Exercise 4
Reflect:
What is the significance of copyright and licensing in the framework of publication, archiving, and reuse of research data? Take notes for your records.
Proposed Solution
- A prerequisite for copyright protection is that a work possesses sufficient creative merit and is legally protected by copyright.
- Only the authors have the right to publish and archive the work.
- Only the authors have the right to grant usage rights to third parties for utilization and reuse.
- If multiple authors are involved in creating a work, joint authorship applies.
- The granting of usage and exploitation rights to third parties occurs through a licensing agreement between the authors and the third parties (commercial or open).
- Licensing agreements specify exactly which rights are transferred and how the work may be used and exploited.
- Open, free licenses, such as CC licenses, enable simple, standardized, and legally secure licensing agreements, allowing low-threshold, cost-free reuse.
- For publication and archiving, the data must be legally secure, meaning that authorship must be clearly established and no third-party works should be included without permission for reuse.