ERIC - Enteropathogen Resource Integration Center

Data Transfer Agreement
Data Transfer Agreement for the NIAID Enteropathogen Resource Information Center (ERIC) For End Users

Data Transfer Agreement for the NIAID Enteropathogen Resource Information Center (ERIC)
For Data Submissions

This document is a Legal Agreement between the Originating Investigator (hereinafter referred to as "You" or "the Originating Investigator") regarding the use and distribution of enteropathogen Proprietary Data (defined here as sequence, annotation, microarray, proteomic, phenotypic, and other forms of biological data) to be submitted to the private sections of the Enteropathogen Resource Integration Center (ERIC), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services of the U.S. Government, as represented herein by the operators of the ERIC system, SRA International, Inc. (hereafter SRA International), prime contractor to NIAID under Bioinformatics Resource Center (BRC) contract HHSN266200400040C.

This Agreement is a binding legal document and must be approved for acceptance by someone legally authorized to sign for your institution, such as a dean, vice president or corporate officer, or technology transfer or sponsored research officer, and not a student, postdoctoral fellow, research associate, staff or senior scientist, or faculty member. It is your responsibility to determine who possesses such authority at your institution. For purposes of enforceability, the person who clicks on the I Agree button below shall be deemed to possess, or to have been assigned in writing, authority to bind you and your organization. If the person who clicks on the I Agree button below does not have such authority, this Agreement is unenforceable and any data to be transferred into the ERIC system will not be protected by the terms of this Agreement. The ERIC Contractor hereby specifically disclaims any and all liability for acts of unauthorized persons (under the same terms as Paragraph 7 below) which cause this Agreement to be unenforceable.

Other researchers at your institution or your collaborators are not automatically covered by this Agreement for additional Data submissions, and must sign it individually in order to submit Data, as well as be granted user access permissions to your Data by the Originating Investigator or by e-mailed request from the Originating Investigator to the ERIC staff. All users will also have to sign a Data Access Agreement for the ERIC system.

For Proprietary Data Submission: As a condition of submitting Proprietary Data (hereafter "Data") to ERIC via the Web, the Originating Investigator named via issuance of an ERIC username agrees to all of the following terms and conditions: 

1.	Purpose of the ERIC Bioinformatics Resource Center: NIAID's central goal for the BRC contracts is to make the databases and analysis resources freely available, without encumbrance or fees, to the research community over the Internet. It is the intent of both SRA and/or its subcontractor partner, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, (hereafter collectively referred to as "the ERIC Contractor") to cooperate with and fully support NIAID's desire to make data freely available to the research community, and to follow NIH data sharing guidelines, referenced below in Paragraph 4.

2.	Data that You submit will be tracked internally by your username and password. 

3.	Use of Data:  Data to be transferred to ERIC should be marked as copyrighted or patent pending, if appropriate.  Data which should be considered private must be marked as such according to ERIC standard operating procedures. Unmarked Data shall be considered to be public data by default. To transfer Data to the ERIC system, we recommend first contacting the ERIC Staff at info@ericbrc.org to discuss the type and amount of Data to be transferred and to obtain further instructions for the transfer.  For all Data marked as private, neither NIAID nor the ERIC Contractor shall publish or make use of such Data in any form, including displaying it on the Web or via other electronic forums, without your express written permission, although this privilege is subject to the guidance on excessive time for data privacy discussed below. 

You may use the analysis tools and other resources provided by the ERIC system on your private Data until you notify the ERIC staff of the acceptance for publication of the main findings from the final data set, at which time, and after written confirmation by e-mail to you, the ERIC Contractor will make the data available through the ERIC Portal and for electronic download to the public in accordance with NIH data sharing policies (see Paragraph 4 below). An exception will be made if you wish to exercise your intellectual property rights as described in Paragraph 5 below, where NIH guidance provides an additional delay of 30 to 60 days that is generally viewed as a reasonable period for such activity. 

