Contractual Limitations on Data Sharing

Abstract

Purpose: This report was commissioned by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research to engage in an in-depth review of exemplar data sharing, data license, non-disclosure, and other forms of agreements under which data are made available for research use. It is part of a project on "Building Community Engagement for Open Access to Data" sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.1 The intent of the review was to identify common limitations imposed on the use and re-disclosure of data, variations on those common limitations, and the implications of such limitations on the researcher. Finally, cognizant of the varying reasons for imposing these conditions of use, such as proprietary or privacy concerns, the review sought to identify approaches to conditional data use that represent the data discloser's compelling concerns and the data user's need for latitude in use, in a standardized way in order to facilitate data transfer and reduce the administrative burden of tracking a multitude of varying data use limitations.