Any research project involving data relating to people must consider issues that may arise with copyright licensing, GDPR, and Intellectual Property (IP). When you write a data management plan, the ownership of the data must be clearly defined early in the proposal design, and carried out throughout the project lifecycle. Once properly protected, data can be disseminated, safe in the knowledge that the original owner has been credited appropriately.
As shown by the clip above, a worldwide license such as Creative Commons can be used to provide permission to others to use and share a work in advance, with explicit consensus on the agreements for sharing. Depending on your research project, certain restrictions may need to be placed on data. Therefore, it is advisable that you adapt the approach of open as possible, closed as necessary when considering the sharing of sensitive data.
A Creative Commons license provides a standardized way to give public permission to reuse data under law. It lets the person reusing the data understand what they can do with your research data, and if they need to link to you when re-use is made.
In the infographic below, there are six different license types, but the most commonly used in research data management is CC BY 4. This license allows the re-user to distribute, to remix, adapt and build on the data that you share in any format or medium, if they also provide attribution to you and your work. It also allows for commercial use.
Fig. 1: Creative Commons licenses by Foster (CC-BY-SA)
If your research data should not be used for commercial purposes, you can select a CC BY-NC license. This allows you to share your data, safe in the knowledge that credit will be given to you, but that no commercial gain will be made from the data in the future.
A CC BY-ND license allows you to go further and not allow derivate works to be created from your original research data.
For help in selecting a license, visit this page: https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/. For more information on copyright and licensing, visit the University's Foundations of Open Science course on Canvas.
