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Open by default: a proposed copyright license and waiver agreement for open access research and data in peer-reviewed journals.

Iain Hrynaszkiewicz | Matthew J Cockerill
BMC research notes | 2012

Copyright and licensing of scientific data, internationally, are complex and present legal barriers to data sharing, integration and reuse, and therefore restrict the most efficient transfer and discovery of scientific knowledge. Much data are included within scientific journal articles, their published tables, additional files (supplementary material) and reference lists. However, these data are usually published under licenses which are not appropriate for data. Creative Commons CC0 is an appropriate and increasingly accepted method for dedicating data to the public domain, to enable data reuse with the minimum of restrictions. BioMed Central is committed to working towards implementation of open data-compliant licensing in its publications. Here we detail a protocol for implementing a combined Creative Commons Attribution license (for copyrightable material) and Creative Commons CC0 waiver (for data) agreement for content published in peer-reviewed open access journals. We explain the differences between legal requirements for attribution in copyright, and cultural requirements in scholarship for giving individuals credit for their work through citation. We argue that publishing data in scientific journals under CC0 will have numerous benefits for individuals and society, and yet will have minimal implications for authors and minimal impact on current publishing and research workflows. We provide practical examples and definitions of data types, such as XML and tabular data, and specific secondary use cases for published data, including text mining, reproducible research, and open bibliography. We believe this proposed change to the current copyright and licensing structure in science publishing will help clarify what users - people and machines - of the published literature can do, legally, with journal articles and make research using the published literature more efficient. We further believe this model could be adopted across multiple publishers, and invite comment on this article from all stakeholders in scientific research.

Pubmed ID: 22958225

Research resources used in this publication

None found

Additional research tools detected in this publication

Antibodies used in this publication

None found

Associated grants

None

Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.

This is a list of tools and resources that we have found mentioned in this publication.


FigShare (tool)

RRID:SCR_004328

Repository for all data, figures, theses, publications, posters, presentations, filesets, videos, datasets, negative data in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner with Digital Object Identifiers. Allows to upload any file format to be made visualisable in the browser so that figures, datasets, media, papers, posters, presentations and filesets can be disseminated in a way that the current scholarly publishing model does not allow. Features integration with ORCID, Symplectic Elements, can import items from Github and is a source tracked by Altmetric.com. Figshare gives users unlimited public space and 1GB of private storage space for free. Data are digitally preserved by CLOCKSS. Supported by Digital Science, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, as a community-based, open science project that retains its autonomy.

View all literature mentions

Dryad Digital Repository (tool)

RRID:SCR_005910

International, curated, digital repository that makes the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Particularly data for which no specialized repository exists. Provides the infrastructure for, and promotes the re-use of, data underlying the scholarly literature. Governed by a nonprofit membership organization. Membership is open to any stakeholder organization, including but not limited to journals, scientific societies, publishers, research institutions, libraries, and funding organizations. Most data are associated with peer-reviewed articles, although data associated with non-peer reviewed publications from reputable academic sources, such as dissertations, are also accepted. Used to validate published findings, explore new analysis methodologies, repurpose data for research questions unanticipated by the original authors, and perform synthetic studies.UC system is member organization of Dryad general subject data repository.

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