SEAD Terms of Service

Version: Thu Jul 28 14:13:45 CDT 2016


Welcome to SEAD! SEAD is supported through the US National Science Foundation’s DataNet program and led by the University of Michigan in collaboration with Indiana University and University of Illinois. SEAD provides data services designed to enhance the use and reuse of science data. SEAD’s services include secure Project Spaces for active research groups; community network services linking people, projects, papers, and datasets; and tools for active engagement of curators early in the publishing process, smart selection of repositories for deposit, and lightweight publishing workflow to publish to partner repositories.

These Terms of Use govern the use of SEAD Data Services. SEAD reserves the right to modify these terms. Creating an account in SEAD signifies acceptance of the Terms of Use, constituted of the following:

  1. By uploading data to SEAD, users grant SEAD non-exclusive rights to the data sufficient to provide SEAD's services (e.g. to store, transmit, display data, etc.). While SEAD allows users to specify licensing terms for data, it is the responsibility of the person uploading the data (whether it is theirs or third party data) to ensure that license terms allow them to share the data through SEAD.
  2. SEAD provides public data services as well as services that allow groups to restrict access to data. SEAD will only share data and metadata in accordance with the permissions set by the user/project teams, but is not liable for accidental data releases due to incorrect permission settings, software errors, or cyber-attacks.
  3. SEAD employs many industry best practices to assure data access, but is not intended as a long-term preservation solution, which is handled by SEAD's partner repositories. SEAD disclaims liability for accidental loss or disclosure of data. In addition, SEAD may experience planned and unplanned downtime and assumes no responsibility for the consequences of a user’s inability to access data in a timely fashion.
  4. SEAD expects professional conduct from those using its data services and reserves the right to terminate any user account and remove content (including data and metadata) when SEAD, at its sole discretion, determines that a user has exploited its services inappropriately. SEAD expects uploaded content to be related to scientific research and will not allow spam or offensive, abusive, or pornographic content. SEAD also reserves the right to remove content that interferes with SEAD’s ability to deliver services (e.g. datasets that are too large in size). While SEAD does not currently specify data size limits, users who wish to deposit large amounts of data (10GB+) are encouraged to contact the SEAD project team before doing so.
  5. You acknowledge that the original collector of the data, SEAD, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.