Intellectual property (IP) considerations

Data is considered to be a fact and is not subject to copyright. But a creative expression of the data (such as a figure or table) can be subject to copyright. Before sharing or preserving your research data, you need to consider your intellectual property rights.

Common intellectual property considerations

• If you're re-using data from another researcher, you may not have the right to distribute the data (i.e. you can't post the data to your personal website, deposit it in a data repository, etc.). Check the data's license for more information.
  
  
• When you published your article, book, etc., you probably signed an Author Agreement. Terms in these agreements vary widely and can include signing over your copyright. Even if you created the figures in your publications, you may not have the right to distribute, re-use or adapt them (depending on the terms in your Author Agreement).

If you're interested in learning more about copyright, OU Libraries has a Copyright and You online tutorial.

Want to learn more about intellectual property? OU Libraries helps faculty, students and staff with many areas of scholarly communication: Fair Use, Creative Commons, Open Access, Online Scholarly Profiles, Author Metrics, and much more! Contact Julia Rodriguez, Scholarly Communications Librarian, for assistance (juliar@oakland.edu).