Guidance

Last updated: August 2011

This guidance note should be considered in conjunction with the following Editorial Guidelines:

• Fairness and Consent
  See Editorial Guidelines Section 6 Fairness: Contributors and Informed Consent
• Privacy
  See Editorial Guidelines Section 7 Privacy. In particular 7.1 Introduction: Legitimate Expectations of Privacy
• Re-use and Reversioning
  See Editorial Guidelines Section 13 Re-use and Reversioning

• Achieving Informed consent requires a potential contributor to be in possession of sufficient knowledge about our plans for a reasoned decision to take part in our content.
• We should aim to obtain consent in a form that is provable. It is important to take notes and maintain records of conversations and other information given to contributors, relevant to their consent.
• Standard contributor consent forms can formalise the consent process and prove copyright in a contribution. However, informed consent will often require providing more detailed information to a contributor.
• Consent needs to be tailor-made according to the individual circumstances of the contributor and the contribution. There are different considerations for unrecruited contributors, recruited contributors, those who are working collaboratively on our output, contributors who are vulnerable and third party contributions.
• Generally, no contributor who has given properly informed consent has the right to withdraw it. However, we should give due consideration to any requests wo withdraw consent and, on the rare occasions where such a request is granted, we should be clear of the specific and distinct circumstances that have made withdrawal appropriate.