Licensing Assignment

Assignment: Data Licensing

Licenses
Open data requires a declaration that the information objects (as provided by an individual or institution) are free for consumption, reuse, and/ or repurposing. Licenses further allow us to protect data creators and data stewards by being explicit about the expectations we have for how data should be used, repurposed, etc.

There are a number of licenses available - each allowing you to achieve different protections for data creators or data stewards.

Below are a small set of resources that describe data licenses and how to make choices between licenses:

• Project Open Data’s commentary on open licenses for open data
• Cornell Library’s IP rights for data management (See in particular their distinction between databases and data)
• Data.World’s guide to open licenses

Implications for your protocol

Here are the basic questions you should answer in this section of your protocol:

• What licenses will you attach to a dataset, and why? (If your data is already under a license you might explain that here)
• Will you make any exceptions?

If you are interested in a primer on data licensing you might consult the following:

• Carroll, M. W. (2015). Sharing research data and intellectual property law: A primer. PLoS biology, 13(8), e1002235. HTML