4.4.3 Good scientific practice, data protection and research permit

Good scientific practice is complied with in all studies at universities of applied sciences. Misconduct and plagiarism in the studies are prohibited. Familiarise yourself with Jamk’s ethical principles and be sure to comply with good scientific practice throughout your thesis project.

Remember

• Ensure appropriate data management and write a data management plan.
• Take copyright and other potential licensing and contractual matters into account.
• Familiarise yourself with the principles related to the processing of personal data and data protection.
• Together with your principal thesis tutor, check whether a research permit and/or a preliminary ethical review is needed for your thesis.
• Inform your principal thesis tutor about the funding and other relevant interests associated with your thesis.
• A thesis is a public document. Make sure that the commissioner is aware of this.

Disciplinary procedure

If there is reason to suspect that the author of the thesis has violated good scientific practice, a written notification will be made of the matter. The matter will be handled in accordance with the Jamk’s Degree Regulations and ethical principles.

Data protection

Familiarise yourself with data protection and the processing of personal data. In the thesis, data protection concerns the student preparing the thesis, the commissioner, potential research subjects and the written thesis complete with its research data.

Identify if your data contains personal data. Personal data means

• any information on a natural person and on their personal characteristics or personal circumstances, where these are identifiable as concerning them or the members of their family or household.
• all types of data that can be used to directly identify a natural person, but also data that can be used to identify a person indirectly (e.g. photos and voice recordings).

If you process personal data, you must have a privacy statement. Remove any personal identifiers, i.e. anonymize the material as soon as it can be reasonably analysed without identifiers. See the data protection page in the intranet for more detailed instructions.

Research permit

If you are conducting research, you need to find out what special permits you will need. Discuss with your commissioner whether you will need a research permit. The research permit will be applied for from the organisation to which the research pertains to. You may not collect any research data until you have an approved research permit.

Jamk research permit

If you are studying Jamk, its students or staff in your thesis project, or if you need archive or register data from Jamk, you must apply for a research permit from Jamk.

The application must be accompanied by:

• data management plan (mandatory)
• thesis privacy statement (if a research file containing personal data is formed as part of the study)
• ethical review (if done, only applies to master’s theses).

Further information about the research permit and how to apply for it can be found from Jamk’s Research Permit website (please, see the link below). Reserve about two weeks for the processing of the research permit.

For instructions on creating a data management plan, see Chapter 4.4.6 Data management plan and processing of research data of this guide (please, see the link below).