NIH expects that the originating investigators may benefit from first and continuing use of Data, but not from prolonged exclusive use. Although ERIC will allow analysis of data privately to prepare it for publication, the intent of the ERIC project is to make all Data publicly available as soon as possible.  Keeping Data private indefinitely contradicts this goal, and depending upon the amount of such Data, could even begin to limit ERIC's computational resources. Therefore, per NIAID guidance, there will be a finite time limit on keeping Data private, suggested as a year from the initial transfer of Data to the ERIC system, before it is made public. However, if special circumstances warrant a longer period of data privacy, the ERIC Contractor will negotiate extensions on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the BRC Project Officer. In all cases, the ERIC Team will contact the Originating Investigator before making any private Data public.

During this time period, neither NIAID nor the ERIC Contractor will redistribute the Data, which will only be visible in ERIC's private area to the Originating Investigator, to any other ERIC end users specifically authorized by the Originating Investigator, and to the ERIC staff (defined as employees of the ERIC Contractor working under the BRC Contract) for the primary purpose of maintaining data integrity. The ERIC Contractor shall refer any request for the Data back to the Originating Investigator for permission.

Note that data releases do not constitute scientific publication per se. In addition, the ERIC Contractor will ensure that all ERIC staff will follow the security precautions considered by SRA and HHS to be necessary to ensure proper and confidential handling of data and information. 

4.	NIH Data Sharing Policies: Since most academic research is performed with public funding, there is a mandate to publish and share data. In particular, NIH has reaffirmed its support for the concept of data sharing, stating that it is essential for expedited translation of research results into knowledge, products, and procedures to improve human health (See details online at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/data_sharing & http://ott.od.nih.gov/NewPages/64FR72090.pdf).

Data should be made as widely and freely available as possible while safeguarding the confidentiality of the data and privacy of participants. Once Proprietary Data is made public in the ERIC system, the data will be freely available without encumbrance to the public research community, either as registered ERIC users or via an anonymous guest account.

NIH considers the sharing of such unique research resources and information an important means to enhance the value of NIH-sponsored research. When distributing such unique information resources (e.g. DNA sequences, microarray images, crystallographic coordinates) via appropriate data bank archives, Originating Investigators are to include pertinent information on the nature, quality, or characterization of the materials. NIAID has created BRCs such as ERIC to act expressly as such archives for data related to biodefense and emerging and re-emerging infectious disease.

5.	Intellectual Property Rights: Signing this Agreement does not alter any pre-existing intellectual property rights you may have in the Data you submit hereunder, provided you properly mark the Data prior to submission, as discussed in Section 3 above. Rights to Data remain with the Originating Investigator(s) and/or his/her employing institution. Users of public data in the ERIC system should note that copyright and all other intellectual property rights remain with the Originating Investigator, subject to fair use rights for copyrighted material.

6.	No Implied Licensing: As noted above, any valid ownership rights to the data remain with the Originating Investigator. It is understood that nothing herein shall be deemed to constitute, by implication or otherwise, the grant of any license or other rights by NIAID or the ERIC Contractor under any patent, patent application, or other intellectual property right or interest to public data contained within ERIC. 

7.	Disclaimers of Liability: Note that submitted Data and/or information, private or public, may contain errors, be incomplete, and should be regarded as preliminary. Although the ERIC Staff will strive for the best curated data quality, only our best efforts can be pledged by the ERIC Contractor. Data and information released from the Enteropathogen Resource Integration Center (ERIC) are provided on an "AS IS" basis. Neither NIAID nor the ERIC Contractor, makes any representation or warranty, express or implied, including without limitation any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or warranties as to the identity or ownership of data or information, the quality, accuracy, or completeness of data or information, or that the use of such data or information will not infringe any patent, intellectual property, or proprietary rights of any party. 

IN NO EVENT shall the U.S. Government including without limitation, DHHS, PHS, NIH, NIAID, as well as SRA International, its subcontractor the University of Wisconsin-Madison, or any of their employees be liable for any claim for any loss, harm, illness, or other damage or injury arising from submission of, access to or use of data or information relating to this agreement or Data or information provided hereunder contained within and accessible from the ERIC system, including without limitation any direct, indirect, incidental, exemplary, special, punitive, or consequential damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. The Originating Investigator(s) and ERIC users agree to waive, to the extent permitted by law, any and all claims against, and to indemnify and hold harmless the U.S. Government, DHHS, PHS, NIH, NIAID and their contractors and subcontractors, including the ERIC Contractor, for any damage that the Originating Investigator(s) or ERIC Users may incur from prior or future use of any data or information contained within ERIC, including any damages resulting from products based on results from the use thereof. 

