This document provides guidance on licensing research outputs in three steps. The first step examines what rights researchers have over their work based on copyright and any relevant agreements. Not all work is protected by copyright, and rights depend on factors like original expression and being fixed in a tangible form. The second step considers any policy issues like privacy, indigenous knowledge, or embargoes. The third step recommends choosing standard licenses like Creative Commons that provide clear permissions and avoid ambiguity. The goal is for researchers to think about the impact they want to have and choose licenses accordingly.

1. Sharing &
Licensing
Research Outputs
Office of Scholarly
Communication Services
Rachael Samberg
Mar. 18, 2019

2. What do you need to
create new knowledge
as a data scientist?

3. Inputs & Outputs
Data & Publications
https://library.uwinnipeg.ca/images/publ
ication%20cycle%20v2.png

4. You’re an author.
You have decisions
to make about
the landscape.

5. Your
scholarly
impact
Author-
level
Journal-
level
Article-
level
Data, code,
& software
Alt-metrics
● Publications
● Citations
● Journals
● Citations
● Bookmarks
● Social media
● Views & downloads
● “Impact”
● Citations
● Reputation
● Citations
● Dataset downloads
● Github forks
● “Attention”
● All outputs

6. Article
Data
Impact of choices

7. Controlling an organic synthesis robot
with machine learning to search for new reactivity

8. 8
[Y]ou grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive,
worldwide license to use, display, and perform Your
Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce
Your Content solely on GitHub ... You may grant
further rights if you adopt a license.
Github Terms of Service
https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service/#d-user-generated-content

9. Creative
Commons
Attribution
License
Compare

10. “If I’m using other
people’s content, can’t
I just cite the source?
Can’t people using
mine just cite me?”
Attribution
License

11. 1 2
What rights
do you
have?
Any policy
considerations?
3
Which
license is
best
suited?
Licensing research outputs in
3 easy steps

12. Step 1:
What rights do
you have?

13. Our rights depend in part on copyright
Solution to Burgers’ Equation Multi-heterocyclic system
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.joc.7b02978https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AB
urgersfig.png

14. What is copyright?
Exclusive rights to make
certain uses
of original expression
for limited period of time

15. Exclusive Rights
▪Reproduction
▪Derivative works
▪Distribution
▪Public performance
▪Public display
Hans Meltofte, et al. (2013) Arctic
Biodiversity Assessment. Status and
Trends in Arctic Biodiversity

16. Limited period of time
Varies, but at
least author’s life
+ 70 years…

17. Prerequisites &
Limitations

18. Original Expression
Protects expressions,
not ideas or facts
Must be original,
authored, & fixed
Ghana Statistical Service, “Gross Domestic Product 2016,”
http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/gdp_new.html By Rachael G. Samberg

19. Public Domain
CDC reportMartin Droeshout [Public domain]

20. Tips for Data
Units of data
● Facts vs. compilations of facts
● Types of data
● Quantitative vs. qualitative
Databases
● Expressive data
● Organizational structures
● Descriptive metadata
Software
● Expressive elements

21. If the outputs *are* protected,
then permission needed
to reproduce, display, etc.,
unless exceptions apply

22. Fair Use
17 U.S.C.§ 107
“The fair use of a
copyrighted work…for
purposes such as
criticism, comment, news
reporting, teaching…,
scholarship, or research,
is not an infringement of
copyright.”

23. 1. Purpose & character of use
Non-profit;“transformativenes
s”
2. Nature of copyrighted work
Whether factual/scholarly
3. Amount and substantiality
Size & importance of portion
4. Effect on potential market
Whether it supplants market
E.g. Building on code & data to refine machine learning

24. Is use fair?
● All four factors
● No bright line rule
● No 10% rule
● A license sure would make
things clearer...

25. Rights over our outputs
also depend on
agreements we’ve signed &
institutional roles / policies

26. Student vs.
faculty vs. staff
Funding
agreements

27. Some relevant agreements
relate to the source of the
outputs we’re using

28. Website terms of use Database licenses

29. PubMed Central Restrictions on Systematic Downloading of Articles
Bulk downloading of articles from the main PMC web site, in any way,
is prohibited because of copyright restrictions.
PMC has two auxiliary services that may be used for automated
retrieval and downloading of a special subset of articles from the
PMC archive. These two services, the PMC OAI service and the PMC FTP
service, are the only services that may be used for automated
downloading of articles in PMC.
Articles that are available through the PMC OAI and FTP services are
still protected by copyright but are distributed under a Creative
Commons or similar license that generally allows more liberal use
than a traditional copyrighted work. Please refer to the license
statement in each article for specific terms of use. The license
terms are not identical for all the articles.
PubMed Central, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/copyright/

30. Step 2:
Any policy
considerations?

31. Privacy

32. Indigenous
Knowledge
http://www.bananaip.com/wp-content
/uploads/2014/10/ayurveda1-2.jpg

33. Endangered
Species
Credit: Tim Laman
Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)

34. Embargoes

35. Step 3:
Which license is
best suited?

36. CC0
(Waiver)
Public Domain
(Label)
CC-BY
(License)
Use Standard Licenses
Creative Commons
MIT License & GNU
General Public Licenses
For software; essentially CC-BY

37. Choosing a license: Avoid ambiguity
or if you can
can cause confusion
If scholars follow citation practices, you
would not “lose out” on citations with CC0

41. Think about
the impact
you want to
have https://library.uwinnipeg.ca/images/publ
ication%20cycle%20v2.png

42. Exercise
http://ucblib.link/qU

43. Questions?
Office of Scholarly
Communication Services
schol-comm@berkeley.edu
lib.berkeley.edu/scholcomm
@UCB_scholcomm