Sound Data Management Training

h1. Licensing Research Data

If you don't supply a license for your research data, you reserve all rights to its use (see [[copyright]]). However, copyright does not exist on factual data itself, only on the “creative” part of the data – e.g. the layout of a spreadsheet.

If you apply an Attribution or Non-Commercial CC license, it may prevent people from using your data. It is therefore recommended that a Creative Commons CC0 waiver is used – this surrenders rights to the data as far as possible. Attribution should still occur if people use your data in their research - good research practice means that people should cite your data if it is used, and [[Research_Council_Requirements#EPSRC|EPSRC principles]] state that credit should be given.

Details of the various Creative Commons licenses are available on the "CC web-site":http://creativecommons.org/licenses/. The (work in progress) Creative Commons 4.0 licenses aim to be more data friendly than the current CC 3.0 licenses and may be appropriate.

"Other":http://opendefinition.org/licenses/#Data Open Data licenses are also available. Much more information on data licenses is available from the DCC guide on "how to license research data":http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/license-research-data.

If you are releasing open source software, we recommend you consult the "Sound Software":http://soundsoftware.ac.uk site for "information":http://soundsoftware.ac.uk/open-source-software-licences-explained.