From the title of this session, I feel like it’s somekind of penance – hopefully not!

http://jif08.jiscinvolve.org/theme-2-the-challenges-of-research-data/legal-and-policy-issues/

This session takes the form of a debate with the motion:
“Curating and sharing research data is best done where the researcher’s institution asserts IPR claims over the data”.

It is also being live blogged at http://jif08.jiscinvolve.org/2008/07/15/session-1-legal-and-policy-issues/  I don’t know where it is being blogged I’m afraid.

Live blog is at http://jif08.jiscinvolve.org/2008/07/15/session-1-legal-and-policy-issues/

At  the start there is 4 for, 10 against and the remainder (majority?) abstained.

Speaking for is Charles Oppenheim….

Note – Charles is taking the position for the purposes of the debate – it does not necessarily represent his views (or that of his employer…)

Starting along the lines of the comment he left at http://jif08.jiscinvolve.org/theme-2-the-challenges-of-research-data/legal-and-policy-issues/ saying that in general the employers of researchers (e.g. Universities) would legally own the copyright. However, they tend to waive these rights (implicitly rather than explicitly) and allow researchers to do things like assign copyright to publishers – by not acting when this happens, the employers can be seen as abdicating their rights.

Charles now saying that since curation (backup, refreshing etc.) involves copying – so copyright is important. You need a copyright owner to give permission for this to occur.

OA movement is threatening publishers business – seeks to persuade authors to keep copyright. Publishers looking at other areas, especially research data that supports publication. If we get into a situation where copyright over this data is assigned to the publisher we will have problems with curation.

Therefore the institution should assert it’s copyright over the research data, while granting a royalty free licence to the employee – researcher – to do whatever they want with the data.

Institution can then exercise whatever curation they wish.

Mags McGeever now speaking against the motion:

Mags saying that she believes that curation is best served when noone asserts IPR over the data.

Firstly – there maybe limited IPR available on data in the first place – since facts cannot be copyrighted. However, a database can be copyright – even if the data in it is not – as long as the database fulfills some criteria around ‘creativity’. Although the law is clearly nuanced here, generally a simple database of facts which does nothing more than record the facts, it is unlikely to attract any IPR.

There is much uncertainty around this – many people believe they can assert IPR where it doesn’t actually exist. However, there are some circumstances where data or databases have IPR – but the collaborative aspect of work in the current academic research environment leads to complexities which are difficult or impossible to unravel – ownership may not belong to a single institution, or within a single legal jurisdiction.

Unless there are clear agreements in place at the start, ownership will be unclear, and getting these agreements in place is a long and complicated process.

So – data unencumbered by IPR is easier to share, and to reuse – e.g. US public data.

Science Commons advocates putting data in the public domain.

One issue is that IPR provides an economic incentive to curate. However, this is not generally the driving force in the academic sector – attribution and credit is much more of an incentive. There are some issues here – as data is manipulated, there is a question of maintaining attribution correctly – and we probably need a technical solution here that does something to show the provenance of data.

So overall, better to have data unencumbered – remove barriers to curation.

Mags closes here.

Comment from Sam Pepler from British Atmospheric Data Centre saying how they require researchers to sign contract giving that BADC a license to do whatever they want with it.

Chris Rusbridge – If I want to use data from the BADC in a new venture does this not mean I need to negotiate with each person asserting control over the data sources? The incredible complexity of possible rights, the only way to promote interoperability is to put the data into the public domain.

I lose ability to keep up here as I dive into the debate – see the live blog for more detail (if you can find it …) – got it, it is at http://jif08.jiscinvolve.org/2008/07/15/session-1-legal-and-policy-issues/