Distribution licenses

A document or dataset published openly may still come with some requirements and limits on what can be done with it. Theses are detailed in the license used to publish it.

Depending on the type of document, and the restrictions one wants to apply to its future (re)uses, several licenses are available.

Creative Commons

The Creative Commons licenses are the most widely used across different fields and locations. They come in different flavors:

CC0

The 0 version of the Creative Commons license completely opens the publication to reuse, including modifications, re-sharing, … Publishing anything under CC0 basically puts it in the public domain.

CC-BY

With the BY mention, the publication can be used openly, but it is required that the original authors be mentioned. This license is the one that fit the best the traditional scientific practices, and can be the default choice when in doubt.

CC-SA

With SA, the open publication can be reused and reshared, be must be shared alike, i.e. under the same CC-SA license or an equivalent one.

CC-NC

NC stands for non commercial. It means any reuse or reshare is authorized as long as it is not for commercial use.

The BY, SA and NC can be combined and form, for example, the CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-NC licenses.

More information on https://creativecommons.org/

CeCIll

The CeCIll license is intended for open software publication. The name stands for “CEA CNRS INRIA logiciel libre”. Its current version is 2.1 and can be found in detail here: https://cecill.info/licences/Licence_CeCILL_V2.1-fr.txt.

European Union Public License (EUPL)

The EUPL is a European Public License, compatible with CeCILL and CC-BY-SA, intended to be a standard at the European Union level. It’s current version is 1.2 and the text can be found on https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eupl-text-eupl-12

LICENCE OUVERTE etaLab

Finally, the licence ouverte etaLab is a general purpose Open License, compatible with CC-BY. Just like the EUPL, it’s a license created to be fully in accordance with the French law and stay compatible with other licenses. The current version (2.0) can be found here : https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DISIC/politique-de-contribution-open-source/master/LICENSE.pdf

It is the default version for datasets published on Recherche Data Gouv.

The issue of Open Access licenses for nuclear data

There are some sticking points with distributing nuclear data for application:

  • The scientist producing the data want their work to be cited, leaning toward -BY.

  • The nuclear data will ultimately be used by industrial, so -NC is not a valid license variant.

  • A specific license for nuclear data could include and exclusion for military uses, while making possible for the exact same data to be transferred to the relevant authorities for military purpose as long as it is done outside the Open Access license.