Hi there,
I’ve been looking through OpenNeuro, and I’ve come across a handful of datasets for which I can’t seem to locate any licensing information. It’s not listed in the dataset_description.json nor in the plaintext README.
Does OpenNeuro have a default licensing, or are these datasets actually unlicensed ? Or is there another place I should be looking for licensing information ?
Thanks so much,
Elizabeth
Hi @emdupre, I can check on that. Do you have the accession numbers? If they migrated from OpenFMRI, I think a definitive answer should be there to be found. If they’re user-submitted since then, we might need to contact the submitters and ask them to explicitly choose a license.
Thanks for the quick response, @effigies ! Here are a few:
They all seem to be since the OpenfMRI migration, but please let me know if I can provide any other information, here !
Thanks again,
Elizabeth
Ah, from the FAQ:
You agree that this dataset and results of all analyses performed on it using the OpenNeuro platform will become publicly available under a Creative Commons CC0 or CC-BY license after a grace period of 36 months counted from first successful analysis of data from more than one participant.
During upload, users are prompted with
I agree that this dataset and results of all analyses performed on it using the OpenNeuro platform will become publicly available under a Creative Commons CC0 or Creative Commons CC-BY license (depending on the dataset metadata) after a grace period of 36 months counted from first successful analysis of data from more than one participant. You will be able to apply for up to two 6 month extensions to increase the grace period in case the publication of a corresponding paper takes longer than expected. See FAQ for details.
And have to click “I AGREE”.
I would presume CC-BY.
Great, thank you ! I thought there might be a default hiding somewhere 
Two quick follow-up questions:
Any ideas what “dataset metadata” is being referenced regarding CC0 or CC-BY ?
If I wanted to have the listing officially updated on OpenNeuro to mention the correct license, should I just comment on the dataset itself ?
Thanks so much again,
Elizabeth
The "License" field in dataset_description.json. This should be the same as what appears on the dataset page under “License”.
If I wanted to have the listing officially updated on OpenNeuro to mention the correct license, should I just comment on the dataset itself ?
Yes, this would be my suggestion.
Sorry, to press on this – folks who do list a license seem to prefer PDDL. Does that listed license take precedence ? And if no license is listed, then the default is CC-BY ?
Thanks again,
Elizabeth
No worries. PDDL seems to be equivalent to CC0 by my reading, as they’re both public domain dedications. I’m asking around regarding how to treat unlisted licenses, but it seems that you can’t go wrong assuming CC-BY, as following that doesn’t violate CC0/PDDL.
Just as a follow-up, yes, you should probably assume CC-BY, but if you can’t get a definitive answer by commenting on the datasets, let us know, and we’ll try to prod people to explicitly license.
Just as another follow-up…
Talking to the site developers, it seems that we’ve been having people click-through an agreement that they are publishing under CC0 since the very beginning, so they are all CC0. We will update all displayed licenses accordingly, and in the meantime, you can treat them all as CC0.
Sorry for any confusion.
MANAGED BY INCF