Licenses and data use agreements

Sharing your data does not necessarily mean that anyone can do everything with your data. One way to protect your data is to add a license or a data use agreement (DUA) to (a part of) your data. Licenses state a standard set of terms and conditions under which data can be shared and re-used. Additionally in a DUA, more specific regulations, set by the owner of the data about the re-use can be included. For example, for pseudonimised data, a DUA can require a re-user to adhere to the GDPR and privacy regulations, and prevent the re-user from trying to re-identiy the data.  DUAs are often drafted by the owner of the data and used in restricted access datasets.

Licenses

There are existing licenses that specifically apply to data. These are the so-called Open Data Commons, which can be divided into three licenses:

There are various options that are combinations of the following conditions:

Attribution (BY)

The ‘BY’ mark signifies that the creater of the work needs to be accredited, for example by mentioning a link to the original work/data. Note that it is common practice in research to reference sourcesregardless of the license includes the ‘BY’ condition.

ShareAlike (SA)

A license with the ShareAlike condition means that users can only share the work under the same license, i.e. under the same conditions that the original work has.

No Derivatives (ND)

The No Derivatives condition states that any alteration or addition to the work may not be shared. Users are free to alter or add to the work for private use, however, the may then not share those derivatives. Be aware that this could greatly obstruct reuse of the data for further research!

Non Commercial (NC)

This conditions states that the work may not be used for commerial purposes.

(The absence of) these four conditions combined create the following licenses:

The more restrictions are applied to the published dataset, the less Open Access the data publication will be. The researcher is free to make a choice on the data license.  The  RDM support team and/or your local data steward are willing to give you advice.

Data use agreements

To set you own conditions, you may use a Data Use Agreement (DUA) for sharing your data. Data use agreements – also known as data exchange agreements – are contracts used for the transfer of data which are non-public or otherwise subject to restrictions.

Data use agreements are made between the data owner (generally Radboud University) and a recipient. More practically, the researcher initiates the data use agreement. Composing a data use agreements may be particular relevant in research that involves privacy-sensitive data.

For composing a data use agreement with your own conditions you may consider at least the following aspects:

  • Legal aspects – including the General Data Protection Legislation (Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming, AVG) and the Medical Research involving Human Subjects Act (Wet Medisch-Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek met MensenWMO)
  • Ownership of the data
  • Privacy/anonymisation of human data
  • Use of data by third parties
  • Embargo period
  • Citations and/or co-authorship
  • Specific scientific purpose

Make sure to contact the legal department of Radboud University in an early stage when you need a data use agreement. Contact information can be found here. Also, ask approval by the institute director. Thereafter, the DUA can be sent to the recipient of the data and after signing the data can be transferred.
Read more about licenses and data use agreements (pdf, 580 kB) (pdf, 580 kB).

Software

In case your data involves software, it can be shared under Open Source Licenses.