1. Data Use Agreements
- The quality and completeness of data cannot be guaranteed. Users employ these data at their own risk.
- Users shall respect restrictions of access to sensitive data.
- In order to make attribution of use for owners of the data possible, the identifier of ownership of data must be retained with every data record.
- Users must publicly acknowledge, in conjunction with the use of the data, the data providers whose biodiversity data they have used. Data providers may require additional attribution of specific collections within their institution.
- Users must comply with additional terms and conditions of use set by the data provider. Where these exist they will be available through the metadata associated with the data.
2. Citing Data
Use the following format to cite data retrieved from Lifemapper:
Biodiversity occurrence data provided by: (Accessed through Lifemapper Web Services, www.lifemapper.org, YYYY-MM-DD)
For example:
Biodiversity occurrence data provided by: Field Museum of Natural History, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of Washington Burke Museum, and University of Turku (Accessed through Lifemapper Web Services, www.lifemapper.org, 2009-05-19)
3. Definitions
- Biodiversity data: Primary data on specimens, observations, names, taxonomic concepts, and sites, and other related data on biological diversity.
- Metadata: Data describing the attributes and combinations of biodiversity data.
- Data: Biodiversity data and metadata.
- Data provider: A custodian of data making it technically available. This may or may not be the data owner. If not they will have declared to GBIF that they have permission to make the data available.
- Data sharing: The process of and agreements for making data freely and universally available on the Internet.
- User: Anyone who uses the Internet to access data through the Lifemapper services.
- Owner of data: The legal entity possessing the right resulting from the act of creating a digital record. The record may be a product derived from another, possibly non-digital product, which may affect the right.
- Sensitive data: Any data that the provider does not want to make available, e.g. precise localities of endangered species.