Rights Management

General Approach

Rights are primarily managed through an ADA Licence Agreement and the associated ADA Licence Terms and Conditions of Use and ADA Licence Access Guestbook. Using the ADA Licence Agreement, data depositors provide ADA the right to disseminate their data and other materials under specified conditions. Data users agree to abide by these conditions when they indicate their agreement with the Terms of Use upon requesting access to the data.

ADA aims to make data as accessible as possible with transparent and minimal access criteria. ADA balances accessibility with preserving the intellectual property rights of data depositors by collecting and reviewing sufficient information from data users before approving access.

Deposit Licences

When a deposit is received by the ADA, the depositor must complete and sign a Licence Agreement, covering:

- The provision of a non-exclusive licence for the ADA to publish the data and other materials for further analysis and the publication of the results of such analysis, subject to any stated conditions.

-The assertion that access can be granted by the ADA only to persons deemed to comply with the agreed access conditions. Access conditions are outlined for users on the ADA website [100].

There are several access categories that can be selected to govern the data dissemination; however, where these categories do not meet the depositor’s requirements, customised access conditions may be devised with ADA.

Standard Access Conditions [100]:

• OPEN ACCESS: studies where there are no restrictions on access

• GENERAL ACCESS: studies with controlled data access managed by the ADA on behalf of the depositor

• RESTRICTED ACCESS: studies where the depositor, or an authorised representative, wishes to be informed by the Archive of each request to use the data in order to give or withhold permission.

• SPECIAL ACCESS: studies where the depositor has included additional special access conditions.

The ADA meets with depositors to ensure both parties can comply with the licence agreement. ADA also provides a comprehensive report detailing any changes required to meet the agreed data access conditions and to comply with Australian privacy legislation.

Terms of Use

Depositors are provided two supplementary forms – Licence Terms and Conditions of Use, and Licence Access Guestbook – that include the standard ADA terms and conditions of use and the standard information that prospective data users are required to provide, respectively. These can be modified as required by depositors.

Standard terms of use include:

- Use of data is for analytical purposes only

- Outputs must include acknowledgement of data depositor and ADA

- Notify ADA of any non-compliance

Terms and conditions of use are published alongside the data and materials. Users must explicitly agree to these terms to complete their access request. Users must also complete the guestbook with required personal and project details. The ADA evaluates these responses against the established access conditions before providing access. If sufficient information is not provided by the data applicant, then ADA access management staff will request additional information for either ADA to decide on behalf of the data custodian, or for the data custodian to decide whether access is granted. Access requests are declined if the user is unable to comply.

Open-access terms can be set for non-sensitive data by applying a Creative Commons Licence.

References

[100] ADA website - accessing data - https://ada.edu.au/accessing-data/