Rights to research data and compilations
The starting point is that everyone holds ownership and rights to their own research data. These rights, and rights to compilations, may be limited by agreements with employers, research groups, or other collaborations.
If you use copyright-protected material from others as research data, your rights are determined by the licenses applied to that material.
There may also be multiple rights holders. Before sharing or licensing, you must ensure that you have the right to share the research data.
What is a license?
A license is a legally binding permission that defines how others can use material, software, source code, and more.
For research data and publications, a license is a permission to use data beyond what is permitted by national laws and regulations. Examples of rights and requirements under the Norwegian Copyright Act include the right to attribution, the right to quote, and copying for private use.
Do you have to apply a license to research data?
YES, for protected material: If your data is rights-protected, you must license the material so that others can use them legally.
Selected examples based on type of material:
Microscope images:
You have taken images you wish to share. Both photographic works and other images are protected under the Norwegian Copyright Act.
Illustrations
You have produced illustrations of phenomena. Graphic representations and illustrations of scientific phenomena, as well as maps and depictions of a scientific or technical nature, are rights-protected.
Music
You have created music to be shared as research data. Note that licensing may be restricted by agreements with collective management organisations (such as TONO).
Compilations of data
You have made a representation of data where the actual data is not protected, but the representation is rights protected in itself.
Examples:
- You have compiled materials where the collection, verification, or presentation involves a substantial investment. The compilation constitutes a database, which is protected under the Copyright Act. The database must be licensed for others to legally extract and reuse material.
Note that the "Transfer of Rights Agreement" (overtakelsesavtalen) regulates who holds rights to databases at UiO. - A concert is held featuring works in the public domain. A recording is made. The recording must be licensed for use. Note that there are multiple rights holders: musicians have rights to their performance, and the producer has rights to the video production.
Note that the administration of these rights may have been transferred to a collective management organisation.
Unprotected material
NO: If the data consists of facts without rights, licensing is not necessary. You can still mark them as "Public Domain" (PDM) to show they are free to use. This also applies if rights have expired or if the data is not protected for other reasons.
Which types of licenses can I use?
The main rule at UiO is: As open as possible, as closed as necessary!
Research data should have international standard licenses that:
- have as few restrictions on access and purpose as possible
- promote the principles of legal interoperability for research data to the greatest possible extent
- are both human-readable and machine-readable
From the License Etiquette Rules p. 42 in How should we share research data?
Several standard licenses can be used for sharing research data or compilations:
See, for example, the overviews provided by:
Creative Commons (CC) licenses are often used for copyright-protected material and serve as a model for open and recognised licensing.
For software, source code, and databases, it is also common to use format-specific licenses such as (This list is not exhaustive):
- MIT License
- Apache License 2.0
- GNU General Public License v 3
Limitations: If you combine data or datasets with different licenses, you must choose the strictest license for the entire package.
Public Domain Dedications
Statements such as CC0 and Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License are used for protected material when you wish to waive all rights. The challenge with these is that their reach is limited by national law.
Example:
In Norway and many other countries, you cannot waive the right to attribution (Norwegian Copyright Act §5). In this sense, CC0 does not have a broader legal effect than CC-BY.
However, a person sharing material with CC0 can choose not to pursue a lack of attribution.
Who decides which license my data should have?
The rule is that the creator of the data decides the license. However, you must follow UiO's Policy and Guidelines for Research Data Management, which states that data should be open unless there are legal, ethical, or security reasons not to be. Research data should be licensed with as few restrictions as possible for access, reuse, and redistribution.
Be aware that collaboration agreements, funding agreements, or agreements with collective management organisations, like TONO, may restrict licensing options. Furthermore, you are not free to choose a license if the data or the compilations are covered by UiO’s Transfer of Rights Agreement; here, the potential for commercial exploitation is the central factor.
Pre-defined licenses in data archives
Some data-repositories use pre-defined licenses and recommendations. You must choose a license that fits your material and fulfills any obligations you may have based on collaboration or funding agreements.
Planning, selection, and changes
Planning
Research data and copyright are part of the Data Management Plan (DMP). Rights and the use of others' sources must be clarified early. When describing data collections, consider the composition of the datasets to ensure they can be licensed.
Selection
The main rule is to choose licenses that are as open as possible. If your dataset contains data with different rights or licenses, you must apply the strictest license to the whole set, as you cannot grant more permissions than you hold.
Changes
If you hold the rights to the licensed material, you can change the license. However, a change is not retroactive. Material already made available under a specific license can still be used according to the original terms. Changing to a more open license is therefore the most common scenario.
Need advice? Send an email to: research-data@uio.no