Citation regulations for Edaphobase
In using Edaphobase information and data sets in scientific or other texts and publications, the respective copyright of the original data provider to the database must be stated and the database named. Following the citation rules of printed publications, author, title, year, and the internet address are to be cited. Furthermore, the last access date must be specified in the citation. In individual cases, where a copyright statement is impossible, data users should contact the original data providers.
Citing data providers
Data users are required to acknowledge all original data providers of any and all data used in analyses and results presented in a publication, report or similar public texts. This acknowledgement shall ensue by at least one of the following three options:
· Co-authorship
The fairest and most cooperative manner for recognizing the provision of data used in analyses and assessments is to offer data providers co-authorship of the publication, which is therefore the primary method. This shall especially apply for all “substantial” (e.g., comprising >5% of all analyzed data), unique or novel data sets affording important or significant results to the overall analysis or assessment.
· Citation
If co-authorship is not or cannot be offered to data providers, then their data set shall be cited in the reference list of the publication. For data sets with a DOI, the metadata of the DOI provides the formal citation. For other data sets, the name of the data provider, the year of submission to Edaphobase, and the title of the data set are provided for all data records in the data download, from which a citation can be created. Instead of a journal name etc., the citation should end with “downloaded from Edaphobase (https://portal.edaphobase.org) on [date of data access and download]”
· Acknowledgements
In all cases where co-authorship or citation are not possible, the data providers are to be thanked by name in the Acknowledgements of the publication. Data providers’ names are given (and associated with the corresponding data records) in the first column of data downloads.
Contact information for the original data providers are not provided publicly or in the data downloads. Contact information must be requested from Edaphobase via info@edaphobase.org.
Acknowledging Edaphobase-created visualizations
All visualizations (i.e., maps and graphs) created with the Edaphobase Data-Query Portal and used in a publication must be clearly and explicitly marked as originating from Edaphobase. This can ensue by, e.g., adding to the map/graph or in the legend thereof “created with Edaphobase on [date of creation of the visualization]”.
Suggested citation for Edaphobase in general:
Burkhardt, U., Russell, D.J., Decker, P., Döhler, M., Höfer, H., Römbke, J., Trog, C., Vorwald, J., Wurst, E., Xylander, W.E.R. (2014): The Edaphobase project of GBIF-Germany – A new online soil-organism zoological data warehouse. Applied Soil Ecology, 83, 3-12.
Suggested general citation for downloaded data from Edaphobase:
Edaphobase data warehouse for soil organisms. Accessed via the Edaphobase Data-Query Portal, https://portal.edaphobase.org, on [yyyy-mm-dd].
Some of the data providers to Edaphobase have partially limited the further use of their data or subject them to specific conditions (e.g., anonymized data). Please note the metadata in such data sets.