Monday, February 21, 2011

National Center For Professional and Research Ethics

Ethics CORE: A Collaborative Online Resource Environment

Policy and Procedures for Depositing Materials

Ethics CORE is the core project of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE). Ethics CORE is funded by the National Science Foundation to provide an online ethics resource center. Its audiences include students and practitioners with questions about research ethics, faculty members offering ethics instruction, administrators seeking best practices and scholars of research integrity. All materials available on Ethics CORE are available without charge to users of the site.

Materials on Ethics CORE fall into categories:

1) Those deposited (uploaded to the site) by their creators for open access by users of Ethics CORE;

2) Commissioned white papers and entries in the Professional and Research Ethics Review, the Ethics CORE online interactive reference encyclopedia of research, pedagogy, opinion and policy;

3) Publicly available items gathered in our central repository;

4) Partner-­-organization generated items; partner organizations include Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R), the National Academic of Engineering (NAE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and others. Each of these materials is labeled by their source; and

5) NCPRE-­-certified materials that have undergone peer review; these materials may have their origins in any of the categories listed above.

Ethics CORE welcomes submission of materials that:

• Can be used in ethics instruction

• Contribute to the scholarly literature on research ethics or instruction

• Assist students and practitioners in approaching or resolving ethical challenges in research or professional life

• Provide information for administrators on best practices and implementation of RCR programs

• Are relevant and helpful to those with interests in research and professional ethics.

All content on the Ethics CORE is moderated so will be reviewed for suitability before it becomes publicly available.

Ethics CORE is not a data repository and cannot accept most data sets. Please look at resources on the site for information on meeting the new federal data management requirements. Open data sets relevant to presenting ethics instruction and best practices will be considered; please contact our digital librarians at the contact address below for more information.

Contact Information: For more information, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Procedures: Use the link for “Upload Content” under the “Get Involved” heading on the first page.

Intellectual Property Ownership

All material posted on Ethics CORE is uploaded to the Ethics CORE site at www.nationalethicscenter.org. The terms and conditions of placing material into the Collaborative Online Resource Environment follow the terms of Creative Commons attribution-­- nonCommercial-­-ShareAlike 3.0 licenses.

This license allows people to use your work for non-­-commercial purposes, but they must attribute you as a source, and they must share any derivative works they create from your original work, using the same license terms. Offering your work under a CC license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means making your work available to any member of the public with conditions attached to it, including that your name always stays with your work and that no commercial uses may be made without your permission. You may offer your work on Ethics CORE under a non-­-commercial license and still grant commercial licenses separately, on a case-­-by-­-case basis.

For further information on Creative Commons visit the Creative Commons homepage.

From the Creative Commons FAQ:

What if I change my mind?

You may always change your mind and ask for materials you have posted on Ethics CORE to be removed. Please note, though, this will not withdraw any copies of your work that already exist under a Creative Commons license from circulation, be they verbatim copies, copies included in collective works and/or adaptations of your work. Creative Commons licenses are non-­-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone who earlier obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, whether from our site or any other, from using the work according to that license. Thus, while you can stop distributing your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you wish, that will not stop any previously-­-posted material from being used by those who have copies. Please think carefully when choosing a Creative Commons license to make sure that you are happy with people using your work consistent with the terms of the license, even if you later stop distributing your work.

Do Creative Commons licenses affect fair use, fair dealing or other exceptions to copyright?

No. All jurisdictions allow some uses of copyrighted material without permission, such as quotation, current-­-affairs reporting, or parody, although these vary from country to country. These are not dependent on the license and so cannot be affected by it. To make this clear, all of our licenses include this or similar language: Nothing in this license is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use, first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws. Thus, regardless of the jurisdiction a user is in, our licenses do not affect a user's right to use or allow use of content under copyright exceptions.

How does the Creative Commons license relate to copyright agreements with a journal? If I publish an article in a journal and grant the copyright to the journal, may I still post a pdf of the article on Ethics CORE?

Only with permission of the journal. If you assign your copyright to any other entity, including a journal, all future uses must follow the terms of the agreement you signed. Please consult your journal and/or our digital librarian for assistance at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . What happens if someone misuses my Creative Commons-­-licensed work? Under the terms, a Creative Commons license terminates automatically if someone uses your work contrary to the license terms. This means that, if a person uses your work under a Creative Commons license and they, for example, fail to attribute your work in the manner you specified, then they no longer have the right to continue to use your work. This only applies in relation to the person in breach of the license; it does not apply generally to the other people who use your work under a Creative Commons license and comply with its terms.

To take action against a person misusing your work obtained under a Creative Commons license, you should contact the person or organization and notify them that the license is terminated according to its terms. This is often effective in stopping the misuse. After that, notifying the institution or webhosting site can also be effective. Ethics CORE and the Creative Commons organization are not set up to enforce the terms of the licenses.