Open Data Rights Statement Vocabulary

Open Data Rights Statement Vocabulary
Open Data Rights Statement Vocabulary
Latest Version
Created
2013-05-31
Last Modified
2013-07-29
Authors
Leigh Dodds
Alternate Versions
Turtle
A vocabulary that supports the publication of Open Data by providing the means to capture machine-readable "rights statements", e.g. the licensing information, copyright notices and attribution requirements that are associated with the publication and re-use of a dataset.
Introduction
Data published to the web should always be accompanied by machine-readable metadata that describes the dataset, its means of creation and, importantly, a statement of the rights that relate to potential re-use of the data.
While legal requirements vary across juristictions, a statement of rights will typically include some or all of the following information:
A reference to a licence or waiver that relates to re-use of the dataset
A reference to a licence or waiver that relates to re-use of the contents of the dataset, e.g where that content is covered by copyright
Notices, e.g. copyright notices, that should be preserved by re-users
Guidance on a means of attributing the source of the data, e.g. when re-used in an application
Pointers to further information, e.g. further guidance on re-use or details on how to acquire additional rights
The Open Data Rights Statement vocabulary is intended to support the publication of machine-readable rights statements. The vocabulary builds on related work from the Dublin Core and Creative Commons communities and is intended to complement ongoing efforts to improve the quality of machine-readable dataset metadata. It is expected that the vocabulary will be useful in a number of contexts, e.g. for Linked Data publishing (
DCAT
VoiD
), dataset distribution (
Data Packages
), as well as data published via web APIs.
The following sections of the document provide more background on the vocabulary, including references to relevant related work.
User Guides
There are two user guides which support the use of this vocabulary:
Publishers Guide
-- a guide for data publishers that provides more detail on the design of the vocabulary and how it can be applied in a number of data publishing scenarios
Re-Users Guide
-- a guide for data re-users on how to process machine-readable metadata that is based on this vocabulary
Related Work
There are several existing vocabularies cover similar goals, but all have their limitations. The Open Data Rights Statement vocabulary builds on this earlier work to support clearer publication of rights information.
Dublin Core
distinguishes between a licence (
dct:License
) and a rights statement (
dct:RightsStatement
) and provides terms for relating a work to a machine-readable descriptions of these documents using the
dct:rights
and
dct:license
properties.
The
Creative Commons vocabulary
(ccRel) supports the publication of machine-readable descriptions of broad classes of requirements, permissions and prohibitions that are associated with licences. It also includes some terms to support attribution.
The
Waiver
vocabulary supports the association of public domain waivers and community norms with a dataset
The
Open Data Rights Language
(ODRL) provides a standard means for expressing policies relating to the publishing, distribution and consumption of digital media.
Similarly, the
L4LOD
and
LIMO
vocabularies also attempt to describe the essential aspects of individual licenses
These vocabularies provide some of the necessary foundations for publishing rights statements, but each has its own limitations. As described in the next section, the ODRS vocabulary is intended to support the publication of "rights statements" that annotate the relationship between a dataset and its license information.
Design Rationale
The key limitations with the existing vocabularies are:
There is no recognition of the need to separately license a database and its contents. Even outside of the EU, it is entirely possible that the content of a database is covered by a separate licence to its structure. Where required there should be unambiguous ways to link to more than one license or waiver
An unclear distinction between descriptions of a re-usable licence; a rights statement which might apply to several datasets, and the specific rights associated with an individual dataset. This leads to some confusion around how best to publish attribution requirements, copyright notices, etc.
The intention is that this vocabulary should allow data publisher to publish, as machine-readable metadata, the following information:
A licence or waiver that applies to the database/data being published
A licence or waiver that applies to the content of a database, where is needs to be separately recorded
Copyright notices
Guidance on attribution requirements
Pointers to additional material, e.g. notes on usage of a licence, additional terms, etc.
The approach taken here borrows from Dublin Core and introduces a "Rights Statement" as a resource that relates a dataset to one or more Licenses as well as providing additional context that relates to re-use of a dataset.
The description of a License, such as the UK Open Government License, remains unchanged no matter how it is used or applied by an organisation. It is the Rights Statement that captures this customisation and description of copyright, attribution and other relevant relationships.
A Rights Statement might apply to an individual Dataset. But it could equally be applied to several Datasets, e.g. if an organization has a common set of attribution requirements.
The vocabulary does not provide a definition of dataset. This is intentionally under-specified to support the use of the vocabulary in a number of ways. The existing
Dublin Core
terms (
dct:rights
and
dct:license
) can be used to relate a dataset to a
odrs:RightsStatement
or a licence.
Similarly, this vocabulary intentionally does not attempt to support the machine-readable description of the terms of a specific license. This is already adequately covered by the
ccRel
and
ODRL
vocabularies.
The ODRS vocabulary is aimed at supporting a simple, common case of publishing open data using standard licenses. However it is compatible with efforts to create machine-readable expressions of licenses and policies. Additional notes on the
use cases that have guided the design of the vocabulary
can be found in the project wiki.
Schema Diagram
The following diagram shows the key resources, relationships and properties defined by this vocabulary.
Recent Changes
For a full history of changes view
the source files in github
The following lists highlights some of the key recent changes:
29/07/2013 -- Added
compatibleWith
property
29/07/2013 -- Added links to L4LOD, LIMO and ODRL vocabularies in the Related Work section and links to Use Cases.
Overview Of Terms
An alphabetical index of the ontology terms, divided into classes and properties. All the terms are hyperlinked to their
detailed description for quick reference.
Classes

