Terms & Conditions

§ 1 Applicability

These terms of service apply to all data that is uploaded to the data repository "opendata.uni-kiel.de" of Kiel University (CAU) by the user or on behalf of the user.

Users are those persons that have write access to the repository: Researchers (e.g. employees and students) at CAU as well as affiliated institutions whose academic activities are related to the university.

§ 2 Multiple Authors

If the uploaded data was collected or processed by multiple persons, they are coauthors of that data. In those cases, the data can only be published if all coauthors consent. The author that performs the actual upload certifies that all coauthors have granted all necessary rights for publishing the data.

§ 3 Rights Granted

The author grants the non-exclusive right to duplicate, store, transmit and publish the uploaded data and related metadata to CAU. The author furthermore commissions CAU to issue a DOI for the research data. The author is free to use and publish the research data by other means as long as the rights granted to CAU are not affected.

The author grants CAU the right to convert the uploaded research data as well as metadata into other formats as well as to delegate this conversion to a 3rd party if this should become necessary during a migration, to improve accessibility, or to maintain future-proofness.

The author grants CAU the right to upload the research data as well as its metadata into other repositories as well as aggregators in order to preserve long-term access and for indexing. The author grants the operators of those services the same rights they granted CAU.

§ 4 Others’ Rights, Liability

The author asserts that they are the only holder of rights to the uploaded data or that she / he possesses all the applicable usage rights for publishing the data. The author furthermore asserts, that no conditions which contradict these usage terms apply. The author especially declares that no rights of 3rd parties (coauthors, financiers, trademarks, personality rights) are violated by publishing this data and that it does not constitute a criminal offense.

The author asserts that the uploaded data (except the accompanying bibliographical metadata) does not contain personal information of living persons. This can for example be ensured by removing such information from the data or anonymizing it before the upload. If personal data of deceased persons is to be be published, it must respect their post-mortem rights of personality. The author further asserts that all persons mentioned in the metadata give assent to the publication of their own personal biographical information.

If the author can not assert the above conditions for legal reasons or if they learn of further circumstances that invalidate them after the upload, the data may not be uploaded to the repository and the author is obligated to inform CAU immediately so the data can be depublished. The contact addresses that can be used for this are mentioned on the repository’s webpage.

The author acknowledges that the depublication of uploaded data after its general release by CAU can only be accomplished locally and to the best of CAU’s abilities. The further proliferation of copies by 3rd parties that were created while the data was public can not be prevented. This is an inherent property of Open Access repositories. This includes uploaded data as well as metadata.

The author releases CAU from any liability and claims for indemnification that result from the publication’s violation of 3rd parties’ rights by the author if it is not related to their employment duties. An exception to this is made if the violation was caused willfully or grossly negligent by CAU but no willful or grossly negligent behavior by the author happened. In the latter case, the damage is distributed between the two parties taking the share of responsibility into account. For publications that are uploaded by an employee of CAU as fulfillment of their employment duties, the normal rules of due diligence apply.

Under no circumstances does the publication of the user's upload imply that the provider of the repository service confirmed the data's legality or the correctness of its contents - especially not in a way that relieves the user of her / his legal obligations. This also applies to cases when an editor of the repository was involved in the publication process of the user's data. Data is manually cleared for publication by repository staff based purely on technical criteria and does not imply a legal assessment.

CAU is not liable for service outages and for corruption or loss of the uploaded data at rest or in transit.

CAU may block access to the uploaded data as soon as it is aware of an indication that it violates 3rd parties rights or other regulations. An attempt will be made to notify the author in this case as long as their current contact information can be discovered with reasonable effort.

Uploading the data does not oblige CAU to accept it for publication, archiving or DOI issuance.

§ 5 Acceptable Content

Data is acceptable content for upload and publishing in the data repository, if it is related to the author’s research activity at CAU and has scientific relevance.

The uploaded data must be generally relevant and of sufficient quality, fulfilling the basic prerequisites for DOI issuance regarding publication worthiness and citability.

The repository only accepts machine-readable Open Access publications, which directly contain the actual data. Empty "metadata-only" publications or contributions consisting exclusively of written text without accompanying data will not be accepted.

If it is technically possible, content should be uploaded using an open file format that is suited for long-term archival (e.g. ZIP, TAR.GZ, CSV, XML, JSON, PDF/A).

The uploading author asserts – to the best of their technical capabilities – that the uploaded data is free from harmful software (viruses, trojans, malicious macros, ...). CAU is not liable for damages that are caused to 3rd parties’ system by the published data.

§ 6 Licensing

The author licenses the bibliographical metadata that accompanies her / his research data under the Creative-Commons license CC0 to the general public.

The author licenses the research data under one of the open licenses that are offered for selection during metadata entry to the general public.