Personal Data & Scholarly publications

In the UK, the General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (the ‘Data Protection Legislation’) controls how personal information (‘Personal Data’) is used and protected.

You are required by the law to remove the personal details of living people from a work before it can be published, unless you have a record of their consent to identify them.

The Data Protection Legislation only applies to information about living people. While it is not illegal to share data which identifies deceased persons, there may be other reasons for not doing so; for example, spiritual, cultural, or political sensitivities.

How to treat personal data in your publications

Collecting, using , and storing personal data for research purposes requires informed consent. The University Research Ethics webpages provides guidance, study documents and templates.

There are additional considerations if you plan to share research data or publications using the personal data, which is covered by the guidance below. For photographs, you should obtain informed consent prior to taking photographs, wherever feasible.

Anonymising or Pseudonymising identifiers:

• Anonymise or pseudonymise ‘direct identifiers’ such as names and addresses. Consider what approach to use and how to do this ethically using the Information Commissioner Office’s Guidance.
• Remove or anonymise ‘indirect identifiers’ (such as age or postcode) which can lead to identification when analysed together with other readily available information (triangulation or the ‘jigsaw effect’). Aggregating participant ages into an age range and providing only the first half of a post code or city may be an effective way to reduce the risk of re-identification (‘data minimisation’).

For more information see the Sensitive data bootcamp.

Including photographs of people

• Review any photographs of people which you plan to include in your publication. If individuals are identifiable, make sure you have a record of their consent (permission) to share the images.
• Sharing photographs of people taken in a public place does not normally require written consent, especially if they are in the background of a public scene, as people could reasonably expect to be photographed in these places, eg shoppers walking in a high street.
• Caution: Many places which may appear public (train stations, shopping centres) are private property. You may need to obtain permission from the owners of the premises as well as the individuals being photographed both to take the photographs and to include them in a publication.
• If you are unsure, you can also consider blurring their features to reduce the risk of identification. This may not always replace the need for consent.