JISC and CREATe Workshop: Choose the Right Rights, Use the Data Right (Report by Conrado Machado)

Dimitra, Fanjing, Conrado, Zihao and Marcel took part on the workshop ‘Choose the Right Rights, Use the Data Right’.  The all-day Workshop took playe on Friday 29th June at the Hilton Grosvenor Terrace in Glasgow and was organized by the Glasgow Research Information Management Services Team, Jisc, and CREATe. The event was the third session (the first happened on November 2017 and the second on April 2018) of a series of discussions on issues around licencing of research datasets.

In the first part of the workshop Dr Sheona Burrow gave a short introduction to the difference between datasets and databases and distributed a copy of the draft of ‘Ownership of Rights in Datasets’ guidance, compiled after the two first seminars already mentioned, so the participants could analyse, discuss in small groups and offer straightforward feedback, such as what needs to be clarified, is there anything superfluous, what do you like, what don’t you like, what do you want. An informal presentation followed that by a member of each group of the main points discussed.

After a short break, the second part of the event continued with Ms Ally Farnhill clarifying terms, meanings and sometimes confusion of particular topics and terminologies understood differently by lawyers and professionals from different areas. After that Q&A session came another group discussion, this time regarding the guide ‘Making your Dataset Available’ and then the lunch break. In the return of the lunch took place the review of ‘Choosing a Dataset Licence’ guidance with the same prolific group discussion activity of the previous parts.

Part 4 was marked by Dr Thomas Margoni’s lecture on the EU Copyright Reform, highlighting the three most critical points of the Digital Single Market Directive ( publishers right, the TDM exception and the filtering obligation) and how they might influence the future of innovation and research in the EU.

The fifth and final section of the workshop, occurring right after a break, held a review of the ‘Using a Dataset’ draft guide, once more in the small group discussion style.Then, Mrs Valerie McCutcheon delivered conclusion words.

Amongst the participants there were mainly research management officers from universities of many parts in the world, such as the UK, US and Palestine, as well as members of the GU-IPS, who benefitted from the different perspective over relevant copyright issues.

GU-IPS wants to thank Mrs Valerie McCutcheon, JISC and CREATe for organzing the event and inviting us.


Ally Farnhill, a CREATe staff member, PhD candidate and GTA at the University of Glasgow has also published a report about the event, which can be accessed here.

JISC is s a United Kingdom not-for-profit company supporting post-16 and higher education, and research, by providing relevant and useful advice while researching and developing new technologies and ways of working.

CREATe is the RCUK Research Centre or Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy, located at the University of Glasgow.