Copyright
Why License Your Work
If you own the copyright to your work, you can choose to apply a license to your work. Applying a license gives potential users permission in advance for how they can use your work, and removes fear, uncertainty, and doubt. For example:
- Applying a license indicates that you are the copyright owner, so users always know who to credit through citation and attribution.
- Most licenses allow you to choose which uses are allowed without your express permission - such as making copies, sharing, making derivative works - and whether commercial uses are allowed.
- Licenses make it easier for people to know how they can use your work without having to ask permission or do a fair use evaluation.
Licenses can make your work more discoverable to unanticipated readers, and encourage innovative uses - such as teaching, text and data mining, and meta-analysis.
Here is some information about different types of licenses for different types of work.
- License Your ResearchSlides from a Licensing your Research Webinar presented by Brandon Butler, Director of Information Policy at the University of Virginia Library
Choosing a License
- Creative Commons License ChooserQuick guide for choosing the best Creative Commons (CC) license for your work.
- Choose an open source licenseA tool to help you choose from a variety of open licenses. Specifically designed for code.
Licensing and Data
Copyright and Data
The ownership and copyright of data can be complex. When considering data, it may be more useful to think about rights and responsibilities, which can be more contextual and granular this simple copyright ownership. Data sharing, access, use, and preservation all intersect with copyright in different ways, so it is beneficial to start by considering what is being done with the data, and who is responsible for it. Copyright is not straightforward with data. There are complicated questions of what is and is not protected by copyright if other intellectual property laws apply, and who owns the data, especially with regards to institutional IP policies. The resources below are a starting place to help you in navigating this tricky terrain.
- Data LicensesFrom the Turing Way Guide for Reproducible Research, provides an overview of Creative Commons Licenses, Open Data Commons Licenses, and other considerations.
- Open Data CommonsA set of 3 standardized licenses specifically meant to apply to data/databases
- Copyrightability of Tables, Charts, and Graphs (PDF)An article explaining how copyright does and does not apply to tables, charts, and graphs.
- Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A PrimerAn article by Dr. Michael Carroll, published in PLOS:Biology in 2015, which explains how to work through the general intellectual property and contractual issues for all research data.
- How to License Research Data - Digital Curation CentreThis guide will help you decide how to apply a license to your research data, and which license would be most suitable, as well as why licensing data is important, the impact licenses have on future research, and the potential pitfalls to avoid.
- Who “owns” your data?From the University of California's Office of Scholarly Communication, this post by Katie Fortney walks through the complications around copyright/intellectual property ownership and data.
- CC-BY and Data: Not Always a Good FitFrom the University of California's Office of Scholarly Communication blog: an article by Katie Fortney which explains Creative Commons (CC) licenses and public domain tools and how they work with data.
- Sharing & Licensing Research OutputsThis instructional session will help you understand how research outputs like data, software, and code can be shared and licensed to maximize reuse and the contribution of knowledge. It explores: how copyright plays out for data, software, and code; other contracts and policies that affect what's "ours" and how we can use and share content; and license selection best practices.
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