Responsible Data Guidelines: Managing Privacy and Personally Identifiable Information in the Research Project Data Lifecycle

These Guidelines from CGIAR’s Platform for Big Data in Agriculture are intended to assist agricultural researchers handle privacy and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the research project data lifecycle. They are premised on the following: research participants have the right to know and consent to the collection of information that can directly or potentially identify them, including for what purposes it will be used, who it will be shared with and why; any actual or potential harms associated with loss of privacy should be ethically acceptable, fully disclosed and should not be excessive in relation to the positive impacts of using PII; privacy protection and confidential handling of PII is paramount unless waived or reduced by a research participant to advance legitimate research objectives; and research ethics often involves consideration of principles that contain inherent tensions, such as individual privacy protection vs. societal benefit, leading to difficult decisions requiring professional judgement and which are the responsibility of individual researchers and their institutions.