FOI_24-249 Links to Israeli universities

Date of response: 08 October 2024

We have now considered your request of 10 September 2024 for the following information:

Question 1. I am writing to formally request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Specifically, I would like to request the following details:

What Israeli universities does the university have links with?
- This includes, but is not limited to, exchange programmes, joint research projects and information exchanges

Question 2. What is the nature of these links with Israeli universities and what agreements underpin these?

Our response:

We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.

Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University may hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to links with any Israeli Universities, and the nature of any such links.

We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.

'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.

To explain our position, information relating to possible links to Israeli Universities, including exchange programmes, joint research projects and information exchanges is held within several University departments: Development Alumni and Campaigns (DAC), Admissions, Recruitment and Marketing (ARM), Research and Innovation Division (RID), Academic Partnerships (ACP) and Post Graduate Research department (PGR). There is no central record of where this information is held.
For DAC, ARM, and ACP specifically, on this occasion it is not possible to provide any of the requested information. In line with your rights under section 1(1)(a) of the Act to be informed whether information is held, we confirm that the University does not hold any recorded information for joint initiatives, links to Israeli Universities.

For records held within RID, we can confirm that the University of East Anglia is a member of a European Commission H2020 funded collaborative research project which includes 37 other collaborators, of which the Reichman University (Israel) is also a member.

For records held within our Post Graduate Research (PGR) department, as of the date of your request, we have 1,675 current researchers, with over 56,000 PGR/PhD project associated documents, which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual research document manually.

We have calculated it would take on average one minute per document, or 933 hours, to locate and manually interrogate each individual research document. Which exceeds the appropriate time limit as outlined above.

We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.