Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Research data management

Especially in case of a data publication several legal aspects and juridical regulations must be adhered. But also the pure data processing can be accompanied by juridical limitations. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to clarify beforehand which of the following legal fields have to be considered. Furthermore other legal aspects that are not listed below could be relevant as well. So every check of the juridical aspects must be seen as individual case.

The most of the relevant regulations and laws exist only on the national level in Germany without official English translation or comparable regulations in other countries. Consequently, many paragraphs in the list can only be given in German.

Relevant legal fields in research data management:

• Copyright law/author rights (e.g. protectability: §2 UrhG, §3 Satz 1 UrhG; co-authorship: §8 UrhG; expiry of the term of protection: §64 UrhG; §72 Abs. 3 UrhG)
• Personal rights (e.g. right in one's own image: §22 KunstUrhG)
• Data protection (e.g. lawfulness of processing: including §27 BDSG, Art. 6 GDPR, Art. 17 Abs. 3 lit. d GDPR; informed consent: including §36 BlnDSG, Art. 13 GDPR)
• Data security (e.g. §64 BDSG)
• Database guidelines (e.g. protectability: EU directive 96/9/EC; §4 Abs. 2 UrhG; §87a UrhG; expiry of the term of protection: §87d UrhG)
• Software law (UrhG Section 8)
• Licensing* (including §31 UrhG, e.g. Creative Commons Licenses)
• Policies (university, discipline-specific, publisher)
• Funding conditions (e.g. Third-party funded projects: European Union, German Research Foundation, Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
• Employment law (e.g. right of use or exploitation right that is regulated in the employment contract: including §43 UrhG)
• Contract law (including: BGB Section 3, e.g. cooperation agreement or confidentiality agreement)
• Patent rights (Patent Act (PatG))
• Competition law (Act Against Unfair Competition (UWG), e.g. collaboration with companies)
• International rights (e.g. relevance of national regulations in research projects with foreign cooperation partners)
• Constitutional rights (e.g. freedom of science: Art. 5 Abs. 3 Satz 1 GG)

* Please note the further information on selecting a suitable license for your research data.

Where do you get legal advice?

• Data protection officer (personal rights, data protection, data security)
• Research Service Center (contract law, competition law, funding conditions, patent rights, licenses, international rights)
• Subject librarians (copyright law/author rights, licenses)
• Humboldt-Innovation GmbH (patent rights, competition law)
• Personnel department (employment law)
• Research data management initiative (policies, licenses, funding conditions, further questions to legal aspects)
• Legal department (please note the official channel!)

The data protection officers provide extensive information on dealing with personal data on their website (in German only). That contains informed consents, anonymising and pseudonymising data as well as special regulations and responsibilites for employees at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Further information

The most regulations with relevance to research data exist on the national level. So the relevant literature (that is freely available) is mainly in German.

Guibault, Lucie, Wiebe, Andreas (Eds.) (2013): Safe to be open. Study on the protection of research data and recommendations for access and usage. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. URL: https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2013-160.

Leibniz Universität Hannover; Technische Informationsbibliothek (2018): FAQs zu rechtlichen Aspekten im Umgang mit Forschungsdaten. Version 180215. Zenodo. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1173546.

Universität Konstanz (2018): Rechte und Pflichten. URL: https://www.forschungsdaten.info/themen/rechte-und-pflichten/ [last access: April 18, 2019].

Baumann, Paul, Krahn, Philipp, Lauber-Rönsberg, Anna (2018): Gutachten zu den rechtlichen Aspekten des Forschungsdatenmanagements im Rahmen des DataJus-Projektes. Kurzfassung. URL: https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/jura/igewem/jfbimd13/ressourcen/dateien/publikationen/DataJus_Zusammenfassung_Gutachten_12-07-18.pdf?lang=de [last access: April 18, 2019].

Kreutzer, Till, Lahmann, Henning (2019): Rechtsfragen bei Open Science. Ein Leitfaden. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. https://doi.org/10.15460/HUP.195.

Hartmann, Thomas (2013): Zur urheberrechtlichen Schutzfähigkeit von Forschungsdaten. In: Teager, Jürgen (Hrsg.): Law as a Service (LaaS) - Recht im Internet- und Cloud-Zeitalter, Band 1, S. 505-515. Edewecht: OIWIR, Oldenburger Verlag für Wirtschaft, Informatik und Recht. URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0014-1208-E.

Kuschel, Linda (2018): Wem "gehören" Forschungsdaten?. Zur Rechtslage nach Urheber- und Datenschutzrecht. In: Forschung & Lehre 2 (2018), 9, S. 764-766. URL: https://www.forschung-und-lehre.de/wem-gehoeren-forschungsdaten-1013/ [last access: April 18, 2019].

Watteler, Oliver, Ebel Thomas (2019): Datenschutz im Forschungsdatenmanagement. In: Jensen, Uwe, Netscher, Sebastian, Weller, Katrin (Hrsg.): Forschungsdatenmanagement sozialwissenschaftlicher Umfragedaten. Grundlagen und praktische Lösungen für den Umgang mit quantitativen Forschungsdaten, S. 57-80. Opladen [u.a.]: Verlag Barbara Budrich. URL: https://doi.org/10.3224/84742233.05.

Klimpel, Paul, Weitzmann, John (2015): Forschen in der digitalen Welt. Juristische Handreichung für die Geisteswissenschaften. Göttingen: DARIAH-DE Working Papers 12. URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:7-dariah-2015-5-0.

DGfK, DGPF, DVW (Hrsg.) (2017): Urheberrecht leicht gemacht. Karten und Geodaten für Unterricht, Wissenschaft und Beruf nutzen und publizieren. URL: http://www.dgfk.net/download/171026_Urheberrecht_4a.pdf [last access: April 18, 2019].