Permissions rights complicate the use of large data sets

Nature : Just because a data set has been made public doesn’t mean that other researchers can use the data however they please. For example, University of Pennsylvania data scientist Daniel Himmelstein has set up Hetionet, an online resource based on 28 public data sets that shows the known connections between drugs, diseases, and genes . When creating it, Himmelstein contacted the researchers who published the data sets to get permission to reproduce the work publicly. Several never responded or replied in ways that didn’t clarify whether he had been granted permission to publish. Generally a fact or a piece of data is not copyrightable, but the European Union and some countries treat data sets in a way that limits republication. In the US, where data sets are not directly protected, it is arguable that the compilation and organization of a data set’s facts could have similar protections.