Effective data sharing is a crucial principle in fostering transparency, reproducibility, and collaboration in scientific research, making it a vital topic in the context of Open Science. Additionally, the ability to find, access, interoperate and reuse data is crucial for advancing scientific discovery and innovation, making it relevant to the FAIR data principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016). This presentation highlights the legal challenges of sharing data from international research projects using the example of a qualitative research project in German and Australian schools. The research project was accompanied by a case study. The case study analysed issues such as data protection, intellectual property and compliance to gain a better understanding of how international data sharing can be done effectively and ethically. The study provides valuable insights for anyone involved in international research projects and helps uncover potential legal challenges. In the field of educational research, data collected is often highly personal and may include minors. However, researchers in education often have little legal knowledge, it is not part of their training. Especially, in an international context, different legal regulations make it difficult to comply with data collection and sharing. To investigate this issue, we selected an international qualitative research project for a case study (Argyrou 2017; Eisenhardt 2002; Yin 2018). The international project examined a digital student exchange between Australian and German students, using video recordings, interviews, student-created videos, chat communications, digital classroom materials, and student-drawn language biographies. This raised complex legal questions about the handling of students' personal data and the handling of personal data of third parties, such as their families. Copyright issues are also key, especially when copyrighted material is to be shared as part of Open Science and used in scientific publications. For the case study, we explored the challenges and issues that arose in collecting and sharing data of the international research project as well as the resources and opportunities to find solutions through interviews and documentation analysis. In our presentation, we summarize the legal challenges of collecting and sharing research data in the international project and show examples of the measures taken to overcome these challenges. Overall, the results of our case study provide valuable insights for those involved in international educational research projects and help identify and deal with potential legal challenges.

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