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Data sharing outside your research project

Consent

If you are using or generating human research data, you will need to ensure you have the appropriate consent arrangements in place to share the data outside your research project. Click through to visit the Ethics and Privacy page to find out more.

Providing Open Access and publishing datasets is not the only way to allow others to use your research data.

There are other ways of sharing your research data outside your research project. Broadly described as data sharing, there are more controlled way of making your data available for re-use. The AIHW describe these as:

Delivered access is the provision of access and custodianship of your research data to another party. This will require you to transfer that data to them.
Secure remote access via a Trusted Research Environment (TRE) is the provision of access to your research data to another party that allows you to retain digital control of the custodianship of your data. Different TREs provide different levels of governance and control of your data.
Secure on-site access is the provision of access to your research data to another party that allows you to retain physical and digital control of the custodianship of your data by physically supervising them while accessing your data.

The appropriate method to share your data (delivered access, secure remote or on-site access) will depend on how much control you must retain over your data given the risks of that data being misused or not kept secure.

Organisations such as Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and other government agencies, use the internationally recognised Five Safes framework, to assess and manage the risks associated with data sharing. This framework requires five dimensions to be assessed in order to determine whether data sharing should occur. These are:

Safe People View

Safe Projects View

Safe Data View

Safe Settings View

Safe Output View

You will need to assess each of these dimensions separately and then make a decision based on the obligations you face and the level of risk.

There are a number of resources available to you in managing some of these risks. They include:

Templated data sharing agreements that formalise the expectations of how your data will be treated by those with whom you will share it. You can access the document here (contact OGC if unable to access the document from the Intranet)
Trusted Research Environments (TRE) that can control the sharing environment including the ability to review of output (to explore data sharing systems available see the Digital Research Capability Catalogue - DRCC)

Monash Research Infrastructure