Licensing Your Research Data

It’s great that you’re supporting and contributing to open research initiatives when you share your research, but let’s make sure you’re receiving proper credit for it. Using a license is a helpful way to be acknowledged for your work and to communicate permission to potential users on how your work can be used.

There are many types of licenses for various kinds of products, contexts, and disciplines, with each having its own unique purpose, policies, and legal protection. Choosing the best license depends on your preferences and the nature of your work.

Looking for a cheat sheet? Check out our one-pager

Table of contents

Warm-up

Before proceeding, let’s answer these warm-up questions:

  1. Take a look at this workshop page. If you were to create a workshop on CC Licenses, can you use this information openly?
  2. Take a look at the cited dataset below. If you wanted to use that data in your research, could you use it freely?

Access the dataset here:

Binfield, Lucy, 2025, “Student perceptions of waste sorting interventions, and participation rates in interventions, in high-density student housing”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/POXHD6, Borealis, V1

What is copyright?

Copyright is a legal concept where an individual or an organization, the copyright holder, has the right to control what becomes of their work, such as:

  • Reproductions
  • Performances
  • Publications
  • Adaptations
  • Translations
  • Telecommunications

In other words, the copyright holder gets to control how users can use their work. A copyrighted work can be used with the author’s permission or by user rights, as outlined in Canada’s Copyright Act. Another way users can use copyrighted works is through licenses.

What can’t be copyrighted?

What can’t be copyrighted is more complicated. Works that don’t have enough “originality” may not be protected by copyright.

  • For example, some forms of data analysis may not be “creatively” driven and can’t be protected by copyright.
  • Another example is when research is replicated using the original raw data to reproduce the results. Neither the original data nor the reproduced data is copyrightable.

More concrete examples include:

  • Facts
  • Ideas
  • Procedures
  • Methods of operations, math concepts
  • Raw data
  • Simple visualisations, like simple line graphs

Why is raw data not copyrightable?

To answer concisely, raw data just doesn’t meet the threshold for copyright protection. However, as a counterbalance, expressions of raw data in an original way can benefit from copyright protection and licensing.

Copyrighting raw, factual data would hinder academic, scientific, intellectual, and artistic freedoms, in addition to obstructing research transparency and replicability. Having factual information freely available improves the learning and knowledge of a discipline.

What can be copyrighted?

An original, unique work produced by a creator can be protected by copyright. Most of the time, creative products of research can be covered by copyright.

Copyrighted things could be:

  • Complex visualisations, like infographics and pamphlets
  • Research papers
  • Tutorial videos
  • Presentation slides
  • Datasets
  • Databases

Creative Commons licenses

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization that issues standardized and free licenses to protect your work when you share it. CC licenses are recognized and applicable internationally.

CC licenses help users know what can and cannot be done with your work without having to be in direct contact or communicate with you. They are a way of giving users permission to use your work properly under copyright law. Don’t worry, CC licenses won’t remove the copyright of the work.

Here are the license terms that are used in CC licenses:

  • BY: attribution
  • SA: share alike
  • ND: no derivatives
  • NC: non-commercial use

There are many kinds of CC licenses. Below is an image showing what each license looks like, followed by a table with a description for each type.

CC license What it indicates
CC BY Give credit to the creator.
CC BY-ND Give credit to the creator, but you must not make derivatives (remixes) or adapt the work.
CC BY-NC Give credit to the creator, but only use the work for non-commercial purposes.
CC BY-SA Give credit to the creator, but make sure to share the work (can be created from remixing or adapting the material) using the same license terms.
CC BY-NC-SA Give credit to the creator, but only use the work for non-commercial purposes. You must also share the work (can be created from remixing or adapting the material) using the same license terms.
CC BY-NC-ND Give credit to the creator, but only use the work for non-commercial purposes. You must also not make derivatives (remixes) or adapt the work.

Different CC licenses have varying levels of freedom and control, with some being more restrictive (less free) and others being more open. For example, CC BY is the license that allows many things (remixing, adding to the work, free distribution, and commercial use), while CC BY-NC-ND is the license that has many restrictions (doesn’t allow for commercial use and remixing or modification).

Image from How to Attribute Creative Commons Photos by Foter, used under CC BY-SA.

A “derivative” work: Are you making a smoothie?

Are you taking things from many places and making something new, like a smoothie? Then it would be considered a “derivative” work. However, it’s still good to give credit to the parts you used to make your derivative work.

