Why data copyright and open licensing matter

Résumé

Research data are often not protected by copyright because they lack originality, but are generally made available under a copyright license. This situation is problematic firstly because research data are not always protected, and secondly because the licenses chosen are often restrictive and closed (e.g. those prohibiting modification and/or commercial use); or open, but not very suitable for Open Research Data (e.g. licenses requiring attribution or share alike). For those reasons, and to fully achieve the objectives of the Open Science movement with the least restrictions to impact data reuse, public domain licenses are recommended for sharing research data (e.g. CC0).