Data should be made available when it is published under an open licence, such as a Creative Commons licence. CC-BY 4.0 (unlimited use with citation) is the most common licence for research data. The Open Data Commons have developed a series of open licences that are specifically adapted to the characteristics of the storage, preservation, joint use and reuse of data.

The Public License Selector is a useful tool for selecting a suitable licence.

Some institutions have specific requirements for the type of licence, which is important to bear in mind during collaborative projects in particular.

You can find further information on this topic in our posts “Using Open Content Licences” and “Legal Issues in Open Science”.

You can also find plenty of information on these pages:

• In a chapter of the Open Access book “Open Scientific Data – Why Choosing and Reusing the RIGHT DATA Matters”, legal issues arising in Open Scientific Data are explained from an international perspective.
• The Guide to Creative Commons for Scholarly Publications and Educational Resources was primarily compiled for researchers in the Netherlands, but offers a good overview of the use of Creative Commons.
• You can find information on “Legal Issues Arising in Open Scientific Data” in a chapter of the open access book “Open Scientific Data” authored by Vera J. Lipton.
• There is a “Publisher’s Guide to Open Data Licensing” of the Open Data Institute.
• The research project Datajus provides a decision tree (German) to help researchers with legal issues relating to Germany in particular that arise in the publication of research data.