Which license should I select when posting my research data?

When posting your research data, you have a choice of Creative Commons licensesopens in new tab/window which govern the conditions of usage of your data.

You may select from the following options:

• CC0: Data may be used freely, without asking for permission.
• CC BY: Data may be used freely, but attribution must be given to the original dataset, and the licence must be linked to.
• CC BY-NC: Data may be used only for non-commercial purposes.

Elsevier supports the principleopens in new tab/window that "Raw research data should be made freely available to all researchers" and authors should be free to publically post their raw research data (see the Elsevier Author Rights pagesopens in new tab/window for more details). We have developed a simple way for authors to do this, by making their research data available on Mendeley Dataopens in new tab/window and linking it to their article on ScienceDirectopens in new tab/window.

Restrictions on people using the data supplied by authors depends on what license the author chooses for their data but attribution to the original authors is always an ethical requirement and often a legal requirement. For example, if you deposit your data on Mendeley Data, you can choose between CC-0, CC-BY or CC-BY-NC licenses. Other repositories may offer different licensing options. If you provide your data as supplementary files to your paper and the paper is Open Access, the data will follow the same license as you choose for the article.

For more information on this see the Elsevier websiteopens in new tab/window.