Open Data Legal and 
Ethical Issues: Consent 
Veronica Howe 
Research Data Manager, 
King’s College London  
This presentation is available 
under a Creative Commons 
Attribution 4.0 International 
(CC BY 4.0) 
Or - the tension and balance between 
protecting research subjects and optimising 
data reuse 
What is consent? 
“Research subjects signifying their fully 
informed and feely given agreement to 
personal data relating to them being 
processed” (EC Data Protection Directive)  
Anonymisation 
Replacing names with codes on recordings, notes and 
transcripts 
 
Would the measures you have put in place to protect 
your subjects withstand the efforts of a “determined 
intruder” (the current test)?  
What about social media?  
Research and the law 
Ethics and Morals  
Open Data and Big Data 
The NHS health records debacle