Data access going the way of journal article access? Insist on open data « Victoria Stodden

" ... The primary cause of the current situation — journal publishers owning copyright on journal articles and therefore charging for access — stems from authors signing their copyright over to the journals. I believe this happened because authors really didn’t realize what they were doing when they signed away ownership over their work, and had they known they would not have done so. I believe another solution would have been used, such as granting the journal a license to publish i.e. like Science’s readily available alternative license. At some level authors were entering into binding legal contracts without an understanding of the implications and without the right counsel. I am seeing a similar situation arising with respect to data. It is not atypical for a data producing entity, particularly those in the commercial sphere, to require that researchers with access to the data sign a non-disclosure agreement. This seems to be standard for Facebook data, Elsevier data, and many many others. I’m witnessing researchers grabbing their pens and signing, and like in the publication context, feeling themselves powerless to do otherwise. Again, they are without the appropriate counsel. Even the general counsel’s office at their institution typically sees the GC’s role as protecting the institution against liability, rather than the larger concern of protecting the scholar’s work and the integrity of the scholarly record..."