Thread by @egonwillighagen

we're going to have a big copyright law fight in science... putting scientific knowledge online, allows legal scraping in the USA. That means, putting data online, puts it out in the open. I am not sure if the scraped data falls under copyright (does it)? 1/

but that latter is not the point: by taking data from a licensed source that does not allow redistribution, and you put it online, you *are* distributing it. Similar thing we see with SPARQL end points. The scraping there is trivial. 2/

it nicely shows that most researches don't git a s***/f*** (depending on region) about copyright law (also why many happily give it for free to publishers). Few journals give a s***/f*** (depending on publisher) either. 3/

on the other hand, #openscience does care. open science has been harassed enough to agree that copyright law is here to stay, whether you like it or not. Ignoring licensing issues is not #openscience. It is saying, we don't give a s***/f*** about collaboration. 4/

fortunately, there is a slowly growing awareness. For example, this is why the CC0 license/waiver is gaining ground. It is like the MIT license for sources code, but then for data. This is why projects like @wikidata and @wikipathways use it. 5/

this is also how @DrugBankDB enables interoperability, by releasing a subset of their data as CC0: go.drugbank.com/releases/lates… 6/

but creating a resource with data that you are not allowed to redistribute is legally a no-go. As an editor, this should have my attention and we see that authors regularly struggle with this. In fact, most universities do not teach legal aspects of doing research 7/

instead, the main Dutch research partners (the government, @NWONieuws, @zonMW, @_knaw, @deVSNU) typically are very silent on this professional skill. Indeed, it is librarians that often have to educate the researchers, such as with #openaccess. 8/

@NWONieuws @ZonMw @_knaw @deVSNU this is particularly shocking if you realize that The Netherlands likes to be a "knowledge economy", but is it really professional to ignore this (nowadays) essential aspect of doing research? 9/

one could argue, is that important to doing research or what we train people for? Good point. I am not sure either. However, at the same time, we do stress presentation skills a lot. As if form is more important than law. 9/

Mind you, law is about collaboration. Law formalizes (where needed) how we as a country as a civilization want to collaborate. Therefore, not giving a s***/f*** about breaking copyright law is not very #openscience. 10/

So, next time someone collects data, publishes a paper, check if they are violating copyright law. I know it is complex. But it is important for being inclusive. #openscience is about sharing knowledge, collaboration, about removing any barriers that make that impossible 11/11

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