Software Licensing and Open Access | Unlocking Research

"If the questions that the Research Data Service Team have been asked during data sharing information sessions with over 1000 researchers at the University of Cambridge are any indicator, then there is a great deal of confusion about sharing source code. There have been a wide range of questions during the discussions in these sessions, and the Research Data Service Team has recorded these. We are systematically ensuring that the information we are providing to our research community is valid and accurate. To address the questions about source code we decided to call in expert help. Shoaib Sufi and Neil Chue Hong* from the Software Sustainability Institute agreed to lead a workshop on Software Licensing in September, at the Computer Lab in Cambridge. Shoaib’s slides are here, and Neil’s slides on Open Access policies and software sharing are here. Malcolm Grimshaw and Chris Arnot from Cambridge Enterprise also came to the workshop to answer questions about Cambridge-specific guidance on software commercialisation. We had over 50 researchers and several research data managers from other UK universities attending the Software Licensing workshop. The main questions we were trying to resolve was: Are researchers expected to share source code they used in their projects? And if so, under what conditions? ..."