Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

As this post notes, Creative Commons has published a report Licensing Best Practices for Sharing Scientific Data (37 page PDF), a guide for researchers and data producers. As with most of what comes out of Creative Commons these days, I have mixed views. First, I note with approval that it endorses FAIR for open data - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. However, it presents only two options for licensing of open data: either CC0, which is a 'public domain' license, or CC-by, which only requires attribution. There is no suggestion that data might be released for non-commercial purposes only. But - note well - it would also allow for the use of the data by corporations to train AI models, something Creative Commons has agitated against, up to and including suggestions like a 'pay to crawl' policy. So I don't know what Creative Commons really intends with respect to scientific data.

Today: Total: [Direct link] [Share]


Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

Copyright 2026
Last Updated: Apr 22, 2026 11:49 a.m.

Canadian Flag Creative Commons License.