Mastodon

Research data should be appropriately licensed with re-use in mind

I’m really pleased this new Open Access paper has just been published.

CC BY 3.0 Zookeys Special Issue 150ResearchBlogging.org

Hagedorn, G. et al. Creative commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information 150, 127-149 (2011).

Some background…

After parading my Open Data t-shirt (pictured below) around the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting this month, I was invited to give an impromptu pitch in front of the great and good of the Mammal AToL project & MorphoBank people. Having pointed out to MorphoBank a while ago that they should really make explicit the terms and conditions [license] under which they make their (?) data available, I naturally advocated CC-BY 3.0 and CC0 licences. I talked about this very subject and pleaded with them NOT to use the NC clause refering to Rod Page & Peter Murray-Rust ‘s [1,2] thoughts on the matter.

Data providers vs Data re-users – need they really be in opposition?

The trouble is, a lot of (data providing) institutions seem hell-bent on ‘protecting commercial interests’, at the expense of research opportunities. So as I understand it, at the moment databases such as these face an awkward problem of either satisfying the restriction requests of data providers OR satisfying permissiveness of re-use by data re-users [such as myself!], and the needs of both camps are seldom entirely met.

Conclusion

I see this paper as an important step in persuading such restriction-minded institutions of the absolute importance of #OpenData / #PantonPrinciples and how NC clauses can genuinely obstruct and impair real academic research.
I just hope people read it and take note!

[Most of this is just a re-post of my spur of the moment G+ post here.
I’m reposting here so that this might hopefully get picked up by Research Blogging to give this paper the publicity it deserves. Much of the content is widely applicable IMO to most of scholarly communications, not just biodiversity informatics, and indeed the whole ZooKeys special issue (Open Access) is well worth a browse.]

References

[1] http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/12/plant-list-nice-data-shame-it-not-open.html
[2] http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2010/12/17/why-i-and-you-should-avoid-nc-licences/
[3] Hagedorn, G., Mietchen, D., Morris, R., Agosti, D., Penev, L., Berendsohn, W., & Hobern, D. (2011). Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information ZooKeys, 150 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.150.2189


Posted

in

, ,

by

Tags: