Research Data Management

Licensing Data

It is important to make it clear how the data can be reused when publishing research data. Publishing data without a license creates ambiguity, hence, you should assign a license to your research data to inform potential users what they are allowed to do with the data.

When licensing your data, you should first check whether there is any licensing requirement for publishing your data. Some funders or publishers may require researchers to use a certain license as a condition of funding or publication. Some data repositories may also require a certain license as a condition of deposit.

Most trusted data repositories allow you to select the license for your data when depositing data. To allow the widest possible reuse and redistribution, you are recommended to choose an open license from below commonly used licenses for data publishing:

For more about data licensing, you may refer to the following resources:

• Conformant Data Licenses from Open Knowledge Foundation
• Creative Commons FAQ on Data
• How do I license my research data? from OpenAIRE
• How to License Research Data from Digital Curation Centre
• Practical Guide for Licensing Open Data from Higher Education Funding Council for England