License
In accordance with the Terms of use, data in PANGAEA are published Open Access, preferably under a CC-BY license.
The license is explicitly defined in the metadata.
Contents
Under which licenses can data be archived in PANGAEA?
Licenses available from the drop-down menu in the Data submission form (Create Issue/License):
- CC-BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
- CC-BY-SA: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
- CC0: Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal
Most of the Creative Commons licenses are used in Version 4.0, which addresses sui generis database rights (SGDRs) in addition to copyright and the other copyright-like rights covered in earlier versions. Because SGDRs can impede a user's ability to share, reuse, and modify a work in the same way that copyright can, 4.0 makes it clear that these permissions apply to works that would otherwise be restricted by SGDRs as well. These version have no country specific variants. Older data were published under 3.0 version.
Additionally, PANGAEA can accomodate community-specific license agreements.
Data sets can be password protected (under moratorium) on request of the author. In this case the data can be accessed via a login which is available from the author and metadata are public.
In unpublished data sets (with status "in review", "questionable " or "validated") the license is not shown.
Which license is suitable for my data?
CC-0 / CC-ZERO 
“No rights reserved” / “no copyright”
- Public Domain
- No attribution required
- Good Scientific Practice still requires citing of used data, but this is not mandated by the license
CC-BY 
BY = shorthand for “BY Attribution”
- Data is freely available to everyone
- Usage requires to “cite”/”attribute” the original author(s)
- No further restrictions on usage
CC-BY-SA 
SA = Share Alike
- Attribution required
- If data gets included into works (e.g., paper), the resulting work must be CC-BY-SA licensed, too
- Impossibility to publish a paper with a figure/diagram, analysis, table based on licensed data in a non-open-access journal
CC-BY-ND 
ND = No Derivatives
- Attribution required
- Data can be used for own publications, but it must be shared unmodified!
- License mainly in use for artistic work (images, logos)
- For scientific use, license may make sense for visualizations, images, or maps which are not intended to be modified
- No cropping / filtering of data, no compilations. Sharing in original form (file format?).
Non Commercial 
- Feels right for scientific data, but no definition of “commercial” in license text
- Disallows fees for sharing/hosting the data
- Disallows advertisements on repository’s homepage
- Impossibility to publish a paper with a figure/diagram, analysis, table based on licensed data in a non-open-access journal
- German Law: no commercial value of data => No compensation on license violations
GNU GPL 
GNU General Public License 3.0
- Free software license
- Guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software
- Because PANGAEA does not specialize on software archivation, this license is not widely used (and cannot be chosen from drop-down menu in the data submission form)
- In case you wish to license your submitted software under this license or any other Free Software compatbible license (e.g., ASF-2.0, MIT, BSD, LGPL,...), indicate it to the editor
BSRN-1.0 
Baseline Surface Radiation Network License 1.0
- A license especially for data from the Baseline Surface Radiation Network BSRN (https://bsrn.awi.de/)
- It is very similar to the CC-BY license
- States explicitly that BSRN data sets must not be passed to a third party without the agreement of the BSRN Data Archive, the World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC); this does not apply to any BSRN data which are made public through publication, presumably with some added value, and/or are incorporated into additional project(s) for wide release. In such events all BSRN data should be clearly identified as such in that release, with information as to how to obtain the original data directly from the BSRN archive. A copy of the publication is to be provided directly to the originator or preferably via the WRMC who will forward it to the originator.
- Also states explicitly that the direct commercial use (selling) of the data is forbidden
Summary
Recommendation by PANGAEA is to use CC-BY, but also CC0 is possible. In general all CC licenses are allowed, but NC and ND licenses are discouraged as they limit usage. The BSRN-1.0 licensce does only apply for BSRN data. The chosen license must be in compliance with possible terms of usage inherent to the submitted data. In case of conflicts, data submissions cannot be processed.
