The Landscape of Rights and Licensing Initiatives for Data Sharing

Authors

Sam Grabus, Drexel University
Jane Greenberg, Drexel University

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

7-4-2019

Citation

Grabus, S and Greenberg, J. 2019. The Landscape of Rights and Licensing Initiatives for Data Sharing. Data Science Journal, 18: 29, pp. 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2019-029

Comments

Open access.

Abstract

Over the last twenty years, a wide variety of resources have been developed to address the rights and licensing problems inherent with contemporary data sharing practices. The landscape of developments is this area is increasingly confusing and difficult to navigate, due to the complexity of intellectual property and ethics issues associated with sharing sensitive data. This paper seeks to address this challenge, examining the landscape and presenting a Version 1.0 directory of resources. A multi-method study was pursued, with an environmental scan examining 20 resources, resulting in three high-level categories: standards, tools, and community initiatives; and a content analysis revealing the subcategories of rights, licensing, metadata & ontologies. A timeline confirms a shift in licensing standardization priorities from open data to more nuanced and technologically robust solutions, over time, to accommodate for more sensitive data types. This paper reports on the research undertaking, and comments on the potential for using license-specific metadata supplements and developing data-centric rights and licensing ontologies.