[An-lang] NSF and data ownership

[Gary Holton]

Hugh,

I think it's important here to distinguish between ownership and
accessibility. For employees of US federal government institutions it may
well be the case that the data are owned by the employer. In the case of
grant-funded research (e.g., NSF grants for language documentation) the PI
retains ownership of the data (at least from a US legal standpoint --
though I personally feel that ownership remains with the original speech
community), but there may requirements for providing public access to those
data. All NSF proposals must include a data management plan, and most NSF
programs now require some sort of data sharing. The Documenting Endangered
Languages program explicitly requires an archiving plan, including plans to
make the data publicly accessible:

"The DMP should indicate how archived materials will be accessible to the
public. Any restrictions to be placed on access should be clearly
indicated. If the applicant expects access to some materials to be
restricted to certain user groups, the DMP should indicate the criteria
delineating such user groups and provide an estimate of the percentage of
materials which will be so restricted. If time limits are to be placed on
access to materials, the DMP should indicate the period of time after which
access restrictions will be removed." (
https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18580/nsf18580.htm)

Beyond this I'm not aware of any attempt by NSF, NEH, or DOE to assert
ownership of data. Has anyone heard differently? Of course other funders
(US Dept of Defense?) may have different stipulations and may treat funding
as work-for-hire, in which case all products are owned by the funder.

I'd also be curious to know more about policies outside the US.

Gary





On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 1:41 PM Hugh Paterson III <sil.linguist at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I'm looking for some pointers to data ownership policies in sponsored
> research.
>
> From a context in the USA, some US government organizations's research and
> publications fall into the public domain - such as work done under the
> Peace Corp i.e. Zorc's dictionary and grammar of Aklanon. This is a trait
> of how US law treats copyright claims of departments of federal government.
>
> However, there seems to be other funding organizations such as the US
> Department of Education, or  NSF, NEH, USAID etc. And then there are
> frameworks from other political entities such as the EU, UK, or Australia.
>
> Are there clear lines of ownership for data collected in Federally funded
> research or does this depend if the research is "grant funded" or "funded
> and managed within a department of government"?
>
> Since I don't have experience with research funding institutions outside
> of the USA, does anyone here have experience with this issue in contexts
> other than USA (or within the USA too)?
>
> all the best,
> - Hugh Paterson III
> _______________________________________________
> An-lang mailing list
> An-lang at anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang
>
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