EU data law ‘fails to protect researchers’

The British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council have called for specific protections for researchers to be inserted into European Union data protection regulation.

The regulation, due to come into force in May 2018, offers insufficient safeguards for social scientists wishing to use personal data for research purposes, the two organisation have said.

Responding in a joint statement to the UK government’s call for views on the implementation of the EU regulation, they expressed concern that phrases protecting the use of data for humanities and social science researchers had been excluded from the latest iteration of the regulation, despite sustained advocacy from UK parties.