Guide to Project Data Management

Contracts

The responsible use of the data collected and the results generated by the project requires that the project contracts provide a basis for this.

Contracts:

• The project will conclude a financing agreement with the donor and
• Cooperation agreement with the partners.
• In addition, the project will conclude agreements on the transfer of rights between Laurea and the Laurea staff and students participating in the project.

Depending on the project, it may also be necessary to conclude separate agreements on issues such as confidentiality, access rights to materials, ownership and use of results, and further exploitation and commercialisation of results.

Common ground rules will make it easier to work on the project. Clear administrative relationships for research material will also allow for efficient re-use of the research material. It is important to define the roles, responsibilities and rights of project participants.

The following questions concerning the data should be considered:

• The confidentiality obligations of the contract: will confidential information be handled in the project; what are the resulting obligations?
• Publication of own results and theses resulting from the project: is the right of publication limited by the contract?
• Ownership of results: who owns the results; the party that produced the results or, for example, the funder (a common condition for Structural Fund projects)
• Access rights to the results: to whom are the access rights transferred; do you have to pay something for the access rights or are they transferred?

Is a separate contract for the data needed??

Issues relevant to the project may have already been agreed as part of the funding agreement or contract with partners, or may be agreed as part of the data management plan. They can be considered as binding agreements between at least the researchers involved in their preparation. A separate agreement is needed if the contract or the data management plan is not sufficiently comprehensive.

The following checklist can be used as a checklist for archiving purposes. A separate agreement may be necessary if the following issues are not explicitly agreed in advance between all researchers:

•   Which data are to be made available for further use?
•     If one or more researchers have brought previous research data into the research project, will this be included in the data to be made available for further use?
•     When can the data (or parts of the data) be made available for further use (e.g. predetermined timeframe or completion of publications)?
•     For what purposes will the data be made available (research only or also for teaching and learning purposes)?
•     Who is entitled to conclude an archiving agreement for the research data?
•     Do you want to impose conditions for further use?
•     If further use is to be subject to authorisation, who decides whether to grant authorisation?

If Laurea does not have its own legal service, external experts will be used to draw up the contracts. Contracts drawn up by Laurea's contractual partners are also always checked before signature.

Agreement for the transfer of rights and licencing

Can the author, after signing the agreement for the transfer of rights for Laurea, license the project outputs himself and can they be licensed under an open license?

In projects, staff transfer the ownership of the results to Laurea by signing the agreement for the transfer of rights. Laurea decides on the use of the results within the limits allowed by the terms and conditions of the funder, including CC licensing. In accordance with Laurea's Code of Conduct, the Vice President for RDI decides on the open licensing of the material generated by the projects and may delegate this decision. If the project agreement of intent or collaboration already states that the material will be opened under a specific licence, the signed agreement is sufficient for the decision. If necessary, please contact the Vice-Rector for RDI to make a decision.

If the CC licence indicates the rights holder who is licensing the rights, it is Laurea. If, on the other hand, the authors, then the person and Laurea.

Which Creative Commons license to choose?