Going Beyond Creative Commons: Licensing Works with Data and Code

In order to make research open, accessible, and reusable to diverse research communities, data repositories must consider a variety of approaches to licensing works. The situation can become particularly complex when individual works contain both data and code, as these two components may require separate licenses. Standard data licenses including Creative Commons and Open Data Commons, do not have terms regarding the distribution of source code, an essential characteristic of open access software. As a result, data curators and repositories must thoughtfully guide researchers through the process of assessing the relevance of multiple open licenses to their work. This lightning talk will present recommendations made for University of Michigan's Deep Blue Data repository on refining the deposit and curation process for works containing both data and code. These recommendations build on those made in the Data Curation Network’s Primer for Applying and Interpreting Licenses for Research Data and Code (Chinn et al., 2024), providing guidance on implementing best practices in a Samvera repository. Recommendations will also briefly highlight compatible data and code licenses and strategies for educating researchers on selecting appropriate open licenses. These recommendations were developed as a part of a 10-week internship with the National Center for Data Services, an office of the Network of the National Library of Medicine.