A new exemption which will stop pre-publication research from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act has come in to force.
The exemption, which is part of the Intellectual Property Act 2014, applies from today and covers information that is being gathered for research purposes.
As with all the exemptions it can be applied by any public authority however it may be used by universities. The campaigning group Universities UK, as well as individual universities, have been pushing for the exemption for some time.
FOI Man has previously written a guide as to what the potential reach of the new exemption may be, he says:
…there is nothing in the way the UK exemption is worded to clearly rule out its use by public authorities outside academia. However, it may be that future challenges could turn on this definition of “research programme”.
As pointed out by the Campaign for Freedom of Information the exemption is similar to one in the Scottish Freedom of Information Act, but even this isn’t straight forward:
1/2 New s22A #FOI research exemption introduced following campaign by Universities UK for an equivalent to s27(2) of the FOI (Scotland) Act.
— Campaign for FOI (@CampaignFoI) September 30, 2014
2/2 No decisions have been issued by the Scottish Information Commissioner on that provision since the Act came into force in 2005.
— Campaign for FOI (@CampaignFoI) September 30, 2014
The full text of the exemption says:
