Toolkit for Researchers on Legal Issues

The OpenAIRE-Advance project runs a series of task forces in three topical areas relevant to open science: Research Data Management, Open Science Policies and Legal Issues for Research Data. The aim is to exploit the expertise in the network (primarily the National Open Access Desks, NOADs) and together to produce a series of materials for public use.
In the context of this task force, legal issues, the team identified a number of pertinent areas to develop materials useful to research communities.
To this end, this deliverable focuses on the emerging field of research data from a legal perspective. It looks at the proper legal and technological classifications and taxonomies for data (data may have very different meaning in hard and social sciences and in legal terms), their status, protection, reusability, licences, interoperability and more in general to any aspect that may make data more or better fit to meet open science goals.
This deliverable is divided into two main sections:
 Section 1 Guides on copyright and copyright related aspects (licenses, reusability, etc.),
 Section 2 Recommendations on data protection and privacy.
Section 1
The first part of this deliverable focuses on the copyright and related rights dimension of open science in the field of data, datasets and databases. The field of data, especially research data, is quite complex and the law does not necessarily call works (copyright) and data (not protected or protected by related rights) following the same categories that hard or social sciences do. Therefore, the field of open access/science to data and research data is particularly complex for users.
The two guides that form this first section, a user FAQs and a companion Open Science (OS) checklist that users can employ to direct repository managers at university and research centres to help them realise their OS potential, are meant to offer a state of the art, legally advanced, but still manageable set of rules, guidelines, and resources to enable the full potential of OS in the EU research field with a view to addressing copyright and related rights issues. The user guide and the companion checklist are intended to be online documents and have been (companion checklist) or will be (user FAQs) implemented on the OpenAIRE website. Given the nature of the documents, they will be regularly updated and revised in the light of new developments in the legal, policy, community and technological fields.
Section 2
The second part of this deliverable provides guidance in the fields of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Personal Data protection in the form of a checklist and a set of recommendations regarding what different players in the open science ecosystem could be doing in order to support and promote open science. The perspective adopted in this paper is one that focuses on the perspective of the researcher but also takes into consideration the types of activities necessary in order to foster Open Science in a broader context. In that sense, it takes forward and expands the
Advancing Open Scholarship
D3.2 - Toolkit for Researchers on Legal Issues Page 5
content of section 1: it focuses on suggestions that aim at the institutional level and set the necessary conditions for opening up data of different forms and kinds while remaining compliant with the relevant legislation. Therefore, it uses two tools: (a) a checklist of things to do in the area of Personal Data protection focusing on the compliance with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), mostly at the institutional level and with a research focus; and (b) a checklist of recommendations regarding the establishment of open IPR policies by different stakeholders in the Open Science ecosystem.
In relation to personal data protection, we analyse the key necessary steps for compliance in accordance to the GDPR and with emphasis on the measures that a Research Performing Organisation should take in order to adhere to the provisions of GDPR. Our interest here is to maintain compliance while maximising the opening up of data.
In relation to Intellectual Property Rights, we take a holistic view focusing not just on copyright but on the broader interrelationship between different kinds of rights, such as patents, trade secrets and copyright. Such interrelationship takes particular interest in the establishment of coherent policies and monitors the moment of information disclosure in order to ensure that open science practices do not prejudice opportunities of exploitation. In order to achieve these objectives, and while the researcher always remains the focus, it is necessary to provide recommendations to a wider array of institutions that cover the entirety of the Open Science ecosystem.