Access and reuse

On this page we provide you with a quick overview of the licensing options for your datasets. Access to and reuse of data published on the SODHA platform is governed by the SODHA Access and Reuse Policy.

Read the SODHA Access and Reuse Policy here: DE – EN – FR – NL

Terms of use: Licenses

As a data repository keen to promote open science, SODHA encourages licensing data. We suggest that you extend the scope of possible reuses of your dataset. This can be done by asking that your data be published under the conditions set out in a text that allows other researchers to reuse your data beyond normal copyright limits – in other words, a license.

Licenses recommended by SODHA are available in the Licenses field, which appears at the top of the form depositors are asked when they click on Add Data > New Dataset. Each option pre-populates the Terms of Use field in the dataset’s metadata accordingly:

SODHA recommends three licenses:

‘CC-BY’ – Citation obligation

The text of this license allows other people to freely reuse your data, but they must properly attribute authorship of the data to you (and your co-authors). In other words, they must cite you as the author of the dataset in all subsequent publications for which they have reused your data. By reusing your data, they commit to this citation obligation.

This license (in full, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License) provides an excellent balance between the goal of opening research results for reuse and the need for researchers to receive proper credit for their work and to highlight their achievements.

CC-BY is the license selected by default in SODHA when you click on Add Data > New Dataset.

Read the text of the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 International Public License here: DE – EN – FR – NL

Scientific Purpose Only

The text of this license allows other people to freely reuse your data but, as with the CC-BY license, they must properly attribute authorship of the data to you (and your co-authors) and they may reuse your data only for scientific purposes (thereby excluding, for instance, commercial uses).

This license is specific to SODHA.

Read the text of the SODHA Attribution – Scientific Purpose Only License here: DE – EN – FR – NL

Public domain (CC0)

Choosing the ‘CC zero’ license means that you relinquish the copyright you (or the data owners whom you represent) may hold over the dataset. The data will be released in the public domain, which means it will be open for reuse under no conditions. There is no citation obligation attached to this license.

The CC0 license (in full, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal) can be a requirement of certain funding agencies or research contracts.

Read the text of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal here: EN – FR – NL [no translation in German available yet]

Terms of access

If you choose to restrict access to one or more files in your dataset, you must specify the access conditions in the Terms of Access field in the Terms section of your dataset’s metadata: