Terms of use

By using the offered services at https://rdmo-sandbox.gfz-potsdam.de/ ("Services") you agree to the following terms of use of Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences ("GFZ"), a Public Law Foundation under the laws of the Federal State of Brandenburg/Germany, Telegrafenberg, 14473 Potsdam, Germany, Mail: rdmo-sandbox@gfz-potsdam.de

I. RDMO Sandbox – what it is about

The Service of the RDMO Sandbox supports the systematic planning, organisation and implementation of the data management throughout the course of a research project run in scientific context provided by GFZ and third parties ("Content").

The RDMO Sandbox can be used by individuals without registration as visit to the website ("Visitors", see III.) and by individuals who have registered an account and who also can add Content ("Registered User", see II.).

The Content is only provided for information purposes. A commercial use of the RDMO Sandbox is explicitly forbidden.

II. Provision of Content as Registered User

To be able to add, modify, recreate and store Content to the RDMO Sandbox as "Registered User" , You need a registered account at one of the identity providers registered at Helmholtz Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure ("Helmholtz AAI"). In most of the cases this account is provided by your user account at your home institution participating at Helmholtz AAI.

When You provide Content, the following applies:

  • You shall use the RDMO Sandbox in accordance with applicable laws and regulations;
  • You shall not knowingly place incorrect or otherwise misleading or unlawful Content in the RDMO Sandbox;
  • You shall not upload content that breaches copyright regulations, personality rights, or confidentiality undertakings signed in connection with your work;
  • You shall only include links to URLs and third party content that you are legally allowed to do so and under observance of copyright issues (i.e. giving copyright attribution); in case you receive the information that the third party URL or Content is not lawfully or not with legal allowance included in your account, you shall delete it with immediate effect;
  • You are responsible for all activity occurring under your Account. If you believe your Account has been, or can be, accessed by an unauthorized person, you should immediately change your password and should notify us immediately by email at support@hifis.net;

The respective home institution will be notified in the event of any of these conditions being breached. The institution will then decide on any legal action that may be necessary in addition to legal steps we reserve.

III. General Conditions for Viewing RDMO Sandbox

(1) Allowed Use

Only Registered Users can provide Content under the conditions as stated in II.

Registered Users and Visitors can browse and view the Content. Visitors can only view the Landing Page and Legal Information.

The RDMO Sandbox and its Content can be used for scientific, educational, informational and research purposes.

When using the Services, you always have to observe the licenses of the third party material as given by the third parties and, if applicable, give the according Copyright Contribution. In case of doubt about the allowed use, you must contact the copyright holder directly.

(2) Unacceptable Use

The following uses of the Services are strictly forbidden and can lead to IP blocking when doing so:

  • heavy use of the Services from an application or individual person; examples for heavy use are: using our Services as a fallback for your own services, more than 500 requests within one minute, more than 5000 requests within one hour
  • seeding or crawling the Services
  • sending the same request multiple times in a short amount of time
  • monitoring the Services in a periodically manner
  • bulk downloading, if not explicitly permitted (see next paragraph III. (3))
  • attempting to circumvent administrative authorisations and security mechanisms

(3) Bulk Downloading

As a general rule, bulk downloading of larger amounts of data is not allowed. Smaller one-time bulk downloads may be possible if you ask the system administrators for permission to do so. For those bulk downloads following additional rules apply:

  • limit your request to a single thread;
  • request from one machine only, no distributed scripts (for example a cluster or cloud service);
  • results must be cached on your side.

IV. Interface for Websites and Applications

(1) You can access the data or integrate the data via the interfaces provided by the RDMO Sandbox. You use the Services at your own risk and under your own responsibility.

(2) When calling the RDMO Sandbox from a web application or by programmatic script (like Shell, Python or R) please be sure to provide a valid HTTP referer and/or user agent identifying the application or client. The HTTP requests should contain at least one of the headers "Referer" or "User-Agent" as it is shown in the following examples:

  • in case of a request from a web application: Referer: example.org;
  • in case of a script (for example a request from cURL): User-Agent: curl/7.37.0.

V. Citation

If You use the Services and/or data sets in a presentation or publication, for instance by linking in your website, then You have to acknowledge the RDMO Sandbox as the source of the material. The Content can be cited as defined by the copyright attributions of the metadata of Content. To cite our Service, please reference us as RDMO Sandbox, https://rdmo-sandbox.gfz-potsdam.de/, <date of access>. You may not use the Services in a way that suggests any official status or that GFZ endorses any particular application of the RDMO Sandbox by You. You may not mislead others or misrepresent the Services and its sources.

VI. No Warranty, Liability

(1) GFZ does not warrant that the Services will function without errors or interruptions. GFZ reserves the right at any time to change or discontinue any aspect or feature of the offered Services, including, without limitation, the content, hours of availability, and equipment needed for accessing or using the services, as well as to terminate the Services themselves.

(2) The Services are provided "as is" without warranty or representation of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of accuracy, completeness, quality, topicality, fitness for a particular purpose or the absence of any infringement of any proprietary rights of third parties.

(3) GFZ is not responsible for the accuracy and correctness of the data. We explicitly don't give any warranty regarding third party Content contributed to the RDMO Sandbox or linked to via RDMO Sandbox and provided on third party websites. The Registered Users as contributors remain solely liable under applicable law for the Content they have contributed to the RDMO Sandbox and for the Content of any URL they link to within the RDMO Sandbox.

(4) Therefore You shall in all cases be entirely and solely liable for the use to which You put such information and material. GFZ shall not be held responsible for the performance of or output obtained from the Services nor for any liability to any party arising out of use of the Services.

(5) GFZ shall only be liable for willful misconduct and gross negligence. For slight negligence, GFZ shall only be liable in the event of breach of a material contractual obligation (cardinal obligation), the fulfilment of which is essential for the proper performance of the contract and on the enhancement of which You may regularly rely, as well as in the event of damage resulting from injury to life, limb or health or statutory liability.

(6) In no event GFZ shall be liable to You for any incidental, consequential or indirect damages (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of data, cost of procurement of substitute services or service interruptions) arising out of the use or inability to use the Services.

VII. Applicable Law, Jurisdiction

The Laws of the Federal Republic of Germany apply to these Terms of Use, under exception of the regulations of the Convention of International Sales of Goods.

To the extent permitted by law, the courts of Potsdam, Germany, shall have jurisdiction with regard to any conflicts between Registered Users, Visitors and us.

VIII. Adjustment of Clauses, Changes

(1) In case a provision of these Terms of Use is invalid in any way, this does not influence the other provisions of the Terms of Use. The invalid provision will be deemed replaced by a provision that is valid, in view of its original intent and purpose. We will update our Terms of Use as soon as possible.

(2) Please be aware that these terms of use may change without notice. In particular, the definition of heavy use may need to be modified in the future and You might have to change your access to those services. Applications using the Services should keep that in mind.

IX. Privacy Notice

See Privacy Policy