(From Sept 1, 2017 to Aug 31, 2021)
This Policy and Data Usage Agreement (the “Agreement”) is between The University of Texas at Austin (“University”), a component institution of The University of Texas System (“System”), an agency of the State of Texas, and each User of the Digital Rocks Portal.
1. The Digital Rocks Portal. The Digital Rocks Portal is an open data repository to organize and preserve images and related experimental measurements of different porous materials. Using data available at or uploading data to the DRP requires agreeing to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
Data at the DRP is stored in a High Performance Storage resource at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (“TACC”) that has built in redundancy and is continuously monitored for security and failure. On a daily basis the data is geographically replicated so that in the event that one system fails the data can be recovered. For information, see https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/systems/corral.
All paying Users are entitled to a minimum of two-hour tutorial on how to use the portal. The DRP has multiple protocols and tools in place to upload data. Remote Users may experience difficulties uploading very large datasets and may contact the data curator for assistance. The DRP will use best efforts to address questions and issues promptly.
3. Privacy and Publication. Users may store, organize and describe their data privately in the DRP for a period of time until they are ready to share it publicly. The private option is intended to keep objects out of the public view for a limited embargo period. However, because the DRP is an open repository, there is a limit of two years from the date of this Agreement during which a user may keep its data private. After the two years have elapsed, users will receive a notice that the project will be published if they are not removed. Upon receiving such notice, the User will have 60 days to publish the data or remove it from the DRP repository. The User understands and agrees that its data will be published if it remains in the repository after the two-year limit embargo period, and hereby grants permission for such publication.
Materials submitted in a format unsupported by the DRP, or without sufficient attribution and metadata, will not be made public by the DRP until corrections to the data have been submitted.
The DRP uses the DataCite metadata schema, for basic author and data description for purposes of citing data in conjunction with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
When the data has been uploaded and described to DRP standards, DOIs will be assigned upon request of the project lead. A DOI is a type of persistent identifier that will be managed over time, allowing the digital object to be persistently referenced, as the identifier will not change even if the item is moved to another repository. DOIs allow your data to be cited by others and are useful to link data to a publication. The DRP allows users to request DOIs for the dataset.
If an upload involves data that has been published elsewhere and or has an existing DOI, project leads have the opportunity to reference those data sets using the External URL box. The existing DOI and/or a link can be added to the data set information.
Once the data is published it cannot be changed, updated, increased or deleted. If users need to publish a data set derived from an existing one, it will become a different (related) data set with its own DOI. The portal offers the possibility to fork data from projects within so that there is no need to upload and describe them again.
Upon publication data creators can request to retrieve their data from the repository. To do so, a User must contact the repository curator and provide a justification. A record stating that the dataset was available and including an abstract and an explanation about why the data was removed will be in place. It has to be reminded that the dataset will have a DOI and that DOI will remain active so that when people use it from a citation they can verify that the data is no longer there.
The DRP is committed to help preserve your data for the long term. If for unforeseen reasons the DRP has to cease services, the DRP will make arrangements to transfer the data to another long-term repository with DOI permanence. In turn, a copy of the data will be preserved at the Texas Advanced Computing Center’s tape archive. Users will be notified of changes and of location of their data with enough time so they can retrieve it along with the metadata.
Users can use TACC computational resources for simulation (presumably using data from the DRP), though presently there is no direct data transfer from the DRP to the high performance computing systems. Industry users are referred to https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/partnerships/industry and academic, non-University of Texas at Austin users are referred to https://portal.xsede.org/#/guest. University of Texas at Austin users can create an account on https://portal.tacc.utexas.edu/.