License
RightsStatement
Properties

attributionText
attributionURL
compatibleWith
contentLicense
copyrightHolder
copyrightNotice
copyrightStatement
copyrightYear
dataLicense
databaseRightHolder
databaseRightStatement
databaseRightYear
reuserGuidelines
jurisdiction
rights
Ontology Terms
Classes
Class: License
Overview
Label
License
URI
A legal document that describes the legal terms for re-use of some information. A licence might be applicable to content, data, or both. This definition of licence used here is deliberately loose, and is intended to also cover waiver documents that indicate that the owner waives all rights over some information, e.g. public domain dedications.
Back to Overview
Class: RightsStatement
Overview
Label
Rights Statement
URI
A description of the rights and terms of re-use for a dataset. A rights statement will include a reference to one or more licences copyright notices, and attribution requirements. Where a Rights Statement refers to several licences the intention is that these should separately apply to the data and content associated with the dataset. An individual Rights Statement may be specific to a dataset or could be applied to a
number of datasets published by the same organisation or person, where the rights associated with each dataset are identical.
Back to Overview
Object Properties
Property: attributionURL
Overview
Label
attribution url
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
The link which should be used when attributing a data source. The URL could be a reference to the dataset or publisher
homepage, but may also be a dedicated attribution page. This is useful when providing onward attribution to upstream sources.
Back to Overview
Property: compatibleWith
Overview
Label
compatible with
URI
Range
License
Domain
License
This property is used to indicates that one license is compatible with another. A re-use that meets the requirements, permissions and prohibitions of the first license should also meet the requirements, permissions and prohibitions of the second, compatible license. The inverse is not necessarily true: the compatible license might have stricter requirements. This statement can be used as an indicator that a re-user could publish a derivative dataset under the compatible license, e.g. to help drive automated selection and guidance licenses for publishers of derived data. However it is not a substitute for properly reading and understanding the text of either license.
Back to Overview
Property: contentLicense
Overview
Label
content license
URI
Range
License
Domain
RightsStatement
The contents of a database might be covered by a separate license, e.g. a database containing copyrightable material (e.g. text, images) might have different rights for the dataset and the contents. This property can be used to refer to a license that applies to the content of the dataset. In some cases the same license can be applied to both content and data, but in others a data publisher may choose to use a separate license for content. The value of the property will be the URI of the license that is being applied to the content.
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Property: copyrightHolder
Overview
Label
copyright holder
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
A reference to the organization that holds copyright over the content of the dataset
Back to Overview
Property: copyrightStatement
Overview
Label
copyright statement
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
A link to a document that includes a statement about the copyright status of the content of a dataset. The web page might include both a copyright notice for a dataset, and any relevant guidance for re-users.
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Property: dataLicense
Overview
Label
data license
URI
Range
License
Domain
RightsStatement
This property is used to indicate which license covers reuse of the dataset(s) associated with this rights statement object. Typically this license will refer to a standard open license, e.g. as published by Creative Commons or Open Data Commons. The value of the property will be the URI of the license that is being applied to the data
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Property: databaseRightHolder
Overview
Label
database right holder
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
A reference to the organization that holds database rights over the dataset
Back to Overview
Property: databaseRightStatement
Overview
Label
database right statement
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
A link to a document that includes a statement about the database rights that apply to this dataset. The web page might include both a statement on the applicable rights and any relevant guidance for re-users.
Back to Overview
Property: reuserGuidelines
Overview
Label
guidelines for re-users
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
Link to a document that provides guidelines for re-users of data that is covered by a specific rights statement. The guidelines
may include more detail on attribution guidelines, a fuller copyright statement, and general guidance on how the data might be re-used
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Property: jurisdiction
Overview
Label
jurisdiction
URI
Domain
RightsStatement
A reference to the jurisdiction in which copyright and/or database rights have been asserts. It is recommended that this refer to the URI for a country or region.
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Property: rights
Overview
Label
rights
URI
Range
RightsStatement
Associates a rights statement with a dataset. This property is equivalent to the Dublin Core rights property
Back to Overview
Datatype Properties
Property: attributionText
Overview
Label
attribution text
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
The text to use in an attribution link. This may be the name of the publisher or a reference to a community or group of contributors
Back to Overview
Property: copyrightNotice
Overview
Label
copyright notice
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
The copyright notice associated with a rights statement. A notice must typically be preserved and displayed when acknowledging the source of some data. This property is expressed as a simple literal value and so is suitable for simple copyright notices. Where a data publisher needs to reference a larger copyright statement and/or related guidance then the copyrightStatement property should be used instead.
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Property: copyrightYear
Overview
Label
copyright year
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
The year from which copyright over the content of the dataset is asserted.
Back to Overview
Property: databaseRightYear
Overview
Label
database right year
URI
Range
Domain
RightsStatement
The year from which a database right over the dataset is asserted.
Back to Overview