
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE….
 For research ethics, do a search on Amazon for the topic – hundreds of
books available
 For data protection, I recommend Peter Carey’s Data Protection: A
Practical Guide to UK and EU Law (OUP), and Rosemary Jay’s Data
Protection Law and Practice (Sweet & Maxwell) - both authoritative and
(fairly) readable
 For FoI, try Peter Carey and Marcus Turle’s Freedom of Information
Handbook (The Law Society)
Professor Charles Oppenheim
c.oppenheim@btinternet.com
DREaM Event 2, Edinburgh
October 2011