Community Science privacy notice
Who collects your personal data
The data controller is the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.
What data will be collected, how it will be used and who it will be shared with
As part of your agreement to take part in a community science project at the Natural History Museum, we will collect your:
Name
Email address (optional)
Your views and opinions on the project (optional).
Your observations, photos and the additional information that you upload will form a ‘biological record’. A biological record must contain four essential pieces of information: which species was seen, where it was seen, when it was seen and the name of the person who saw it. This is why we ask you for your name; it is an essential part of the biological record and ensures that your data can contribute to our shared understanding of biodiversity and be shared with local, national and international biodiversity databases.
All data submitted are stored in the Museum’s Data Ecosystem in accordance with Data Protection Regulations. From there they will be made available to researchers and may be passed on to the National Biodiversity Network Atlas – the UK’s largest repository of publicly available biodiversity data. The dataset may also be made available via the Natural History Museum's Data Portal where we share all our collections and research data.
Your name will be stored as part of the biological record and may be made publicly available along with the species name, date and location of the record.
The legal basis for processing your personal data
The reason we ask for your name is that this is a necessary part of a biological record. The Natural History Museum believes that the collection of names is necessary for us to perform a task in the legitimate interests of our organisations and the wider scientific community as regards scientific research.
If you choose to opt into marketing communications, your email address will be used by the Natural History Museum to send you relevant communications by email, as described in the opt in consent statements. If you choose to provide your email address, you do so based on consent and can withdraw this at any time by emailing communityscience@nhm.ac.uk and we will delete your email address.
How long the Natural History Museum holds personal data
Your name will be retained permanently as part of the biological record in the Museum’s Data Ecosystem, and your email address (should you choose to share it) will be held by the Museum for five years.
Where we have your consent to send you marketing material by email, but are not aware of any interaction with the Museum (i.e. opening one of our emails and clicking on a link in it) for more than three years, we will contact you to ask if you wish to renew your consent. If you do not, we will remove your details from our marketing mailing lists.
What happens if you do not provide the personal data requested
If you do not provide your name you will not be able to contribute to our community science projects. Providing your email address is optional – you will still be able to contribute to our projects if you do not provide it.
Use of automated decision-making or profiling
The information you provide is not used for:
automated decision making (making a decision by automated means without any human involvement)
profiling (automated processing of personal data to evaluate certain things about an individual)
Transfer of data outside the UK
Your data will be stored in a UK storage location. In the unlikely event that data needs to be stored elsewhere, the Natural History Museum will only transfer your data to another country that is deemed adequate for data protection purposes.
Your rights
If you have any questions about how the Natural History Museum uses your personal data and your associated rights, please contact the Natural History Museum’s Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@nhm.ac.uk or
Data Protection Officer, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.
The Data Protection Officer is responsible for checking that the Museum complies with legislation and can be contacted via the email and postal addresses above.
Complaints
You have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time.