[Cod-bugs] Questions about COD

[HERBET Marie-Emilia]

Dear Saulius,

Thank you for all the information provided below. I get back to you with another question regarding COD. In the framework of our project aiming at building up a data repository selection tool for reasearchers, I would like to know if COD ID has the same features and role as a DOI. In other terms, does it act a permanent identifier that can be cited and accessed even if the URL changes?

Regarding my previous question related to licenses, the idea was not to promote copyright but rather to ensure that structures can be freely reused and cited using for instance CCBY license instead of depending on the license of the paper in which the structure is described (which often entails copyright rules applied by publishers.)

Thank you in advance,
Best regard,
Marie

De : Saulius Gražulis <grazulis at ibt.lt>
Envoyé : mardi 31 janvier 2023 18:31
À : HERBET Marie-Emilia <marie-emilia.herbet at univ-lyon3.fr>
Cc : cod-bugs at lists.crystallography.net
Objet : Re: [Cod-bugs] Questions about COD

Dear Marie-Emilia,

thank your for your inquiry about the COD! Below I will attempt to answer your questions.

On 2023-01-31 18:08, HERBET Marie-Emilia wrote:
Could you please tell me what is COD’s main supervising institution?

Currently the hosting institution is Vilnius University, Life Sciences Center, Institute of Biotechnology.

The COD scientific contents is supervised by the international COD Advisory Board (COD AB) whose members are listed on the COD Web site.
I saw that the repository received donations from several organisations but I don’t quite understand what is its founding institution.

The COD is founded by scientists who constituted its first Advisory Board, as a "grass-root" movement. It was hosted at the Le Mans University at that time. It is funded by various means – research grants to it's development and applications, donations by companies that use it, donations of individuals and support of research organisations such as universities.

The founders of the COD are physical persons, however – scientists who overview and invest their time into the COD development. It is regarded that for the project of this type, no "founding institution" can be identified, or is actually necessary.
Second point, where is the data hosting service based
The data are currently hosted in the Vilnius University Data Center, supported by the Vilnius University.

and what is the long-term preservation policy of the repository?

The policy is to preserve the COD data for as long as it is need for the community and valuable for science. The projected life span is decades, depending on the developments of the crystallography.

All COD history is recorded in the Subversion repository, allowing to trace all changes to the database that were done over the time, ensuring full data provenance.
Finally, I would like to know why COD opted for CC0 license instead of CCBY?
The Advisory Board and the founders of the database (Armel Le Bail, Daniel Chateigner) was strongly insisting that crystallographic data should be as open as possible, thus putting their collections of data under the "public domain" designation. Since "public domain" is not a legal license in Europe, it was eventually voted by the COD AB that CC0 should be adopted.

The public domain license might deter some researchers from depositing their structures as this license does not require to cite the authors when reusing their structures.

I think there is some misunderstanding here.

Facts of nature, as we all know, are not copyrightable (i.e. everyone has an unrestricted right to post a statement that "NaCl unit cell length a is 5.640 Å" and similar facts, encoded in whatever form they like). The license therefore does not apply, and can not apply, to the information in the individual records. Only the database as a whole is copyrighted, and licensed under CC0 by its creators under sui generis "sweat of the brow" doctrine of the current copyright law.

Citing the individual records, or the database itself when they are used in research is an accepted good practice of scientific scholarship. It is therefore independent, in my view, from the license under which the database is distributed. When researchers use individual papers or the database as a whole, they cite the relevant papers to provide information for their readers and to give credit to information sources. This alone should ensure that the antecedent work is properly cited.

Hope this helps,

Saulius

--

Dr. Saulius Gražulis

Vilnius University Institute of Biotechnology, Saulėtekio al. 7

LT-10257 Vilnius, Lietuva (Lithuania)

fax: (+370-5)-2234367 / phone (office): (+370-5)-2234353

mobile: (+370-684)-49802, (+370-614)-36366
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