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Open Access and Open Licensing

What open access is and how open licenses work, the different types of OA materials, plus relevant Whittemore Library resources.

Open Access Data is...

Data that is either openly-licensed, or in the public domain, and stored in online repositories where the datasets are free to access and download.

Open, freely-usable data makes activities such as 'Open Science' much easier to carry out.  For example, one researcher's data could become useful to a different researcher years later, when analyzed in a different way, or perhaps in aggregate with other studies' data.

More about open data

Resources that will help you learn more about and work with open data:

  • Open Data Handbook
  • Open Data Commons
  • The Panton Principles for Open Data in Science

How do I figure out if a particular dataset has an open license?

Licenses for data have been found in various places:

  • Embedded in the metadata for the data
  • Communicated by watermarks or notices within the data
  • Specified on the landing page for the dataset
  • Specified on a repository website
  • Detailed in a ReadMe file released with the dataset

Where can I find openly-licensed datasets online?

Multidisciplinary:

figshare

ICPSR: Deposit Data

Open Access Directory: Data Repositories

Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data)

Open Knowledge International Projects

 

STEM:

Biosharing

  • Directory of life sciences databases and reporting standards

DataONE

Dryad

knb

  • The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB): An international repository for ecological and environmental data

Nature: Recommended Data Repositories

NIH: Data Sharing Repositories

PLOS: Recommended Repositories

Science: Data Deposition

Chemspider

ArcGIS Open Data This link opens in a new window
  • Freely available datasets from ArcGIS users, including government agencies and private institutions

 

Health Science:

Patients Like Me