License assignment

[kristinaMPDL]

Spec

General Assumption: Each published item should have a license assigned. Licenses should be assigned to items, not to collection metadata.

Use Cases: Assignment:

1. The user wants to assign one license to all items of a collection
2. The user wants to assign separate licenses for the items of one collection
3. A default license will automatically be assigned to items (during the publishing process) Changing:
4. The user wants to change the license assigned to all items of one collection
5. The user wants to change the license of one of the items in the collection Viewing:
6. The assigned license will be displayed next to the item

License: Each licence consists of

• A predefined list of possible licenses where the user can choose one

or

• A free text for the name of the license (mandatory)
• URL (mandatory)
• Picture (optional)

License Assignment: The metadata license will be handled similar to the metadata filename. That means when creating an item, the system automatically creates a metadata field license that is empty. For editing the license, there are several ways:

• To edit the license of one item: Via view item: below edit, the menu "Edit Metadata" will be changed to "Edit Item" and will include the license
• To edit the licence of all items of one collection: Via view items of a collection: below edit, there will be a new menu entry called "add/edit license for all items". Here the user can choose between "add only if value is empty" and "overwrite all values".

Release Collection:

• When the collection will be published, all items that do not have a license will automatically get the default license of the system (that can be defined by the admin of the instance). During the confirmation process of the release, the user gets a message, that x items will be assigned the default license .
• When uploading new items to a released collection:
  • Via single upload: as here the metadata of the item are editable, the license of the item should also be editable
  • Via batch upload: The user should get an information message that these items will automatically be released under the default license. In both cases, the user should get an information message that s/he is uploading an item in a released collection which means that the item itself automatically will be released, too, which s/he has has to confirm.

Change of the License : For released collections, the license can not be changed any more. Only a new license can be assigned (similar to the assignment of the first licence). When that is the case, the old license will be displayed together with a timestamps (valid until the date of the assignment of the new license ) next to the new license .

Display of the License: The license will be displayed together with all other available metadata next to the item (as a link). For licenses like creative commons licenses that have a picture which represents the licence it would be nice when the picture (as link) will be displayed instead of the link.

Further changes:

• In the metadata profile, the type license has to be deleted.
• It should be possible via the advanced search to search for a license.
• Edit single item: the license should not be displayed in the edit modus as it can not be edited via "edit metadata".
• During single upload and content upload it should also be possible to edit the license.

[ioverka]

One question regarding the "General Assumption" - isn't http://choosealicense.com/no-license/ valid for research data as well?

... and one remark regarding the "Changing" - changing the license of a published item may result in problems (if the new license is more restrictive than the old one). How is that handled in other systems?

[kristinaMPDL]

List of predefined Licenses:

• CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
• CC-BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
• PDDL (http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/summary/)
• ODC-By (http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/summary/)
• ODC-ODbL (http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/)
• CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
• dl-de-by-2.0 - Data licence Germany – attribution – version 2.0 (https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0)
• dl-de-zero-2.0 - Data licence Germany - Zero - Version 2.0 (https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/zero-2-0)

[ioverka]

I think we should keep the list of predefined licenses as short as possible. Some results from my today's field research:

1. Dryad provides one license only (CC-0)
2. Figshare has 7 (which seeem pretty extensive to me)
3. Zenodo provides 5 CC licenses

Maybe the list of available predefined licenses should be configurable as well - because the selection may be done based on the use case of a specific imeji instance? (i.e. licenses for data versus licenses for content versus licenses for software). Not sure myself ;)

[ioverka]

I think we have to talk about how to make the list of predefined licenses optional/configurable. The license selection area on the advanced search interface is much too prominent for my liking - in particular considering the Outbox scenario (private instance, currently no license used at all):

[kristinaMPDL]

You are absolutely right Inga. The list is much too prominent. First of all I would propose not to mention the version number and the whole name. Just the abbreviation would be fine enough. And perhaps we can use a drop down menu (instead of such a long list) where it is possible to select more than one value?