These are our recommended licenses for open data, not all services on Data.ac.uk domains will necessarily be open or linked data.
We recommend that you use one of these licences when releasing open data on Data.ac.uk, unless your data has specific restrictions which make these licences unusable. These recommendations are not rules, but an attempt to stop ‘license proliferation’. There is a common temptation to tweak a license but this makes it very difficult to combine data from multiple sources.
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CC0 - Public Domain Dedication
This license is the most open and allows people to use your data without any restrictions. That doesn’t mean you can’t request attribution, just that you don’t require it.
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ODCA - Open Data Commons Attribution License
This license requires the data is attributed but otherwise makes no restrictions on use.
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OGL - The (UK) Open Government License for Public Sector Information
This licence requires the data is attributed, and also includes explicit restrictions around the use of personal data, implication of endorsement, misrepresentation of data and the Data Protection Act.