2009 Articles

The Legal Framework for Reproducible Scientific Research: Licensing and Copyright

Stodden, Victoria C.

As computational researchers increasingly make their results available in a reproducible way, and often outside the traditional journal publishing mechanism, questions naturally arise with regard to copyright, subsequent use and citation, and ownership rights in general. The growing number of scientists who release their research publicly face a gap in the current licensing and copyright structure, particularly on the Internet. Scientific research produces more than the final paper: The code, data structures, experimental design and parameters, documentation, and figures are all important for scholarship communication and result replication. The author proposes the reproducible research standard for scientific researchers to use for all components of their scholarship that should encourage reproducible scientific investigation through attribution, facilitate greater collaboration, and promote engagement of the larger community in scientific learning and discovery.