Data Re-use and Licensing Frameworks

 A comprehensive list of all Licensing related webinars is available via the ANDS YouTube channel.

A fundamental aspiration of the Australian Research Data Commons is that more data is reusable.  One of the essential ingredients of reusable data is clarity of reuse permissions, terms, and conditions.  Prospective reusers need to know exactly what they can do with the data.  Those conditions and permissions should be explicit. 

Within the Australian context, this information about the permissions and conditions of re-use can be expressed in different kinds of notices, licences, contracts, etc accompanying the data.  Not being clear about permission to reuse data can have the same result as forbidding data reuse, because uncertainty can be enough to discourage the potential reuser.

Open Licensing Framework

AusGOAL (formerly GILF) is an open licensing framework designed to assist organisations to start by default from the most open licensing arrangements and work back from there as appropriate.  ANDS has prepared a Guide to AusGOAL.  AusGOAL has been successfully used in many Commonwealth and State government agencies (e.g. Geoscience Australia) to move these organisations on to an open access data footing.  The AusGOAL framework incorporates Creative Commons licences.

In principle, any kind of clarity around re-use permissions and conditions is useful.  ANDS is promoting the use of AusGOAL in the research and innovations sector in order to not "reinvent the wheel" and to ensure licensing harmony within and between these sectors.

Software Licenses

A list of software licenses is located on the Open Source Initiative website. ANDS does not enforce any of these, but we encourage Partners to adopt one of the Google recommended licenses (i.e. Apache, Artistic, BSD, GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPL, MIT, MPL, and EPL).

Using Data Licenses

Attaching a licence or reuse notice to data is the last step in a long journey for research organisations.  Major stops along the way include drafting organisational policies, establishing data management capabilities and procedures, as well as clarifying the provenance, ownership and custodianship of the organisation's data assets.

ANDS offers a number of services and projects to support research organisations along that journey:

• Research Data Licensing Working Group for Infrastructure Providers
  
• University Data Licensing Implementers Group
• Support materials on the AusGOAL website
• ANDS Data Re-use page

 ANDS Publications

• AusGOAL - ANDS Guide
• Creative Commons and Data - ANDS Guide
• Copyright and Data - ANDS Guide
• Licensing webinars
• Research Data Licensing FAQs

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Licensing Series Videos

Access all ANDS Licensing series videos