Research Data Management

Data Licensing

As copyright only protects the expression or product of ideas, research data that is factual is not covered by copyright. However, the way we organize data is a creative process that may be protected under copyright. Providing an explicit license for the shared data helps clarify how others can legitimately reuse your research data.

The most common international licenses for data sharing are Creative Commons (CC) Licenses and Open Data Commons (ODC) Licenses. The recommended types of license for public data sharing are:

Type	Description	CC License	ODC License
Public Domain	Place the research data into the public domain without restriction in reuse.	CC0	Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)
Attribution	The research data is free to reuse with credit to the creator.	CC BY	Attribution License (ODC-By)
Attribution Share-Alike	The research data is free to reuse with credit to the creator and share the adapted data using the same terms.	CC BY-SA	Open Database License (ODC-ODbL)
Attribution Noncommercial	The research data is free to reuse with credit to the creator and not for commercial purposes.	CC BY-NC

Most data repositories allow different levels of restrictions for data not suitable for public sharing. For example, some researchers may only want to make the metadata publicly available while data is only available after approval by the researchers. To retain exclusivity to their own research data, some researchers may also set an embargo period for the shared data.

Consult your Faculty Librarian to learn more about the data reuse licenses.