Data Ownership and Data Sharing Practices

Synonyms

Data policies; Data stewardship; Integrated science; Intellectual property; Nanopublications; Open data; Open science

Definition

Research-generated data are generally regarded as intellectual property and entitled to legal protection or copyright; however, ownership of those rights may be governed by institutional policies. Implicit in the idea of ownership of data is the concept of stewardship of data, including access, creation, modification, sale, storage, and the ability to assign or license any of these privileges to others. Open data and open science promote sharing research data gathered by scientists to verify scientific findings, reduce the financial burden of conducting research, and improve the reproducibility of scientific studies (Editorial 2018). It is also widely held that open data decrease the cost of research by fostering multiple projects from one data source, although there are costs associated with transforming and maintaining data in a repository where...