When someone mentions open access and licensing agreements, most of our minds turn to journals, but, don’t forget about data!
Data is everywhere, with producers posting their datasets in open portals, creating packages that are linked to in blogs or workshops, being emailed around and saved to your desktop to check out at a later date. Remember that just because you have data saved to your computer or sitting on a drive that you can access doesn’t mean you can disseminate or do whatever you want with it. Find the license and check to make sure you are in the clear! If you can’t find the license better to be safe than sorry. Go back to the original source, contact the producer, or find a new one.
To learn more about data sharing, licenses and rights, send your faculty, students or come yourself to “Know Your Rights: permissions and use rights for teaching and research” presented by Althea Wheeler, Copyright Officer and Andrea Szwajcer, Acting Coordinator RSDS
