Permissible Closed-Use General licences: filling the gap between Open and Restrictive Data Licences

The virtues of Open Data are increasingly understood within the research domain, yet barriers remain for data producers to release data under an Open Data licence. Though restrictive licences exist, these are undesirable by some data providers wishing to adhere to many of the virtues of open data, but have concerns about onward sharing; seeking instead to establish a single, canonical data source. This desire stems from reasons including: data usage reporting requirements; maintaining data veracity; and that data may continue to develop (e.g. new additions or versions). These providers wish, however, to still follow other Open Data principles, especially in permitting as broad a range of uses as possible. To support such data providers' wishes the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis have drawn up two new generic, permissive-use 'closed' data licences based on the UK Open Government and UK Non-Commercial Government Licences. The Closed-Use General Licence (CUGL) and Closed-Use Non-Commercial General Licence (CUNCGL) permit widely permissive use as per open data licences, but address the onward-sharing concerns. Thus, they also signpost potential users to the canonical data source should they wish to exploit the data themselves. The licences can be found at: http://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/