Sharing Research Data: When, in What Form, with Whom, and at What Cost?

Sharing Research Data: When, in What Form, with Whom, and at What Cost? Thursday, November 14, 2013, 4:30 p.m., McDonnell Hall Auditorium, room A02 Free and Open to the Public

Michael Carroll, Professor of Law and Director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University Washington College of Law, Founding Member of Creative Commons

Sponsored jointly by Princeton University Library, the office of the Dean for Research, and OIT.

Should researchers share their data? If so, when, in what form, with whom, and at what cost are among the issues researchers, their funders and their employing institutions wrestle with on a daily basis. While these issues have been traditionally resolved by researchers on an ad hoc or discipline-wide basis, they are now becoming the subject of more formal understandings and policies under the rubric of “data management.” The National Science Foundation requires grantees plan for data management when seeking funding, and this expectation is likely to spread to other funding bodies that have come to appreciate the importance of data sharing and data reuse in science.

This talk focuses on the emerging policy framework for data management, with particular attention to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s directive concerning data arising from federal support agreements, and on other legal considerations for data sharing including intellectual property, privacy, and contractual terms of use. In most cases, data may readily be shared, with the notable exceptions of clinical and patient data. The principal legal and policy issues center primarily on providing researchers with incentives and infrastructure to meaningfully share data by ensuring that datasets are comprehensible and reusable by other researchers.

Professor Michael W. Carroll

Michael Carroll is a Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law. His research and teaching specialties are intellectual property law and cyberlaw, focusing on the search for balance over time in the face of challenges posed by new technologies. He is a founding member of Creative Commons, Inc., a global organization that provides standardized legal and technical tools that enable legal sharing of cultural, educational, scientific and other copyrighted works.

Professor Carroll is recognized as a leading advocate for open access over the Internet to the research that appears in scholarly and scientific journals. He has written white papers and has given numerous presentations to university faculty, administrators, and staff around the country on this issue. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science and recently completed service on the National Research Council’s Board on Research Data and Information. He also is an Academic Fellow of the Center for Democracy and Technology and is a member of the Advisory Board to Public Knowledge.

Prior to entering law teaching, Professor Carroll practiced law at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C. and served as a law clerk to Judith W. Rogers, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Judge Joyce Hens Green, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He received his A.B. (Anthropology), with general honors, from the University of Chicago and his J.D. magna cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center. Questions or comments, contact: rdmteam@princeton.edu