This Privacy Notice will be updated as necessary. This version has been updated on 1 November 2024. Updates to the Privacy Notice are approved by Ella Bingham.
Processing of personal data of researchers and other experts
Aalto University’s mission is to build a sustainable future. Our goal is to conduct high-quality research and achieve breakthroughs in science, art, technology, the economy, and their intersections. We develop strong centers of expertise in key areas of research. We bring together diverse expertise to solve the world’s major challenges. To support this work, the university processes personal data of researchers and other experts of the university community.
For the services and processing activities described in this Privacy Notice, we use, among others, the following services and applications:
Purpose for processing your personal data
Aalto University needs to process your personal data for the following purposes, for example:
- We agree with you on working in the university community. This contract may be an employment contract, or a contract of a visiting researcher, adjunct professor or professor. Your contract connects you to one of the university departments. Through this contract, you will be given the university username and your personal data will be shared with the information systems that support the university’s operations.
- If you are applying for competitive research funding, we will ensure your eligibility, help you with your application and maintain information about your most important application targets. After the funding decision, we process and monitor the agreements related to your operations as well as your funding and its use in the financial management systems of research services and report the information required by the funding agencies on the use of research funding.
- We will send you newsletters about the university’s events, practices and funding opportunities and services.
- When you are looking for literature and materials to support your work, you can book materials in the Aalto Primo system or order materials using an e-form. You can publish in the university’s open access publication channels, in which case we maintain your personal data both as a user of the publication channel and as an author of the publication.
- We maintain a register of information on research and artistic and social activities. In most cases, this information is provided by you, but we can also search for publications from outside sources on your behalf. We report on the university’s research and artistic activities. Some of this reporting is voluntary and some is mandatory data collection as defined by the Ministry of Education and Culture.
- Authors affiliated with Aalto University and its predecessors are in addition to Aalto's information systems, described in the Asteri authority database of the National Library of Finland. Only public sources of information are used in the description. More information on Asteri's privacy policy (available only in Finnish).
- To support communication, information on research and artistic and social activities is openly available through the research portal and the university’s website.
- We record and report the users of the infrastructure.
- When we assess and develop the university’s operations, we can use your operational data in the evaluation material. Often these materials are only examined at the unit level.
- We carry out scientific research on data related to research or disclose data to scientific research.
- We provide advice and research support services such as funding search and funding use support, data management support and contract advice.
- We organize an ethical review of non-medical research on humans at the university.
With the help of data related to research, the university communicates its research activities in accordance with good scientific practice and provides the Ministry of Education and Culture with the research-related information it requires.
Legal basis to process personal data
The legal basis for processing personal data are
- article 6(1)(e) of EU General Data Protection Regulation: processing of data is necessary for carrying out tasks of general benefit and
- article 6(1)(c): processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject.
- article 6(1)(b): processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract;
In the name of general benefit, University processes, stores, analyses and publishes personal data concerning research activities and societal impact according to tasks described in Universities Act 2 §. Data may be disclosed on a discretionary basis for scientific research in the public interest.
The organization of research ethics assessment is based on a statuory oblication (University Act, Medical Research Act, see Ethical Review | Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK
Personal Data describes the activities of a person as a researcher in University, his/her research resources and output and societal impact. Data on research activities are public except for data separately agreed with funders. With the help of research information, University communicates about it’s research according to good scientific practice, and according to University Act Section 51 delivers the research information stipulated by Ministry of Education and Culture.
The Research Information Hub Act 1238/2021 3 & 4 § define which data are transferred to the National Research Information Hub.
What personal data does Aalto University collect?
In order to maintain the Aalto Project List (APL) data and to provide related support services, we process the following categories of personal data:
- work email addresses
- Information on funding applications and projects for external research funding and information on their respective responsible and contact persons
- Personal data contained in plan and contract documents for funding applications and projects
- Usernames, limited employment information
- Contact requests of persons and information on advice and service provided
The following data is stored of research active personnel to ACRIS:
- Personal, employment, user and contact details, picture, University identifier and international identifiers, research interest, social media links and other links, academic degrees and experience of thesis supervision of research staff. In addition, visibility in research portal (research.aalto.fi) and log information.
- Organizational information (university, schools, departments and research groups)
- Research projects
- Publications, activities, prizes, press/media, research data, research infrastructure, impact
- From 2020 onwards, individual identification information (name and username) is collected for master's level graduates, as well as the details of the author of the master's thesis and the duration of the study period.
Persons can manage their own data as long as the data are not integrated from other systems of the University.
Additionally, the public portal (Research.aalto.fi) gathers cookies on users visiting the portal. The portal user will accept the cooking policy when visiting the portal for the first time. See more details in the portal cookie policy.
In the implementation of research ethics assessment, we handle:
- Name, title, organizational information and contact information
- Research plan and any other information provided by the application regarding the research project
Sources of personal data
Aalto Project List APL
- Personal data will be entered to the system by the users themselves or by Aalto personnel
- From other Aalto University systems, such as Workday
Data are integrated to ACRIS from the following information systems
- Organizational, personal, project information is imported daily from other Aalto University’s information systems.
- PhD students and thesis supervision information (supervising professor and advisors) is imported daily from student registry automatically for 1) those students who are enrolled and have started their studies after 2010, and 2) for those students who have enrolled and started their studies before 2010 and given their unambiguous permission for the transfer of their information to ACRIS. Automatic integration can be interrupted upon request.
- Once a person gives written authorization for processing personal data, profile can be created manually to the system.
- Person can deposit data on his/her own, another person can deposit data on his/her behalf (common activities) or trusted user can deposit data (user deposits data on his/her behalf).
- Publication information can be imported via online databases like Web of Science, Scopus and ORCID.
- From 1.1.2020 onwards, bibliographic information for master's theses (excluding the School of Business) will be imported from the Aaltodoc publication repository, with the supervisor and advisor information integrated into the thesis from both Aaltodoc and the student information system (SISU). In addition, the student's study period will be included from the student information system into the view of the supervisor and advisor (SISU).
The information required to carry out the ex ante ethical evaluation is provided by those requesting the research ethics assessment themselves.