[open-science] Openness and Licensing of (Open) Data: norms as codes of practice?

[Heather Morrison]

Would it make sense for norms for open data to be expressed as codes  
of practice?  Perhaps different groups (disciplinary, regional etc.)  
could each have their own codes of practice.  This would allow for  
real-world experimentation, in a way that lets each group move  
forward in the way they are most comfortable with, without the legal  
messiness of licensing being attached to each datum / dataset.   
Within academia, it seems to me that this leaves enforcement with the  
academics themselves.  Simply using someone else's data without  
attribution and without adding value is a lot like plagiarism, for  
example.

A code of practice could easily accomodate the kinds of things I see  
as desirable about noncommercial and sharealike, without hard-coding  
licensing terms in a way that prevents use of the data.  One way to  
develop such codes of practice in a way that helps steer us towards a  
more inclusive global world, could be to involve Without Borders-type  
groups in the early stages of developing potential codes of  
practice.  Even a simple statement in such a code along the lines of,  
"in our discipline / lab / country, we share our data openly.  All  
that we ask in return is that you respect this open sharing by  
ensuring that any commercial products or services made possible by  
this data are provided in a way that is fair and responsible for the  
people of the planet, and sustainable for the environment".

This approach gives leadership to the development of norms to  
scholars themselves - in the long run, in my opinion, this has value  
in and of itself.  This would not be a quick fix for every  
discipline, although there is nothing here to stop those in areas  
like environment science from forging ahead quickly.

thoughts?

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, and  
does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library  
Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com