Best practices and resources to conduct due diligence

Consult with the UBC Research Security team at any point during your due diligence process for further support. You don’t necessarily have to have completed the entire form before engaging with us. If you identify information during this process that indicate that there may be some risks to your research and are unsure of how to proceed, please reach out. Our team has experience conducting risk assessments for partners and can provide with you with additional guidance.

The Government of Canada course Safeguarding Research Partnerships with Open-Source Due Diligence (see a Summary here or the webpage guide here) provides in-depth guidance on approaches to conducting open-source research on your potential research partner. We highly recommend reviewing the course material to familiarize yourself with techniques that will aid your research.

Some starting points on your research include:

  • Reviewing your partner organization’s website, including their services, products, partners and offerings to determine whether your research objectives may align, as well as key personnel and research staff members, to determine whether their history and expertise align with your research activities.
     
  • Performing a search of the company and staff members with whom you are planning to collaborate against existing sanctions regime to ensure that your collaboration will not risk violating sanctions in Canada, the US, or the EU, as applicable.
  • Using additional resources to collect information regarding your partner’s ownership structure, financial status, and members of the board, which may provide you with additional datapoints to assess if the company may be subject for foreign ownership or influence
    • Pitchbook (UBC institutional access via CWL)
    • Crunchbase (no institutional subscription, limited information in open access)
       
  • Examining the research outputs of your partner organizations and their staff members with whom you plan to work for alignment to your research objectives and identify potential conflicts of interest.Anchor5
  • Verifying whether your potential partner may be involved in legal disputes.
  • If the information is available, reviewing other clients and customers of your partner to help you identify whether they may be organizations who may use your results of your research in a way that does not align with your research goals.
    • As an example, if you did not intend your research for military uses, but your potential partner has customers in the defence sector, you may wish to discuss your objectives with your potential partner and have an agreement with them that the research is for civilian use to ensure the results are not transferred to military end uses.

Mitigating risks and safeguarding your research

Part of the VP Research & Innovation portfolio

UBC Research Security

Suite 580, Walter C. Koerner Library, 1958 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC Canada
E-mail research.security@ubc.ca

UBC receives support for managing its research enterprise from the federal Research Support Fund.

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