CC BY-ND: Why this license may not be the best for researchers working with data

Under this license, research outputs cannot be remixed (i.e., new works derived from the original copyrighted material), which is often counterproductive for sharing and reusing research data.

The “ND” (NoDerivatives) term means that while adaptations or transformations may be created (for private use, for example), any newly adapted or derived work cannot be distributed, limiting data reuse.

How can I apply a CC license?

To apply a CC license, you need to be the copyright owner of the work. If you don’t have copyright ownership over a portion of the work you’re licensing, then you need to obtain permission from the owner of that work.

  • You need to be specific about what part(s) of your work are being CC licensed (if the work contains third-party copyrighted material and the work isn’t 100% yours).

Which CC license do I choose?

Selecting a CC license depends on your preferences and the nature of your research. Consider asking yourself:

  • How much freedom do you want users to have?
  • How much control do you want?
  • How much access and use by users are appropriate for the subject of your research?
  • Do you want others to attribute you? Do you not want others to make derivatives? Do you want to allow users to make money off your work (commercial use)?

The Creative Commons also provides a tool that can help you choose the right license.

The Borealis data repository is supported by the UBC Library to allow the application of any suite of CC licenses. You can also consult UBC’s Creative Commons Guide for more detailed information about CC licenses.

CC0 Universal

What does CC0 mean? CC0 is not a license, but instead a public domain dedication tool that indicates the creator giving up copyright for their work and releasing it into the public domain. A work may also enter the public domain if the copyright protection expires.

Copyright protection for works will expire 70 years after the calendar year in which the creator’s death occurred. Therefore, the work is no longer protected by copyright, and it can be used openly for any purpose. Users can distribute, remix, adapt, add to the work, and more, unconditionally.

The CC0 dedication tool does more than just give up copyright:

  • It waives copyright and any other rights that apply.
  • If there are rights that the rights holder cannot waive under applicable law, the work is licensed in a way that mirrors as closely as possible the legal effect of a waiver.
  • If there are any rights that the rights holders cannot waive or license, they affirm that they will not exercise them, and they will not assert any claim with respect to the use of the work.

More information about the public domain and the duration of copyright protection for certain kinds of work can be found on UBC’s Public Domain page.

Exercise 1

Let’s now try practicing what we’ve learned so far. Of these 3 datasets provided below, please determine which can and can’t be used based on these 2 scenarios:

  1. You want to use these datasets as part of your systematic review project
  2. You want to use these datasets to help set up your small startup business

Access the datasets here:

Azadian, Amin; Protopopova, Alexandra, 2025, “Replication Data for: Stability in Cognitive and Behavioural Performance Varies Between Dog Breed Clades”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/8MC0X2, Borealis, V1

Hives, Benjamin; Bruno D. Zumbo; Mark R. Beauchamp; Yan Liu; Eli Puterman, 2025, “COVID-19 Pandemic and Exercise (COPE) Trial: Engagement with exercise apps and psychological stress”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/SJYOUF, Borealis, V1

Ali, Naila; White, Hailie; Min, Jason; Leung, Larry, 2025, “Pharmacy Program in a BC First Nation: Perspectives of Patients, Clinicians, and Student Learners in a Rural and Remote Indigenous Context”, https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/TAWTOV, Borealis, V2

Open Government Licenses

As an extra note, you may also be interested in knowing about a different kind of license: Open Government Licenses (OGL). OGLs are applied to government datasets in government open data portals. This kind of license allows users to reuse government data openly (but not freely, since there are outlined terms).

  • This kind of license also supports and encourages policies related to government transparency and accountability, such as BC’s Open Information and Open Data policy.

Different levels of government in different Canadian provinces and territories have their own OGL version. You may notice that the usage terms can be very similar to one another, but vary by attribution name and information provider.

Here are some examples of open data portals by various levels of government:


Here’s a breakdown of what we covered: Licensing and copyright can only be applied to things that are products of creative or unique intellectual activity. Licenses like Creative Commons and Open Government Licenses help to concisely communicate how to use a work properly and legally within the copyright framework. The level of permission can vary — some licenses openly allow modification and commercial use, while some don’t. Choose the license that best suits your preferences and the subject for your research output.

Congrats!

Hooray! You now know about copyright and licensing in a research data context, and can communicate to users how you want your work to be properly interacted with.


Sources

Need help?

Please reach out to research.data@ubc.ca for assistance with any of your research data questions.

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