Did you say you “own” this data? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. | ptsefton

“In this post I question the use of the word ‘own’ in relation to research data. Is it misleading to talk about owning data? This came up as I was doing research into policies and procedures for research data management, in the context of projects funded by the Australian National Data Service, designed to promote data re-use and sharing... This is my private blog. I am not a lawyer. I’m working at UWS with others on policy in this area, alongside the work we’re doing on a Research Data Repository but this is not UWS speaking... Richard Stallman famously urges us to reject the term Intellectual Property – ‘IP’ to its friends – on the grounds that it confuses and conflates several legal frameworks under one term: “Did You Say ‘Intellectual Property’? It’s a Seductive Mirage...” talking about ‘my IP’ gives a false sense of propriety, a sense that somehow the products of one’s intellect can be locked up like a house, or fitted with an immobiliser like a car. I tend to agree with Stallman that IP is not a usually a useful generalisation but I’ll use it here, because the point of this post is to discuss property rights in data... Every time I hear it now I wonder, what does it really mean toown data? ... There’s an inherent recognition of how copyright worksfunctions in the way people refer to these things, ‘owning’ is usually ‘owning a copy’ not ‘owning the rights to’, but the way we talk about data doesn’t seem to be so nuanced; you do hear people talking about owning data rather than having collected it, or compiled it or being responsible for its preservation and upkeep. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I can tell in Australia, there are two types of Intellectual Property in data that you might own. [1] You can talk about ownership of copyright in a data set that has had sufficient creativity put into its compilation to make it a creative work (and no, nobody can tell you for sure what qualifies). Many advocates of open access research reject the use of copyright as a way of controlling research data (for example this group), but note that in Australia official advice is to use copyright licenses (see below). [2] Or there’s confidential information, or trade secrets. That is data that you take reasonable measures to protect, and restrict access by others by contracts limiting their rights... Should we talk about data creators, compilers, custodians, users and so on, but avoid the term ‘owners’ except when properly qualified? For example ‘Copyright in collections of data compiled by employees is normally owned by the University’. Or, ‘All data are to be considered confidential and must not be shared except with an explicit contract specifying terms of use, or organized into collections and placed under an open licence’. In conclusion, what Stallman says about the term Intellectual Property applies just as much to the word ‘own’: ‘The term [IP] carries a bias that is not hard to see: it suggests thinking about copyright, patents and trademarks by analogy with property rights for physical objects...‘ what should researchers do? ... my thoughts: [1] Don’t talk about ‘ownership’ of data without qualification as to which kind of ownership you mean... [2] Do consider how you would like to share, manage, preserve and re-use data to further the cause of research, make sure findings can be validated and to be cited as a data creator or compiler (There are lots of reasons to share. Lets assume those conversations are taking place as they should be). [3] Never share data with anyone without an explicit statement of what your expectations are for how it can or cannot be used, re-used cited and disseminated. The DCC guide is a good starting point for understanding the issues. And in Australia there are the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) guides. For openly available data in Australia the recommendation from ANDS is to use Creative Commons licenses, which are copyright-based licences (even though there is a degree of uncertainty around the extent of copyright in data). The CC licenses give you a way to express the terms under which you would like to share data[2]. For confidential or commercially sensitive data that can’t be shared openly talk to your office of commercialisation about appropriate contractual arrangements for data sharing.”