Data Management and Publishing

Ethical and Legal Issues

When publishing data, it is vital to consider the rights and responsibilities you have with regard to issues of confidentiality and intellectual property.

Confidentiality

It is vital to maintain the confidentiality of research subjects for reasons of ethics and to ensure the continuing participation in research. At the same time, data on research subjects can be shared if proper steps are taken to maintain participant confidentiality:

• Informed consent should make a provision for data sharing: When obtaining informed consent from study participants, ensure confidentiality while also enabling the option of data sharing. Even if you are not certain that you will share your research data with others, you must obtain informed consent at the outset. For an example of how to write informed consent forms to allow for data sharing, see the U.K. Data Archive guide to consent.
• Evaluate the sensitivity of your data: Researchers should consider whether or not their data contains either direct or indirect identifiers that could be utilized with other public information to identify research participants. If so, steps should be taken to remove or mask these in public-use data files.
• Obtain a confidentiality review: A benefit to depositing your data with some archives, such as ICPSR, is that their staff will review your data for the presence of confidential information.
• Comply with MIT regulations: MIT researchers concerned about confidentiality issues with their data should consult the MIT Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES).
• Comply with regulations for health research: HIPPA Privacy Rule, Information for Researchers.
• Enable restricted use of your data: Do you want to make your data available in a more restricted, limited-access manner? The ICPSR DSDR program has resources for data producers including a tool for Designing a Restricted Data Use Contract.
• Learn about guidelines from the National Academy of Engineering: Their Online Ethics Center includes a discussion of  Responsible Collection, Retention, Sharing, and Interpretation of Data.

Intellectual Property Issues

Sharing data that you produced/collected yourself:

• Data is not copyrightable (yet a particular expression of data can be, such as a chart or table in a book).
• Data can be licensed; some data providers apply licenses that limit how the data can be used, such as to protect the privacy of participants in a study or guide downstream uses of the data (e.g., requiring attribution or forbidding for-profit use).
• If you want to promote sharing and unlimited use of your data, you can make your data available under a CC0 Declaration to make this explicit.

Sharing data that you have collected from other sources:

• Most databases to which the MIT Libraries subscribe are licensed and carry restrictions on use, but many do allow for educational and research use, which allows for sharing limited portions of data.  For more information on terms of use for databases licensed by the Libraries, contact the Program Manager for Scholarly Publishing & Licensing, copyright-lib@mit.edu.

If you are uncertain as to your rights to disseminate data, MIT researchers also can consult the Office of General Counsel. Note: Laws about data vary outside the U.S.