8. Meeting legal/regulatory, ethical and sensitive data obligations

Digital/Extended Specimen
5

This is the second part of my answer, considering which fields and functions might make user’s interactions with licenses et al. easier. On one hand, they can provide orientation to users. At the same time, their extent should not scare providers and users away from these issues.

Fields and functions associated with licenses, legal agreements and/or business contracts

  • [Owner of resource]
  • License
    • Type
    • Version
    • information/description
    • URL
    • License holder
  • Contact for interaction
    • Agent (might be owner, license holder, designated contact point, etc.): researcher, institution, organization, business, agency, etc.
    • Contact information, eg. email, phone, etc.
  • Expiration date
    • Set legally by regulation
    • Set by license holder (needs to be sooner than any legally set date)
  • Legacy (testament for license and license rights)
    • Who will inherit the license and the rights arising from it?
    • Information if this testament is legally binding (and why)
  • Acknowledgements/Attributions
    • If the resource includes previous licenses (eg. because it is a composite dataset of several to many data points): yes - no
    • Links to those licenses
    • (automatically compiled) list of links, resolved to license holders, who require attribution in human and machine-readable form

Legal and/or business statements (eg. permits, contracts) concerning acquisition and/or further uses of the resource. These fields need to be repeating, since several interactions might occur for one resource. Also, interactions might evolve over time, reflection of a series of eg. inquiries, outcomes, contact points, etc.

  • Legal and/or business agreements (eg. permits, contracts)
    • Legal and/or business agreements
      • Are required? Yes – no (eg. associated with acquisition)
      • Exist? Yes - no
    • Permit holder, signatories of agreement
    • Link to legal agreement or business contract, including (scanned) document
    • Contact points and information on both sides, eg. collector and permit agency; resource provider and business partner, etc.
    • Associated communication, eg. inquiries and associated outcomes
    • Terms of contract
    • (Potential) Expiration date
  • Information about confidential legal/business agreements (eg. Prior Informed Consent (PIC) and Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) agreements associated with Access and Benefit Sharing, see Nagoya Protocol - Wikipedia, might be confidential)
    • Confidential information exists? Yes – no
    • Contact for inquiries into confidential information
    • Restricted access, accessible only for resource owner/provider (legal contact) and permit provider/business partner:
      • Module under 7.

@Andrawaag and everybody: I am curious what you think about these ideas, proposals. Do you have experience with these topics and matters?