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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear Marie-Emilia,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">thank your for your inquiry about the
COD! Below I will attempt to answer your questions.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2023-01-31 18:08, HERBET
Marie-Emilia wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0051dbcd7fd940579d354680fe98ff41@univ-lyon3.fr">Could
you please tell me what is COD’s main supervising institution? </blockquote>
<p>Currently the hosting institution is Vilnius University, Life
Sciences Center, Institute of Biotechnology.</p>
<p>The COD scientific contents is supervised by the international
COD Advisory Board (COD AB) whose members are listed on the COD
Web site.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0051dbcd7fd940579d354680fe98ff41@univ-lyon3.fr">I saw
that the repository received donations from several organisations
but I don’t quite understand what is its founding institution.</blockquote>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0051dbcd7fd940579d354680fe98ff41@univ-lyon3.fr"><o:p></o:p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Second point, where is the data hosting
service based <br>
</p>
</blockquote>
The data are currently hosted in the Vilnius University Data Center,
supported by the Vilnius University.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0051dbcd7fd940579d354680fe98ff41@univ-lyon3.fr">
<p class="MsoNormal">and what is the long-term preservation policy
of the repository?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0051dbcd7fd940579d354680fe98ff41@univ-lyon3.fr">
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, I would like to know why COD opted
for CC0 license instead of CCBY?</p>
</blockquote>
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.<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:0051dbcd7fd940579d354680fe98ff41@univ-lyon3.fr">
<p class="MsoNormal"> 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. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think there is some misunderstanding here.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Hope this helps,</p>
<p>Saulius<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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
</pre>
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