CC BY 4.0 as licence for GAW data hosted by GAW WDCs - wmo-im/et-acdm GitHub Wiki

Attn: EPAC SSC Chair Greg Carmichael

Status: APPROVED BY SSC EPAC (5 July 2022)

Originators

Kjetil Torseth (EBAS, hosting WDCRG), Markus Fiebig (WDCA), Jörg Klausen (Chair ET-ACDM)

Background and Rational

GAW World Data Center (WDC) data are openly available and serve many application areas. Experience has shown that data are often used without reference or attribution to neither the underlying efforts made by the data center hosts, to GAW nor to the data originators. In the case of NILU hosting the WDCRG and WDCA, parts of the GAW data will also be licensed through other organizational frameworks (EMEP and ACTRIS). Data licensing is also considered an important contribution to making data FAIR. For this reason it is suggested to introduce an open data license on GAW data hosted by the WDCs. Requests for attribution by the community providing data to WDCs call for a common, clear, legally binding arrangement of the rights and obligations of data users. The Creative Commons organization provides a series of well-established licenses, of which CC BY 4.0 meets all requirements.

Value Proposition

By adopting a well established license, data submitters and data users know their rights and limitations (if any) of use of the data they access. Under CC BY 4.0, data archives (as the stewards of the data they manage), and the program/framework the data are affiliated with (e.g., WMO GAW) are attributed for the services they provide.

Proposed License and Attribution Template

Licensing of data in GAW [acronym of WDC]

GAW [acronym of WDC] data are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). The summary of (and not a substitute for) the license can be found here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

By downloading data from GAW [acronym of WDC] you agree to the licensing conditions that apply to the data (CC BY 4.0). Under this license derived products and redistribution are allowed, but you are required to always inform your users of the original source of the data used, refer them to the license text and the original source at GAW [acronym of WDC] for possible updates or corrections. The GAW [acronym of WDC] data are provided "as is", without warranty of any kind. In no event shall the copyright holders or GAW [acronym of WDC] be liable for any damages or other liability in connection with use of the data.

You are free to:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial use

Under the following terms:

  • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit to [WDC host institution, including URL] and to WMO GAW, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • You are requested to contact the data originators (data creator) when the data is used for publication(s), and to offer them the possibility to comment and/or offer them co-authorship or acknowledgement in the publication when this is justified by the added value of the data for your results. The data originator can be identified through the metadata connected to the provided DOI or PID or in the meta data header in the file,
  • No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything the license permits. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Proposed Attribution

Attribution/citation/acknowledgement should be expressed as follows:

Data used in this [study/report/figure/etc] were accessed on [date] from [acronym of WDC] ([URL]) hosted by [hosting organization]. These data originate from the following program(s)/network(s): [list of program/network acronyms] [and are always available at [DOI or URL of DOI landing page]].

Example: "Data used in this report were accessed on 1 February 2022 from GAW WDCRG (ebas.nilu.no) hosted by NILU - Norwegian Institute for Air Research. These data originate from the following programs/networks: WMO GAW, ACTRIS."

Note: Persistent Digital Identifiers, DOIs, for data in GAW-WDCRG are under implementation (to be ready in 2022). When implemented, the citation to data will be available through the landing page of the data object. From this page you will always be able to download the data object again. The Persistent Digital Identifiers (PID) or Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the data object will always resolve to its landing page when you submit this to the handle system.

Relation to WMO Unified Data Policy

Atmospheric composition data fall under the category 'core data' of the WMO Unified Data Policy (Resolution 4.1/1, Cg-Ext(2021), 2021). WMO Members (i.e., nations and territories that are signatories of the WMO Convention) shall provide [these data] on a free and unrestricted basis. The relevant terms are defined as follows:

  • Free and unrestricted means available for use, re-use and sharing without charge and with no conditions on use.
  • In the context of this resolution, conditions on use may be applied only to recommended data; such conditions may be applied using licenses. Note that attribution is not considered a condition on data use and is strongly encouraged in all cases.

Data submitted to GAW WDCs were submitted under the provisions of the (former) GAW data policy, which says "For scientific purposes, access to these data is unlimited and provided without charge. By their use you accept that an offer of co-authorship will be made through personal contact with the data providers or owners whenever substantial use is made of their data. In all cases, an acknowledgement must be made to the data providers or owners and the data centre when these data are used within a publication."

Although the provisions of the WMO Data Policy are not exactly the same, and attribution is only strongly encouraged for core data, it is believed that attaching a CC BY 4.0 license - imposing the requirement for attribution - for the retrieval and use of GAW data is compatible with this WMO Resolution.

Application to existing data in archives

The CC BY 4.0 does not impose "an offer of co-authorship will be made through personal contact with the data providers or owners whenever substantial use is made of their data". The template offered above extends the CC BY 4.0 with a request to "to contact the data originators (data creator) when the data is used for publication(s), and to offer them the possibility to comment and/or offer them co-authorship or acknowledgement in the publication when this is justified by the added value of the data for your results." This is not legally binding in any way, though.

Moreover, CC BY 4.0 also explicitly allows commercial use of the data, which clearly goes beyond the (former) GAW data policy. Thus, data submitters waive their rights to constrain use of their data to scientific applications if CC BY 4.0 is adopted by the WDCs.

It would be impractical to solicit active agreement by the originators of existing data in the WDCs to a change of the data policy as intended here. It is also impractical and not necessarily in the best interest of these originators to provide the existing data under the (former) GAW data policy and only register new data under a CC BY 4.0 license. Thus, an adoption of CC BY 4.0 by a WDC implies applications to the entire data archive. Data owners should be proactively informed about this change and should be asked to contact the archive it they disagree to making their data available for all purposes covered under CC BY 4.0 - including commercial use. EPAC SSC should decide beforehand what should happen with such data.

Considerations by ET-ACDM

The proposal was discussed by ET-ACDM during its meeting on 2 March 2022. [summary of discussion of ET-ACDM meeting]

o Discussion showed majority support, but also expressed concerns and raised a number of questions:

  • IPR of data submitters vs IPR of WDCs, license should protect the former as a priority
  • Compliance of suggested license with WMO Unified Data policy is unclear and needs to be looked at by (WMO) lawyers
  • Can WDCs attach a license to something they don’t own?
  • Questions on application of existing data at WDCs, on already licensed data that are submitted to a WDC

Conclusion and Recommendation to EPAC SSC

ET-ACDM members in support of motion:

  • Jörg Klausen (chair)
  • Kjetil Tørseth
  • Markus Fiebig
  • Gao Chen
  • Tom Kralidis
  • Martin Schultz
  • Vincent-Henri Peuch
  • Atsuya Kinoshita
  • Øystein Godøy

ET-ACDM members who have not voted:

  • Christopher Lehmann
  • Anatoly V Tsvetkoc

ET-ACDM members not supporting the motion:

  • None

ET-ACDM members who abstain from voting:

  • Judd Welton

Further discussion of this document

https://github.com/wmo-cop/et-wdc/issues/19