Contribution Terms

• 1.1 These Terms apply to every contribution sent to Reports through the Site or its contribution routes: evidence, data, corrections, case studies, analysis, methods, code, reviews, translations, comments and any other material (a Contribution).
• 1.2 Contributing is voluntary and unpaid. It creates no employment, membership, partnership or agency, and no obligation for GCRI Canada to publish or use a Contribution.
• 1.3 Comments, consultations, nominations, working groups and events are also governed by the Participation and Events Terms; research outputs and datasets by the Research and Data Terms.

• 2.1 By sending a Contribution you confirm that: (a) you created it, in whole or in part, and have the right to submit it under the licences in these Terms; or (b) it is based on earlier work that, to the best of your knowledge, is covered by an open licence that allows you to submit it, and you identify that work and its licence; and (c) you understand that the Contribution and the credit you give for it are public and kept permanently on the record.
• 2.2 This confirmation follows the DCO 1.1 sign-off used across open-source projects (developercertificate.org). Code sent to a repository is signed off in its commit message, as the repository explains.
• 2.3 Do not send material you are not free to share, such as confidential information, material under a non-disclosure agreement or material whose licence forbids it.

• 3.1 You keep the copyright in your Contribution. You license your own work in it under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), so anyone may share and adapt it with attribution.
• 3.2 Descriptive metadata of a Contribution, such as its title, summary, keywords, identifiers, dates and links, is dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0 (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0), so that catalogues and indexes can reuse it freely.
• 3.3 Material of others included in a Contribution keeps its own licence and must be identified with its source and licence. Code is contributed under the licence stated in the repository that receives it.
• 3.4 A CC BY 4.0 licence cannot be withdrawn for material already published. A Contribution can be corrected or removed from future versions on request, with a notice where the record requires one.

• 4.1 Contributions are credited with the name you give. An ORCID iD is optional; if you add one, it travels in the metadata so your record can be updated. Credit roles follow the CRediT taxonomy where a role is recorded.
• 4.2 No account and no password are needed to contribute. An email address is needed only if you want an answer.

• 5.1 A Contribution must not contain personal information about other people, such as names, contact details, images, health or location data of identifiable individuals, unless it is already lawfully public and needed for the Contribution. Personal information found in a Contribution is removed before publication.
• 5.2 Do not send security-sensitive detail, such as vulnerabilities of named systems or the exact locations of critical infrastructure; report security matters privately to the contact form.

• 6.1 Knowledge held by Indigenous peoples and local communities is governed by the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance: Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility and Ethics (gida-global.org/care).
• 6.2 Traditional, sacred, secret or culturally sensitive knowledge, and the locations of sacred sites, of threatened species or of sensitive heritage, are never published openly. They are submitted only with the free, prior and informed consent of the community that holds them, and only where the community chooses how they are kept and who may see them.
• 6.3 If such knowledge is received without that consent, it is withheld from publication, the sender is told, and it is returned or deleted as the community requests.

• 7.1 Every Contribution is reviewed against its stated sources and method. Acceptance, edits and the decision to publish rest with the editors; no contributor, funder or provider decides a finding.
• 7.2 Contributing confers no authorship of the publisher’s documents, no editorial, governance or voting right, and no endorsement of the contributor; the publisher’s name may not be used to suggest one (see the Trademark and Name Use Policy).

• 8.1 Contributions to standards work are also subject to the Standards IP and Participation Policy, which covers patent disclosure and competition safeguards.

• 9.1 These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules that would apply another law.
• 9.2 Questions about these Terms may be sent to the contact form.

Prepared for review by legal counsel before adoption.

• EmailGateway GW-STDSend it from this pageEvidence, a correction, a case, a method, a review, a translation or profile input. It arrives tagged with this page, so the editor who owns it receives it.
• ZenodoOpen depositDeposit it and submit to the communityPublish your own record on Zenodo with your ORCID iD, then submit it to the Reports community there. Curators review it; the DOI stays yours.
• ReportsNexus StandardsSee every way to contributeThe contribution types, how each is reviewed, what credit you receive, the licence and what is never accepted.

Never send personal data, sensitive infrastructure detail or anything you have no right to share. A contribution is reviewed before use; sending it confers no authorship or editorial rights, and sponsorship never buys a finding.