Copyright and Licences

Research Data and Copyright

The Swiss federal Act on Copyright (CopA) protects a work if it is a creation of the mind (the result of human activity) that has an individual character (someone else doing the same task will not be able to produce the same work). Photographs of three-dimensional objects have a special status: it is not necessary for them to have an individual character to be protected.

For research data, this means that (Hirschmann 2025):

  • Raw or primary scientific data, e.g., unprocessed data", or data harvested by machines, are not protected by copyright;
  • Processed or enriched data that meet the criteria of a creation of the mind, e.g., graphics, text, or images that have some originality, are generally protected by copyright.

It should also be noted that research data produced by the University's collaborators in the course of their duties are the property of the institution (Loi sur l’Université, article 15).

Licenses

A copyright license is a contract in which the author grants non-exclusive permission to use their work and specifies the terms of such use, while retaining their rights as the author.  The license permits the use of the work in situations where permission would otherwise be required under copyright law, such as distributing, reproducing, or modifying the work.

Copyright licenses operate within the framework of the law: they allow neither more, nor less. Thus, it is not possible to use a license to prohibit a use if that use is authorized by copyright exceptions (quotations, private use exception, educational use exception, etc.). Similarly, only works protected by copyright may be made available under a license, and exclusively by the author or the rights holder. At the University of Geneva, although the institution owns the research data, the choice of license is left to the person who conducted the research, as they are the ones who know the data best.

When you share your research data, it is best to assign a license to it, to allow their reuse and thereby contributing to the dissemination of scientific knowledge and open science. The license allows those who access the data to know what they are (or are not) authorized to do with it.

Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are widely used and recognized in the scientific world.

For research data, the license that is recommended is the CC0 license. When you choose it, you remove all barriers to reuse and place the data in the public domain. Furthermore, other CC licenses are only suitable for data that constitutes copyrighted works (creations of the mind with an individual character). If the data does not meet this criterion—for example, because it is too factual or machine-generated—then CC0  is the only option. And although CC0 does not legally require you to be cited as the creator of the data, failing to do so would constitute a serious breach of scientific integrity. 

The other CC licenses are composed of 4 elements that can be combined:

cc_by.png BY (Attribution) The author of the work must be cited and the changes made from the original work in the derivative work must be indicated
cc_sa.png

SA (ShareAlike)

 Derivative works must be released under the same license
cc_nc.png

NC (NonCommercial)

 Only non-commercial use of the work is permitted
cc_nd.png

ND (NoDerivatives)

 Modifications or adaptations of the work are not permitted

 

Details of these licenses and the obligations and prohibitions associated with each are listed in a summary table. Creative Commons also provides a guide to using their licenses with data and databases.

With research data, it is generally recommended to avoid licenses that include the NC (Non Commercial Use) or ND (No Derivatives) elements because these restrictive licenses hinder interoperability and reuse of the data. This has a direct impact on the advancement of knowledge and the emergence of new scientific knowledge.

Licenses for Computer Code

Creative Commons licenses are not suitable for computer code. Instead, Creative Commons recommends looking at "licenses listed as free by the Free Software Foundation and listed as "open source" by the Open Source Initiative."

CCdigitallaw explains what these free and open source software licenses are. 

Please note that commercial licenses are managed at UNIGE by UNITEC. 

To learn more

Help for choosing a license

Training at UNIGE

Resources