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As a follow-up to the UZH Open Science Summer School 2020, a half-day workshop on “The Legal Aspects of Open Science” was held earlier this year. The workshop was organized by the HBZ in cooperation with the Graduate Campus and met with such great interest that it even had to be held three times. It seems that copyright, licenses and Co. are on the minds of the research community at the UZH. So, what did the participants learn in the workshop?

The workshop was led by Suzanna Marazza and Anna Picco-Schwendener from the Competence Center in Digital Law (CCdigitallaw) and gave the participants in-depth insights into the definition of copyright and protected works, the difference between moral and economic copyright, the rights of other users when they want to copy, modify or share protected works, as well as the connection between copyright and Open Science and how to choose the right license. The workshop made it apparent that a good understanding of copyright and licenses is particularly important in the context of Open Science. This is due to the fact that Open Science practices aim to make everything publicly available to everyone, while copyright law prevents this from happening automatically. However, by granting detailed licenses, an author can, for example, grant others certain rights that determine how the copyrighted works may be further processed and used. Depending on the license then, other users have different possibilities of using a work, from “everything is allowed” to “use is allowed, but only if the user indicates the author, does not modify the work and does not use it for commercial purposes”.

The presentation slides of the workshop can be downloaded here. More information about copyright can also be found on the HBZ site.

The topic of copyright is thus complicated enough in and of itself. If personal and sensitive data of research participants also comes into play, data management becomes even more complicated. The DMLawTool developed by CCdigitallaw is designed to help researchers find their way through the legal jungle: How and under what conditions can I publish my data open access, which licenses are necessary, and what do I do with personal data? All this and much more can be found out at dmlawtool.web.app.

And for those who are also interested: The HBZ and the GRC are organizing a community event on Open Science on June 18, 2021 for an exchange of experiences. You can register via contact@grc.uzh.ch .