Today, we are sharing our newest report, Licensing Best Practices for Sharing Scientific Data. This report builds on our 2023 report Recommended Best Practices for the Better Sharing of Climate Data with the goal of extending the open data practices originally designed for climate data to other disciplines. We are thankful to our partners at the McGovern Foundation who supported our Open Climate Data project, which paved the way for this revised and updated report.
Open data is central to accelerating scientific progress because it allows researchers everywhere to freely access, verify, combine, and build upon existing data without legal or technical barriers, dramatically increasing the speed, scale, and collaboration of discovery.
By encouraging adoption alongside those already maximizing open access to publicly funded data, our recommendations provide a baseline for globally interoperable and practical licensing and attribution practices. They make open data easier to access, share, and reuse with clear guidance and actionable steps. Consistent licensing reduces legal uncertainty, improves interoperability, and enables faster discovery and collaboration. Adopting these practices strengthens trust, transparency, and global scientific cooperation.
This updated report expands the scope of the original beyond climate while retaining the core principles around standard legal terms and metadata for maximized sharing and interoperability. The report and its summary version are resources that anyone who wants to publish open data can use and include guidance on both licensing and metadata.
The 2023 Recommended Best Practices for the Better Sharing of Climate Data was created through our Open Climate Data project, which brought together global partners committed to improving the accessibility and interoperability of climate data. From deep collaboration with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) we helped strengthen the foundations for open, reusable knowledge to better share and build upon climate science across the globe.
The initial recommendations complemented existing frameworks such as the FAIR Principles, the GEO Data Sharing Principles, the WMO Unified Data Policy, and CARE Principles by filling a specific gap. The recommendations focus on open licensing clarity and embedding license information in metadata practices that support reuse, attribution, and sharing. From 2023-2025, we consulted directly with more than 30 intergovernmental, national, and academic organizations on the implementation of the recommended licenses and metadata values in their policies, platforms, and practices.
An invaluable aspect of the Open Climate Data project was the depth and quality of the partnerships we built. Our collaboration with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) stands out in particular: as active members of the GEO Law and Policy subgroup, we were part of a truly collaborative environment, one where open sharing is not just a principle but a lived practice that directly shaped implementation of the recommendations across earth observation data producers worldwide. Our relationship with the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has been equally important. As one of the organizations consulted early in the project, the WMO played a meaningful role in strengthening our recommendations and validating our approach. In 2025, we also had the opportunity to engage in a deep and productive collaboration with the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on updating their open licensing policy, which helped 196 countries and the EU implement clear open-licensing practices for environmental data, enabling global land-degradation information to be legally reusable, interoperable, and accessible for research, policy, and climate action. Details about our partnership on the UNCCD open licensing policy can be read about in more detail in our corresponding case example.
Working in partnership with global governmental and intergovernmental producers of climate and earth observation data allowed us to further the following impact in the world:
As implementation increased with our Open Data Project partners, it became clear that across scientific domains, data producers, hosts, researchers, and institutions, there existed the same barriers: uncertainty about licensing, inconsistent metadata, unclear provenance, and friction in reuse, which result in less reuse and licenses being ignored by researchers. The Open Climate Data project was spent supporting data producers around the world with implementation of the recommendations across their policies, platforms, and practices. This work revealed a more universal need for practical, legally sound, and interoperable data sharing practices that are not limited to just climate data, in order to maximize open data sharing for other types of scientific data that are also intended to be made publicly available. The recommended metadata values for source link, license link, attribution statement, and rights were generally applicable as well.
Because of the ongoing collaboration in testing and refining open data licensing practices with data producing organizations, we were able to further strengthen the recommendations in such a way that they are applicable across scientific disciplines.
For a sneak peek of our licensing best practices for sharing scientific data: We recommended the use of one of two legal terms, and the use of six metadata values that keep licensing and attribution information both human- and machine-readable.
Legal Terms Options:
Metadata Values
Read our full report here and its summary version here. Please share these essential resources with colleagues and partners who are actively engaged in opening up scientific data in the public interest.
If you are looking for additional support in implementing open licensing to increase the accessibility, discoverability, and use of scientific open data, we are pleased to offer a suite of consulting services. Get in touch!
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Posted 20 April 2026
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