How to license research data
This Digital Curation Centre guide provides a range of information on why and how to use licences.

Publisher's guide to open data licensing
A guide from the Open Data Institute that answers questions on what it means to licence data, what licence to use and how to indicate the licence for a dataset.

Conformant [open] licenses
A list of licences that are conformant with the principles laid out in the Open Definition.

Choosing a licence

There are number of things to consider when choosing a licence for your research data:

Data repository: Will the data repository dictate a licence?

Attribution: Is attribution necessary or desirable?

Commercial use: Is commercial use expected?

Communicated: How will the licence be communicated?

Multiple datasets: Should the same licence apply to all the research data?

Contractual obligation: Does a funding contract or collaboration agreement dictate the terms of a licence?

Ownership: Do you own the work? If not, do you have permission from the rights holder or is the content covered by licences that permit you to publish it and apply the chosen licence?

• Copyright: a practical guide provides practical advice to help you stay legal when using other people's materials in your research.

Commercial potential: Does your data (software) have commercial potential?

• If you think your research might have commercial value, you should consult with the University's Commercialisation Team for advice on commercialisation before you publish/licence it.

Questions taken from the work of the University of Glasgow Choosing a licence for research data

Research data should be made available (shared) under an open licence, unless there is good reason to licence it on a more restrictive basis.

Examples of open licences include:

• Creative Commons licences for creative works, including research data;
• licences for specific types of work. For example, Open Data Commons licences intended specifically for databases;
• government open data licences. For example, the UK Open Government Licence (3.0) for public sector materials;
• public domain tools, for example Creative Commons "No Rights Reserved" (CC0). Strictly speaking CC0 is a rights waiver but it's generally considered as a type of open licence.

The University does not prescribe the use of any particular open licence for research data. Choosing the most appropriate open licence to assign to your data will be dependent on the nature of the material and any related requirements.

Creative Commons licences can be applied to research data as well as open access publications.

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) is widely used for licensing datasets and is the default licence for research data deposited with Research Data York. Other licences may be used or preferred by some data repositories.

Creative Commons licences should not be applied to software or code due to design limitations, compatibility considerations and the availability of long-established specialist open source licences.

Creative Commons for researchers: a practical guide

A guide to help you understand the range of Creative Commons legal tools and licences available, and the benefits and considerations for both creators and users of licensed works.