Both university groups and individual institutions have spoken out to support exempting unpublished research data from the Freedom of Information Act.
Their views are revealed in written evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee for its inquiry on the 2000 act. The inquiry will look at its strengths and weaknesses and investigate whether it is working in the way it was intended to.
A possible exemption for unpublished research has recently been discussed as part of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, which is currently making its way through the House of Lords.
Home Office minister Oliver Eden rejected the amendment at a third sitting to discuss the bill on 12 January but said he’d be willing to debate it further at a later stage.
The evidence includes contributions from supporters such as the Russell Group, the 1994 Group and universities including Oxford and Reading. The Wellcome Trust has also backed the amendment in its response.
“The University believes the lack of an equivalent ‘research exemption’ that is available to Scottish universities…puts UK universities at a distinct competitive disadvantage and undermines existing review processes, such as peer review, that are designed specifically to ensure quality assurance,” said the University of Reading in its response.
The University of Oxford said the FOI Act has made it difficult for the institution to collaborate with private companies. “Companies worry about the effect that the disclosure of information about a project will have on their business or their ability to exploit intellectual property rights,” it says.
Meanwhile, several universities questioned whether they should be subject to the FOI act at all, as they receive an increasing part of their income from the private sector.
“Given that the university receives only about a third of its income from the public purse and that this share will decrease significantly over the next two years with the introduction of the new fee regime, we believe that the case for including universities within the scope of FOI should be reviewed,” argued Reading’s submission.
The University of Manchester added that private funding leads to universities “regarding some of the information which they hold in a completely different way to a government or council”.
The University of London warned that private higher-education providers, which are not subject to the act, could use it to obtain “commercially sensitive information” from their public competitors.
The universities also revealed that the number of FOI requests they receive has increased in recent years. The University of Oxford said it received 330 in 2011, up from 158 in 2005, while Manchester received 208 in 2009 and 316 in 2011.
Several institutions also argued that journalists are wasting their time using the act. “As the enquirer is under no obligation to explain their enquiry…the Act is routinely used (particularly by journalists) to ‘fish’ for information around a particular topic, seeking anything of interest…Worse, it can be deliberately used for time‐wasting or mischievous questions,” said the University of Sussex.