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Data Management: Data Sharing

How to manage data.

Data Sharing

 

Funder Requirements

NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy

  • Data are defined as “recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings, regardless of whether the data are used to support scholarly publications”
  • Timing: shared data should be made accessible ASAP, no later than at publication, or the end of the award period, whichever comes first
  • NIH encourages the maximizing of sharing of data whether it is published or not
  • Encourages storing/sharing with NIH supported discipline specific data repositories.
  • Please see more at our NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy LibGuide

NSF Data Management Plan Requirements 

  • Each directorate has its own requirements
  • Scientific communities develop the standards
  • Investigators are expected to share data within “a reasonable time”

Publisher/Journal Data Sharing Requirements

 

Copyright Licenses and DOIs

With the push from funders and mandates to make research more open, authors are encouraged to license and release their data to protect themselves and their work.

Three conditions that vary among types of licenses:

  • Attribution requirement - credit must be given to licensor
  • Copyleft requirement - derivative works from the licensed one, must be released under the same license
  • Non-commerciality - prevent commercial exploitation of work

If you need more complex license requests/answers, please contact the office of technology transfer.

Email: techtran@cshl.edu Phone: 516-367-8301

Public Copyright Licenses:

Creative Commons License - author-enabled license allowing for use and distribution of the work (not applicable to software). There are six permutations of creative commons license that an author can choose from that vary in:

  • Attribution
  • Allowing for sharing
  • Allowing for non-commercial use
  • Allowing for alterations (derivatives, remixes) in the work
  • Or use a CC0 so that the author waives all rights and allows for release of data completely in the public domain

This site from CreativeCommons.org provides more information to help you choose which license is appropriate for your research output.

Software Licenses:

Proprietary Licensing - Copyright holders license that is more restrictive and does now allow for modification or distribution, where the source code is usually undisclosed.

Open Source Licensing - License that goes through the Open Source Initiative that allows for software and source code to be freely available to be used, modified, and shared.

  • Permissive Licenses - use at your own risk as long as you acknowledge the author/contributor.
  • Copyleft Licenses - add a few more requirements to permissive licenses.
  • This article from OpenSource.com and guidelines from GitHub provides a summary for open source licensing.

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) consist of an assigned alphanumeric string that allows for identification as well as a persistent link to the DOI material. The DOI is specific to the source material and allows for the user to easily locate the specific item.

The CSHL library can assist in assigning DOIs for any of your material. For further assistance please contact Tom Adams or libraryhelp@cshl.edu.

 

Additional Resources