8.	No Fees for Non-Commercial Use: Data and information from the ERIC system is provided at no cost for research purposes. There are no fees, licenses, or subscriptions involved with gaining access to the data in ERIC beyond acceptance of the terms and conditions of this Data Transfer Agreement. For any private or external public databases for which the Originating Investigator(s) will allow NIAID via ERIC to use, copy, or mirror such Data, the Originating Investigator(s) will maintain ownership of that Data and primary responsibility for its accuracy. Such Data shall retain applicable copyright notices, licensing terms, and disclaimers when accessed from ERIC. Free use of ERIC data for all research, both commercial and non-commercial, to discover and develop therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines for enteropathogens is both permissible and strongly encouraged. However, you are hereby expressly prohibited from downloading and selling any data from the ERIC system, and from any other direct or indirect commercialization of the Data itself without express prior written approval from the Originating Investigator(s).

9.	No Restriction on Field of Use. Upon providing third-party data to the ERIC BRC, it is not acceptable to request that public data be restricted ONLY to academic and/or non-commercial users. Commercial users have full access to ERIC, but must respect all data and intellectual property rights under penalty of law. Commercialization and licensing of applicable intellectual property should be negotiated with the Originating Investigator(s) of third-party data in the ERIC system.

10.	Severability: The provisions of this Agreement are severable, and in the event that any provision of the Agreement shall be determined to be invalid or unenforceable under any controlling body of law, such determination shall not in any way affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining provisions of the Agreement.

11.	Governing Law and Venue: The construction, validity, performance, and effect of this Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia and by U.S. Federal law, as applicable, without regard to conflicts of laws provisions. All actions shall be brought in the Federal or state courts of Virginia. 

12.	Modifications: This Agreement constitutes the entire understanding and agreement between the parties hereto relating to the submission of and/or access to data and information from the ERIC system and may not be superseded, modified, or amended except by further written agreement duly executed by all parties.

13.	Effective Date: This Agreement shall become effective when an authorized person clicks on the "I Accept the Terms of the Data Transfer Agreement" button below on the ERIC webpage. Your username will be recorded in lieu of a signature, along with a date and time stamp in the ERIC system indicating when this Agreement went into effect. A list of users and their institutional affiliations will be provided to NIAID solely for assessing ERIC's usage and utility.

Upon completing this Data Transfer Agreement by the Certification below, you may submit Proprietary Data for upload to ERIC. As noted above, we recommend first contacting the ERIC Staff at info@ericbrc.org to discuss the type and amount of Data to be transferred and to obtain instructions for the transfer.

Certification of ERIC Users and/or Originating Investigator(s): I hereby acknowledge that this Agreement is a binding legal document which must be approved for acceptance only by someone legally authorized to sign for my institution. For purposes of enforceability, my click on the 'I Agree' button below shall be deemed to possess, or to have been assigned in writing, authority to bind me and my institution to the terms of this Agreement. If I do not have such authority, I acknowledge that this Agreement is unenforceable and any data transferred into the ERIC system will not be protected by the terms of this Agreement, with no liability whatsoever (as detailed in Paragraph 7 above) to the ERIC Contractor or others.

I have read and understood the conditions outlined above in this Data Transfer Agreement, and by clicking the button below, hereby agree to accept these terms and abide by them for submission(s) of Proprietary Data to the NIAID ERIC BRC system.


Please print a copy of this Agreement for your records, prior to leaving this Web page. 
If you have questions regarding this Agreement and its terms, please contact 
Dr. John Greene, john_greene@sra.com, 240-514-2741, Principal Investigator 
for the ERIC BRC. 

Thank you, and Welcome to ERIC!