Research Data Management and Sharing

Contact Brown Technology Innovations for questions about licensing and patents, including assigning a license to software and research products developed at and owned by Brown University and/or funded by sponsored research. In addition, if you have any intent to commercialize a research product or the research product has commercial potential, then contact Brown Technology Innovations before publishing/sharing the research product publicly.

License for Software

Brown University Patent and Copyright Policy Section 3.1.5 Patentable Works/Computer Software

"Computer software created by Members of the Brown Community in the course of their University duties or using University funds or funds administered by the University. All creations of computer software must be disclosed to the office of Brown Technology Innovations (“BTI”). University-owned computer software may be distributed by the author to others for academic and research purposes only using the Computer Science Department Copyright Notice (see below). Any other release or distribution of computer software must be coordinated with BTI. BTI will provide appropriate guidance for distribution licenses and will arrange for copyright registration when appropriate. Distribution for internal University purposes need not be coordinated with BTI and is permissible with the approval of the author of the work and the Department Head."

• Brown Computer Science Department Guidance on Software Licenses and Copyright [https://cs.brown.edu/about/system/get/licenses/]
• Brown University Software Copyright Notice and License Agreement [https://cs.brown.edu/about/system/publish/copyright/copy_notice/]
• Open Source Initiative  [https://opensource.org/licenses]  Provides links to several open source and open access licenses and initiatives for code and software, including BSD, MIT, Apache, and GNU GPL. (N.b. these open source licenses may not be appropriate for software for which Brown asserts its ownership/copyright under the University's Patent and Copyright Policy, which prohibits incorporation of Brown-owned research into products owned by commercial entities or such entities profiting off Brown-owned research. Contact BTI for assistance.)

Licenses for Datasets

• Creative Commons  [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/] (CC) licenses are used by a growing number of scholarly journals for sharing open access versions of articles and are often used for supplementary materials. CC licenses allow creators to be explicit about their wishes for how they intend for their works to be used, re-distributed, adapted, and under which conditions and by whom. (N.b. these open access licenses may not be appropriate for software for which Brown asserts its ownership/copyright under the University's Patent and Copyright Policy, which prohibits incorporation of Brown-owned research into products owned by commercial entities or such entities profiting off Brown-owned research. Contact BTI for assistance.)

Licenses for Databases

• Open Knowledge Foundations Open Data Commons [https://opendatacommons.org/index.html]  offers open access licenses for datasets and databases. (N.b. these open licenses may not be appropriate for software for which Brown asserts its ownership/copyright under the University's Patent and Copyright Policy, which prohibits incorporation of Brown-owned research into products owned by commercial entities or such entities profiting off Brown-owned research. Contact BTI for assistance.)