Each published Data Descriptor will be accompanied by machine-readable metadata designed to help advanced users mine and search our content. These metadata will include basic information about the Data Descriptor article, as well as terms that describe key aspects of the experiments or procedures in the study. See Box 1 for a brief outline of this information.

After discussions with the community, and our Advisory Panel, we have decided to share this information under the Creative Commons Zero waiver (CC0), which is designed to free information of copyright restrictions. By applying the CC0 waiver to Data Descriptor metadata, we allow others to reuse it without legal limitation. Indeed, much of the content in these metadata files could be considered collections of “facts”, and may not be copyrightable in the first place – but, there can be substantial legal grey areas. The CC0 licence helps to remove ambiguity. Simply put, we don’t want data miners to have to hire a lawyer before using our metadata.

The main human-readable content of Data Descriptors — the body text of the main article, figures, etc — will remain covered by one of three open-access Creative Commons licences selected by the authors, all of which explicitly require attribution for any reuse (CC BY, CC BY-NC, & CC BY-NC-SA). The actual primary data files associated with Data Descriptors will be stored in one or more external repositories, which will have their own terms of use or licencing policies. Continue reading →