6.6 Data licenses

Which data licenses are being used, or are planned to be used in the project? A range of agreements are available to protect data and related intellectual property rights. Where a research project is seeking to access data or license a database it has created, an appropriate agreement is necessary. The first step is to work out where data is to be entered into the value chain from external providers, and where the results of the data product are to be made available to data consumers. In general, even when data is apparently freely offered, parties always have different perspectives on data that must be negotiated in one of these ways:

Some data will be subject to financial agreements—for instance, paying a satellite provider for specific crop health data for an area over a specific time period. Some data might be clearly supplied free from license or under a Creative Commons agreement—for instance, where data can be freely used if credited.

Some other relationships between data providers and users will require individual agreements, outlining the terms of use under which data is being supplied.

You may have already started answering these questions under Step 3. Now you can review those decisions and build on them.

Once the different license requirements are identified, they must be acquired and put in place:

Paid subscription or copyright payments need to be made to access necessary data where required, and the details of the license agreement should be stored within the data catalog.

Creative Commons agreements need to be chosen to meet requirements about distribution and accreditation of sources. A Creative Commons license permits users to access, distribute and download data according to the provisions specified in the different licenses. The authorizer can see which licenses are on offer, and what they allow the user to do.

A third form of license arises ad hoc because of the differing ways in which the data is seen by different parties. For instance, a grey area might exist between:

• the individual farmers who allow their fields to be surveyed, their practices to be monitored, and their methods to be questioned, as the basis for the data about what is taking place; and
• companies, such as sellers of fertilizers or crop types, who want access to such data from a point of collective overview, to justify and better target the products they are selling.

Where farmers are surveyed on the impact of their fertilizer use, as in Project SIS, or on the relationship of their crop growing to the provision of water, as in Waterways, a license agreement at once clarifies this relationship between data provision and data consumption. A license agreement between the farmer providing the data and the consumers who get to see the results can specify how the data of crop outputs and water use is targeted primarily for research purposes. A license agreement with the farmer can detail how the data will be used and specify how data providers (such as the farmers) might themselves access the results as data consumers (benefiting from the research).

Once the license agreements are in place, the metadata needs to keep in view the applicable restrictions for all users:

• The commercially licensed data might have restrictions on the original satellite or field data not being transferred to other users. In this case, only the results of the analysis of the data through the data product are to be communicated.
• The Creative Commons licenses typically list restrictions on the free use of data. This might require that one acknowledges the source, and is not looking for financial gain in using the data. Such restrictions need to be held in the metadata, to ensure that use of the dataset is clear to all users.
• Individual agreements, for instance with farmers providing access to their land to record the data, also impose restrictions on how this data is used. Some of these restrictions will be generic on not including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), but others might be individual agreements between parties.

The DVC should be circular in the journey from data provision to data product. Considering the DVC adds value in the case of the scenarios, because it brings the results of the research back to the farmers’ original questions.

When this activity is properly planned in advance, and the license agreements are held in the data catalog, there is no friction in the DVC over who has access to which dataset and data product:

• The paid licenses are properly documented and cover the necessary external data.
• The Creative Commons licenses are clearly visible and credited where necessary.
• Individual license agreements ensure that the circle of data provision and data product is indeed rounded, so that all those who feed into the DVC are also the beneficiaries of the research.

A successful DVC, as illustrated in the scenarios, naturally and clearly honors all points of data exchange between parties.

When distributing the data product, any license requirements for acknowledging the data sources should be honored. Normally, one would acknowledge the main sources of data on which the analysis and results are based. Naming the source gives a validation that the data is trustworthy.