Universities UK blog

Exempting unpublished university research from FOI is a reasonable request to make

November 10, 2011 at 10:43 am Vivienne Stern 1 comment

There has been a lot of concern within universities about how Freedom of Information [FOI] requests affect university research. Universities UK is currently trying to persuade Parliament to amend the Freedom of Information Act to create a new exemption that so that universities (in England, Wales and Northern Ireland) can decline to release information and data relating to research that has not yet been published.

It is a pretty limited request – there are many other problems to do with the way FOI works in universities – but we think it is an especially reasonable one since an exemption of this sort already exists in Scottish FOI legislation.

We’ve got a narrow window of opportunity to get this change because a related Bill, the Protection of Freedoms Bill, is currently making its way through the House of Lords. We’re making some hopeful progress. During Tuesday’s Second Reading debate,  10 of the 30 Peers who spoke mentioned our concerns. We think that’s a pretty good platform for pushing for the amendment at Committee Stage, which should happen in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, if you have evidence of how Freedom of Information requests relating to unpublished research can cause difficulties, please email us or leave a comment below. You can read more about this in our briefing on the issue.  

I’d also recommend taking a look at the Second Reading debate on the Protection of Freedoms Bill to get a flavour of where the political debate is at.

Vivienne Stern, Head of Political Affairs

Universities UK

Entry filed under: About Higher Education, About Universities UK, Research. Tags: Freedom of Information, House of Lords, Protections of Freedoms Bill, research, universities.