Data privacy issues concern researchers in manifold ways: The life and social sciences often work with data deserving protection, the same is true for Citizen Science projects and basically any project providing a web platform. Therefore, data privacy questions can concern research data as well as user data.
 

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The European Union harmonized European data privacy laws by means of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The EU information portal EUGDPR.org explains the most important changes that the GDPR implements.
 

Data privacy in research projects

Since the GDPR went into effect in May 2018, research projects have to treat personal data more sensitively and transparently. In case a project hosts a web presence, several explanatory texts and data privacy statements need to be provided to comply with the GDPR. The platform Österreich forscht provides an overview (in German) of what texts are necessary and what they are required to contain (the provided guidelines focus on data privacy issues in Citizen Science projects, but are also helpful for all other research projects that have to deal with personal data protection). With the White Paper "Language Resources and Research Under the General Data Protection Regulation", the Legal issues Committee of the research infrastructure consortium CLARIN offers a comprehensive overview of the most important aspects and basic concepts of the GDPR.