Summary

This is a short summary of the note “Proposal for a licencing policy for KM3NeT open science components”. It introduces key considerations and recommendations for the application of open licenses to KM3NeT research products. A fuller insight into the developing discussion, introduction to core concepts and developing guidelines to license application are available at the dedicated webpage.

Requirements

To ensure legal security for the user of open science resources, science products like publications, software, and data are required to carry a license in which the copyright holder (i.e. creator) grants the user the right to reuse and modify the material. Applying open licenses is considered an essential part of the “reusablility”-requirement of FAIR data and a key requirement for open science. These licenses should be machine-readable and be distributed with the products to allow easy tracability.

Licenses need to be specific to the use, and various open intiatives provide licenses tailored to the specific needs.

Licensing domains relevant to KM3NeT include but are not limited to

  • Open Access material, including publications, graphics and media, for which the widely-used Creative Commons license can be used;

  • Open Software, focusing on software produced by and for the KM3NeT collaboration (“bespoke” software), for which interoperability amongst the wide choice of licenses is a key consideration; and

  • Open databases and data sets, which can be separated in a license covering copyright on the database itself (sui generis database rights), copyright on the structuring of the database, and on the data itself.

Policy

As in part already approved by the Institute Board, licensing in KM3NeT should, if not limited by other circumstances, follow the following principles:

  1. Permissive license - Copyright licenses to products produced within the KM3NeT collaboration and for the KM3NeT collaboration should put minimal restrictions on the reuse of the products and should therefore be permissive.

  2. Attribution - It should be ensured that the use of KM3NeT products is attributed to the creators, i.e. to the copyright holder according to the best current understanding of the legal situation, and to the KM3NeT collaboration where possible.

  3. No Share-Alike - As share-alike clauses might lead to compatibility issues at a later stage, they should be carefully considered and are not recommended, as they also contradict rule 1).

  4. No Warranty - Liability for the use of KM3NeT products should be limited as far as the national jurisdiction allows. Licenses should therefore carry a “no warranty” clause.

  5. Standard application - The license should be machine-readable to allow the easy distribution of the licensing information alongside the product. Standard license templates should be provided for the KM3NeT collaboration.

Recommendations by product

Software licensing

As the community use does not indicate any preferred version for open software licenses, three different option are meeting the criteria of wide use and no share-alike (copyleft) clause: Apache 2.0, BSD-3-clause and MIT license. Within the computing and software working group, a preference for MIT and BSD-3 clause was found. Due to its analogous use in the CTA and SKA experiments, the latter is recommended:

Recommendation: 3 clause BSD license

Documentation and supplementary material

For supplementary material, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0) is widely used and meets the policy principles, as it allows all baseline rights as redistribution and modification, but under the condition of author attribution. CC International licenses 4.0 act as international licenses by incorporating clauses allowing for deviation from the license according to national regulations.

Recommendation: CC-BY 4.0 International license or higher

Data and databases

Following the above principles and opting for a license that is specific for the use on databases, a license by the OpenDataCommons is recommended, including attribution. For the data itself, the use of CC-BY 4.0 is recommended, as it is already offered as a default option within the Virtual Observatory software and widely used for datasets. Only for internal exploitation of the data, licenses are applied to the data after a predefined embargo period.

Recommendation for databases: ODC-By

Recommendation for data: CC-BY 4.0 International license

Implementation

Current status in the KM3NeT collaboration

Currently, various licenses have been applied to KM3NeT publications, e.g. on Zenodo, software packages, e.g. on Git, and supplementary material on webpages and social media. In addition to that, also the quote of the copyright holder varies widely, from individuals to institutes or to “the KM3NeT collaboration”.

Attribution

In the applicable Memorandum of Understanding for phase 1, Article 14 regulates intellectual property rights, which, shortly summarized, leaves copyright of any product with the contributing institutions. Note that the copyright holder might in most cases not coincide with the author and / or contributors, as copyright to dedicated material to KM3NeT is mostly governed by the employment status of the creator to their respective institutes and additional clauses from funding contracts.

As the copyright notices and license should cite the actual copyright holder, this would require in most cases to name the contracting institutes rather than the creator/researcher, or various institutes for joint efforts, or the full list of KM3NeT members and institutes regarding such high-level products into which the full collaborative effort was invested.

Within the INFRADEV project supporting KM3NeT phase 2.0, an obligation is placed on the institutes to foster open access 1, and an according “consortium agreement” needs to be reached. Both here and in the MoU, however, no explicit regulation exists that would allow to transfer copyright to “the KM3NeT collaboration”, as no specific clauses exist within the inter-institutional contracts, and the collaboration, not being a legal entity, is not able to hold a copyright anyway.

For practical reasons, however, it is recommended to cite as copyright holder “the KM3NeT collaboration” where possible, and link the license as matter of completeness to the full list of authors and member institutes at the time of licensing. In addition to that, (primary) authors and contibutors should be listed separately from the license. This would indicate shared copyright for the collaborative efforts, and also allow for copyright infringement claims by all participating institutions should the need arise.

Starting with licenses

  • The use of standard licenses and the citation of the copyright holder should be agreed upon by the Institute Board of KM3NeT.

  • Short guidelines how to apply the chosen licenses will be made available.

  • For future approved publications of research results, data and software, authors should be encouraged to apply the licenses.

  • Where relicensing is appropriate or no licenses has yet been allocated to the research product, authors are encouraged to also apply the licenses retroactively.

Internal review

It is also recommended that licensing to the KM3NeT Collaboration follows internal reviewing processes, e.g. approval by the Publication Committee for open access material and an internal reviewing process for software and data by the yet to be installed Open Science Committee.

1

Including a Commission Recommendation on the management of intellectual property.