FAIRsharing record for: FAIR Principles R1.1: (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license

This FAIRsharing record describes: 'FAIR Principles - R1.1: (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license' states that digital resources and their metadata must always, without exception, include a license that describes under which conditions the resource can be used, even if that is “unconditional”. By default, resources cannot be legally used without this clarity. The absence of a license does not indicate “open”, but rather creates legal uncertainty that will deter (in fact, in many cases legally prevent) reuse. Note also that the combination of resources with permissive as well as more restrictive license conditions may lead to adverse effects, and ultimately preclude the use of the combined resources for particular purposes. In order to facilitate reuse, the license chosen should be as open as possible. While the implementation of a FAIR principle is up to each community, note the following addition comments from the GO-FAIR Foundation: 1) if a license that cannot be found by an agent, is effectively the same as no license at all, 2) beware of licenses that may be different for a data resource and the metadata that describes it, which has implications for the indexing of metadata v.v. findability, 3) this principle also reiterates the need to separate and permalink data and metadata. (Text modified from: see reference URL.)