Rules around data use

In the previous section the concept of licences, and in particular, Creative Commons licences, were introduced. It is important to be aware of licences when using publicly available data so you use the data in the way permitted.

All data resources have different rules for what you can do with the data so it is important to review what the specifics are for each data resources you use.

The online tutorial, Using publicy available data, featured earlier in this collection, outlined how data licences can be used.

Academic or commercial use

It is also necessary to consider your reason for using the data as some data resources have different usage rules for academic and commercial purposes. For example, COSMIC (Catalogue Of Somatic Mutations In Cancer) has introduced licence fees for its commercial use, but continues to be provided free of charge for non-commercial use. The COSMIC website provides details of their licensing.

In the final section of this collection we’ll start to think about data submission, before finishing the collection with a short challenge!