Share data and collaborate
To add value to research it is important to be able to share data and collaborate with other researchers, as well as companies and society.
Sharing non-personal data
If the data does not contain any personal information, usually no separate data agreement is needed to share them with collaborators. You might, though, want to regulate the overall collaboration with a collaboration agreement.
Sharing personal data
If the data contains personal information, and it is not possible to anonymize the data, agreements that regulate access and what the recipient (e.g a collaborator at another university or a private company) is allowed to do or not with the data are required.
The process for drawing up agreements for the transfer of personal data is described here.
Licencing data
A licence is a formal statement issued by the holder of the rights to a dataset, giving permission to use the dataset in certain ways.
You might, for example, specify that if the data is reused, you must be cited as the creator – or that the data may be used for research and educational purposes, but not in commercial contexts.
Licences for data can be:
- Traditional data sharing or collaboration agreements, which grant rights only to specific individuals or entities.
- ‘Open’ licenses, which grant rights to anyone, often subject to certain minimal conditions like attribution of the data’s owner. Commonly used open licences for data include Creative Commons and Open Data Commons licences.
Contact research data office
If you have questions regarding sharing and collaborating research data please contact rdo@ki.se