Licensing

The page provides information on the intellectual property rights associated with pictures and data of digitised specimens, and how to manage those rights. This is not legal advice. Each country has different intellectual property law. Here we focus on common principles.

Reusability

One of the most important objectives of digitization is to make collection data reusable by anyone anywhere. This includes reuse of images, data and their metadata. Without transparent guidelines on their reuse, digital collections may not be used despite the effort made to create them. For more information on making your data and images reusable see go-fair.org.

Copyright

It is often assumed that a maker of an image or data automatically holds the copyright. In the case of collection digitization this is often not the case. Copyright varies considerably between jurisdictions, but nowhere are data copyrightable. Furthermore, most jurisdictions require that there is some novel intellectual creation step whereby the work is different from what preceded it (Patterson et al. 2014). Therefore, scientific images of specimens are highly unlikely to fall into this category. No matter how much work or skill it has taken to produce material, it is only the individuality in the form of presentation that is protected by copyright.

Database copyright

Database copyright protects the structure of a database, if that structure is original. This does not protect the contents of the database, nowhere are data copyrightable, but it protects the structure of the database. That said, if the database contains some original text those could hold copyright. If the database structure is based on open community standards, such as Darwin Core, it would not be considered original.

Sui Generis rights

Within the European Union there is the concept of Sui Generis rights on databases. These exist for databases where there has been a substantial investment of time or money in “obtaining, verification or presentation” of the database. The investment for researching or collecting data is not taken into consideration. If the database qualifies for Sui Generis rights they last for 15 years from the database’s creation date or the date it was made public. This can protect the contents of the database as a whole from exploitation by others, but it only covers data that are obtained, rather than those that are created, such as calculated fields (Labastida & Margoni, 2020).

Licensing

Potential users will not automatically know whether your images or data are eligible for copyright or Sui Generis protection, and they should not use images or data without knowing whether they have the right to use them. Furthermore, there is a scientific need to show the evidence of assertions, and an ethical need to credit the work of others. Therefore, when publishing your data and images it is imperative that provenance and licensing are explicit. Even if you do not claim any rights on your digitization output you need to say so in order that users can reuse it. If you do claim rights, you should make sure that users know how they can reuse the output. If you intend that your digitization project contributes to science and conservation then a frequently used option is to use one of the Creative Commons licences. Indeed, these licences are often used for datasets and images that do not qualify for copyright or Sui Generis, however, this can be beneficial because it expresses the preference of the data provider.

Creative Commons Zero licence waiver (CC0)

To remove any ambiguity and ensure maximum reuse of your output, the Creative Commons Zero licence waiver allows you to waive any rights you might have automatically have been granted in the creation of images and databases. This is compatible with publishing to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). You can also use the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark.

Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0)

The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence requires reusers to attribute the holder of the rights. This usually works well, and even in this domain, where much of the images and data would not qualify for copyright or Sui Genenis rights, there is still a need to cite the source of images and data. This licence is also compatible with GBIF. Note that it is imperative that you explain how the work should be attributed.

An example of citation advice from the GBIF website for a dataset.

Meise Botanic Garden (2023). Meise Botanic Garden Herbarium (BR). Version 1.29. Meise Botanic Garden. Occurrence
dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/wrthhx accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-07-20.

Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0)

The Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence additionally means that users may not use the work for commercial purposes. While use of this licence may seem attractive to poorly funded institutions it is highly unlikely to lead to an increase in revenue, but will almost certainly result in less use. Because commercial and non-commercial uses and intentions cannot be exhaustively defined, use of this licence can deter users who may be uncertain. In addition, if institutions are unlikely to challenge use in practice e.g. through lack of resource, there may be little purpose in using a non-commercial licence. This licence is also compatible with GBIF, but cannot be used to put images of specimens on Wikimedia platforms, such as Wikipedia.

If you use a non-commercial stipulation it is important to explain how commercial users can obtain permission for use.

ShareAlike

The sharealike term requires users to distribute their contributions under the same licence as the original. This licence is not compatible with GBIF, but can be used on Wikipedia. The intention of using this licence is to encourage open data sharing, which is commendable, but it creates a significant block to downstream use of derivatives, including in scientific publications.

NoDerivatives

This stipulation means that people can use the material, but they cannot distribute anything derived from it. This is largely incompatible with most of the potential objectives of digitization and is not recommended. Licences with this stipulation are not compatible with GBIF or Wikimedia.

References

• Labastida, I., & Margoni, T. (2020). Licensing FAIR data for reuse. Data Intelligence, 2(1-2), 199-207. doi: 10.1162/dint_a_00042
• Patterson, D.J., Egloff, W., Agosti, D. et al. Scientific names of organisms: attribution, rights, and licensing. BMC Res Notes 7, 79 (2014). doi: 10.1186/1756-0500-7-79

Authors

Quentin Groom
Meise Botanic Garden, Meise, Belgium

Citation

Document Control

Version: 0.1
Changes since last version: Last Updated: 19 July 2023

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