The EPD is a constituent database of Neotoma and follows Neotoma data use and embargo policies unless stated. All EPD data available through the Neotoma Paleoecology Database are free to use with attribution under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Complete attribution operates at three levels:

1. A reference to the Neotoma Paleoecology Database
2. Reference to the EPD
3. References to all original investigators and primary publications for the data used.

Large-scale studies that employ many datasets should seek solutions that ultimately result in citation for the datasets used. Neotoma now supports DOIs as citation endpoints for all datasets.

Upon publication, please also send a copy of the published work or a link to the electronic resource to the EPD data manager. Your assistance helps document the usage of the database.

Acknowledgments

Any use of EPD data should include the following or similar text in the acknowledgments:

“Data were obtained from the European Pollen Database (EPD) via the Neotoma Paleoecology Database (http://www.neotomadb.org). The work of data contributors, data stewards, and the EPD and Neotoma communities is gratefully acknowledged.”

Paleoecological datasets are labor-intensive and complex: they take years to generate and always have additional attributes and metadata not captured in the database. The availability of EPD data and metadata relies on expert curation by EPD data stewards.

Co-authorship

Users of data curated by the EPD should consider inviting the original data contributor, or EPD stewards, to be a co-author(s) of any resultant publications if that contributor’s data are a major portion of the dataset analysed, or if a data contributor or steward makes a significant contribution to the analysis of the data or to the interpretation of results. For large-scale studies using many EPD records, contacting all contributors or stewards or making them co-authors will not be practical, possible, or reasonable.

Under no circumstance should authorship be attributed to data contributors or stewards, individually or collectively, without their explicit consent.

Data embargo

The EPD follows the overall philosophy and strategy of Neotoma to enable the temporary embargoing of some uploaded datasets. Embargo is designed to encourage good scientific data-management practice of preparing scientific data and metadata prior to publication. Access to and use of embargoed data requires permission from the original investigator or data synthesizer. Please review the Neotoma Embargo Policy.