2021eResearchReport - Flipbook - Page 30
Providing secure
access to sensitive
data: bridging the
gap between dataprotection and Open
Science
Currently, there is also work underway
to pair UCT author’s ORCIDs with other
global platforms and services such as
OpenAIRE, Web of Science and Scopus.
This will go a long way to also ensuring
a robust and automatically-populated
record of the complete outputs of UCT as
an institution.
“This is important as university
rankings, for instance, are measured by an
institution’s research productivity,” says
Claassen. “ORCID is one of the ways for
us to measure that institutional research
productivity.”
Bibliometrics and the focus of
research outputs is shifting away from
purely publication numbers to research
impact and a recognition of other forms
of contribution including datasets,
scientific workflows and creative works.
This integrated system, tied together
with ORCID, provides a mechanism for
statutory reporting to include these
outputs for recognition.
As more researchers connect their
ORCID to eRA, the integration also
represents UCT’s domain of research
impact and our contribution to global
knowledge.
~ Dr Dale Peters
eResearch Consultant
There is a tension between the Open
Science movement and emerging data
protection regulations. Dale Peters
outlines how UCT is working to address
this tension to ensure workable policies
and infrastructure to enable research.
Emerging data-protection regulations,
including the European Union’s General
Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and
South Africa’s Protection of Personal
Information Act (POPIA), are likely behind
the significant increase in the number of
researchers seeking support on datagovernance issues in recent years. In
response to this growing demand from
the research community, UCT eResearch
set about working to provide a central
data-storage environment with access
controls managed by research groups,
and essential physical and cyber security
measures for studies using sensitive
information.
The challenge of managing
authorised disclosure of
information that is classified
as restricted or confidential,
prompted the further
development of the datagovernance framework at
UCT to address the inherent
tension between the Open
Science principles of data
sharing and POPIA regulations
of the processing of personal
information for research
purposes.
“The bottom line of all this is
that it makes UCT research
as a whole, more visible and
discoverable for the continent
and globally,” says Claassen.
“Which takes us a step closer
to achieving the Vision 2030
goal of ‘unleashing’ African
knowledge.”
UCT’s Research Data Management Policy
(2018) emphasises the principle of open
access by default of data gathered during
publicly-funded research. The policy also
recognises legal, ethical and commercial
constraints on the release of research
data, with the provision to ensure that
the research process is not damaged
by inappropriate release of data in the
development of associated policies,
guidelines and practices. The POPIA has
also raised awareness that some of our
data should not be open, for example,
where technology transfer and potential
patent interests require controlled access
procedures to such restricted information;
or where the terms of the ethics
committee approval do not permit for data
to be shared openly, defining such data as
confidential.
The Legal and Ethical Task Team of the
Research Data Management Governing
Committee steered the well-founded
debate about the inherent tensions,
based on the principles to both protect
individual and collective rights and
interests, while ensuring that trade-offs
affected by data management and data
use, are made transparently, accountably
and inclusively.
Associate Professor Nicki Tiffin of the
Department of of Integrative Biomedical
Sciences, contributed to good practices
learned from her experience working with
both human genome data and routine
health data.
Right: What is an ORCID iD and why it is necessary for you, the
researcher. Design by Sean Robertson.
2020/05/19 12:25
30 eResearch Report | 2019-2020
ORCID A3 poster.indd 1
Rese arch Systems and Infrastructure
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