The NASA Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) is responsible for the long-term archiving and preservation of NASA heliophysics science data (for non-solar data, with solar data preserved by the Solar Data Analysis Center (SDAC), and other data relevant to heliophysics.
Inherent with that charge is the responsibility to make the archived and preserved data available to the science community and the general public as appropriate.
Therefore, SPDF has been granted the authority by the data submitter to provide long-term preservation for any data deposited with SPDF, unless other constraints are explicitly stated in an archiving agreement. In all cases, it is the intent of SPDF that all its long-term preservation and dissemination actions will comply with all applicable NASA and U.S. government policies, laws, and regulations, and data submitters are responsible for identifying and notifying SPDF of any restrictions. SPDF reserves the right to add additional restrictions if required.
Unless otherwise noted, the content, data, documentation, code, and related materials associated with SPDF and its services is public domain and made available with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) dedication. In short, NASA waives all rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute, and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. NASA makes no warranties about the work, and disclaims liability for all uses of the work, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.
Some data at SPDF may not be public domain, such as copies of copyrightable works made available to the NASA by private entities. NASA may make these works available under the fair use provision of the Copyright Act, or as a result of regulatory directives. Therefore, your rights to use those works may be similarly limited.
CC0 does not exempt those who reuse the data from following community norms for scholarly communication, in particular from citation of the original data authors. On the contrary, by removing unenforceable legal barriers, CC0 facilitates the discovery, reuse, and citation of that data. Any publication that makes substantive reuse of the data is expected to cite both the data package and the original publication from which it was derived.
Considering all data as released to the public domain reduces legal and technical impediments to the reuse of data by waiving copyright and related rights to the extent permitted by law. In most cases, CC0 does not actually affect the legal status of the data, since facts in and of themselves are not eligible for copyright in most countries.
Use of CC0 to make the terms of reuse explicit has some important advantages:
Interoperability: Since CC0 is both human and machine-readable, other people and indexing services will automatically be able to determine the terms of use
Universality: CC0 is a single mechanism that is both global and universal, covering all data and all countries. It is also widely recognized
Simplicity: There is no need for humans to make, or respond to, individual data requests, and no need for click-through agreements. This allows more scientists to spend their time doing science
It is important to note that if you have data that, due to pre-existing agreements, cannot be released under the terms of CC0, please do not submit that data to SPDF or warn us of the need to keep the data private.