4. Storage and Maintenance Fees for Private Data. The DRP is currently funded via federal grant and Users are charged no fees to use it. Beginning September 1, 2017, Users will be responsible for paying a storage fee of $258 per 1 TB of data per year, and portal maintenance fee according to the following schedule.
| Less than 5TB of data | 5 - 20TB of data | Greater than 20TB of data | |
| Industry user | $10,000 | $12,000 | $15,000 |
| Academic user | $2,000 | $3,000 | $4,000 |
For Users who have entered into this Agreement on or before September 1, 2017, the fees are assessed based on the storage level on November 1, 2017, and the storage and maintenance fees are due and payable on December 1, 2017, and then on each successive yearly anniversary thereafter. For Users who enter into this Agreement after September 1, 2017, storage and maintenance fees will be assessed based on storage as of 2 months following execution of the Agreement, and payment will be due and payable 3 months after executing the Agreement. If the fee is not paid the user will have 2 months to download the data before it is removed from the system.
5. Storage Limits. Limits on amount of storage space per project are as set by the DRP. Initially, there will be no limit on the amount of storage space that may be used per project.
6. Data Licenses. The DRP is an open data repository and recommends that all data be accompanied by license terms so that potential users know under what conditions posted data may be reused. The default license selection is the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) which indicates to the users that they can freely share, modify and use the data provided that they cite the authors and that they license derivatives under the same terms and conditions of this license. Contributing users who wish to designate another license appropriate for an open repository need to send that information to the data curator.
Data derived from original DRP data may be distributed under terms and conditions established by the creators of the data and stated in the license. Users agree to comply with the terms and conditions of use set by the creators of the data.
7. Disclaimers. THE SERVICES OF THE DIGITAL ROCKS PORTAL AND DATA ARE PROVIDED “AS IS.” NO WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS ARE MADE RELATING TO THE DRP OR ANY DOCUMENTATION, AND UNIVERSITY EXPRESSLY EXCLUDES THE WARRANTY OF NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD-PARTY RIGHTS, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR MERCHANTABILITY. NO WARRANTY IS PROVIDED THAT THE PORTAL OR ANY DATA WILL SATISFY ANY REQUIREMENTS, THAT THE DPR OR ANY OF THE DATA IS WITHOUT DEFECT OR ERROR OR THAT OPERATION OF THE DPR WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED.
Under no circumstances shall the DRP, University, System, or any of their parents, affiliates, officers, employees, or agents be responsible for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising from or in connection with the use of or any inability to use the site or the projects, or any content contained on the DRP, or any unauthorized access or use of data in the DRP.
Users employ the published data at their own risk. The portal does not guarantee that the data is free from error. Moreover, Downloader has no knowledge of and will not be responsible for any inaccuracies and any other problems or inaccuracies in the content of the data and the accompanying citation information.
8. Indemnification. User agrees to indemnify and hold harmless System, University, their Regents, officers, agents and employees from and against any claims, demands, or causes of action whatsoever relating to this Agreement, including without limitation those arising on account of any use of the DPR.
9. Governing Law, Jurisdiction and Venue. This Agreement shall be construed in accordance with and all disputes hereunder shall be governed by the laws of the State of Texas as applied to transactions taking place wholly within Texas between Texas residents. The Texas state courts of Travis County, Texas (or, if there is exclusive federal jurisdiction, the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division) shall have exclusive jurisdiction and venue over any dispute arising out of the Agreement, and User hereby consents to the jurisdiction of such courts.
10. Agreement and Policy Subject to Change. The imaging technology, database management, business model, and characteristics of the DRP are continually improving, thus details of this agreement and policy are subject to revision every six months.
11. Citation and Acknowledgement. Users must acknowledge the use of DRP data when publicly presenting any findings that benefited from their use of public DRP data. Such presentations include but are not limited to papers, books, book chapters, conference posters, and talks. When publishing findings that benefit from public DRP data, please include the following citation: Masa Prodanovic, Maria Esteva, Matthew Hanlon, Gaurav Nanda, Prateek Agarwal (2015) Digital Rocks Portal: a repository for porous media images http://dx.doi.org/10.17612/P7CC7K which specifically refers to the Portal, as well as using any project specific DOI.
