Data Licensing

DataONE Dash (oneshare.cdlib.org)

All data submitted to DataONE Dash will require a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0) waiver. This waiver has no restrictions on use and encourages reuse of data for any and all purposes. Read more on why CC0 is best for data at wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0_use_for_data.

UC Dash (campus.dash.edu)

The UC Academic Personnel Policy (APM) 020 states: “Notebooks and other original records of the research are the property of the University” (II. 5, p.3), which the university interprets as meaning that research data are owned by the university.

UCOP General Counsel currently recommends a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0) license, requiring attribution, but they continue to study the issue. In the interim, data submitted to UC Dash instances will be made available via CC-BY-4.0. We recognize that this will not fit the needs of all researchers, but it simplifies implementation of Dash at this early stage.

Our use of CC-BY to make the terms of reuse explicit has some important advantages (the following text is borrowed heavily from the Dryad repository’s FAQ on their use of CC-BY licenses):

  • Interoperability: Since CC-BY is both human and machine-readable, other people and indexing services will automatically be able to determine the terms of use.
  • Universality: CC-BY is a single mechanism that is both global and universal, covering all data and all countries. It is also widely recognized.
  • Simplicity: There is no need for humans to make, or respond to, individual data requests. This allows more scientists to spend their time doing science.

Data submission agreement

When a user submits to Dash, the following message is displayed:

By confirming submission to Dash, your data will be publicly available on the Dash website under a CC-BY-4.0 license. Please only submit legitimate, complete data.

Data use agreement

Because all data in Dash will be available under a CC-BY license, no data use agreement is required. Instead, each dataset landing page will bear the CC-BY logo with a link to more information.