In the U.S. and in many other countries, much of the basic information about the public sphere—media industry structure, programming, audiences, internet use—is collected by private companies: BIA, Arbitron, Nielson, Tribune Media, Soundscan, and others.  Because the primary customers for these datasets are other media companies, licenses are usually priced well out of reach of most researchers.  The high cost of data and often onerous licensing terms greatly hinder research on media and communications, and creates powerful knowledge ‘asymmetries’ in policy  research.

One of the central goals of the Data Consortium is to improve the terms of access to commercial datasets.  We do so recognizing that:

• Private data collection depends on commercial markets for data
• Data about the public sphere is not a purely private good, and that commercial data providers should make allowance for generous public policy uses.

 We have encouraged commercial data companies to develop public policy-friendly versions of their licenses.   Public policy licenses will differ widely depending on the nature and scope of the data but share the goal of expanding access to data for public policy purposes. 

	Commercial datasets generally receive a restricted rating by the data consortium.
	Commercial providers who implement more generous public policy or non-commercial licensing terms receive an ‘open under some conditions’ rating.

What is a public policy license?

A public policy license will generally provide much easier access to data in exchange for much narrower restrictions on use.  The goal is to ensure that (1) public policy researchers face low barriers of access to data and that (2) that use of the data does not compete with commercial uses of the data.  Adherence to the terms of the license is still in the hands of the licensor and licensee.

To qualify as a public policy license, the initial terms of access must be simple enough enough to obviate the need for complicated, often unworkable restrictions on sharing or other secondary uses.  Sharing of data among researchers, in this model, is achieved by the acquisition of a new license to the data by the 'sharee'. 

Any license that substantially advances these goals will be treated as a public policy license by the Data Consortium.  If you are a commercial vendor interested in learning more about public policy licensing, please contact us at mediahub@ssrc.org.

Other licensing models:

Individuals and non-profit organizations are encouraged to make their datasets available using less-restrictive licensing terms, such as creative commons licenses or similar minimally-restrictive use licenses. 

The Center for Public Integrity’s Media Tracker database provides an example of how to structure a non-commercial use license for data maintained by a non-profit organization.

Any data provider that provides unrestricted access at no cost for (at least) non-commercial use receives an ‘open access’ rating from the Data Consortium.

The SSRC Data Consortium will be happy to distribute researcher-collected or donated datasets for open-access use in this field.   For small datasets (<20MB), researchers may upload datafiles directly to the Research Hub via the Dataset Mapping tool.