Copyright and Terms of Use

Copyright Policy for LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library and all partner society portals.

Original copyright holders retain their rights to copyrighted materials submitted to LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library or the partner portal, EcoEd Digital Library, EconBotEd Digital Library, PlantEd Digital Library or EvoEd Digital Library.  Each partner professional Society - BSA, ESA, SEB and SSE - agree to give copyright holders appropriate credit in all reproductions, copies, and publications of the materials by the professional society.

Individuals submitting materials created or licensed by someone else must first obtain the original copyright holder’s permission before sharing that resource via LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library and all partner portals. Note that in some cases, the copyright holder for a resource may be a journal or publication, rather than an individual author. If this is the case, submitters must obtain permission from that publication as the licensor of the work. By granting their permission, copyright holders give the professional society the nonexclusive world rights to reproduce and/or distribute materials included in LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library and all partner portals; this allows copyright holders to retain the rights to materials so that they may republish or otherwise use them.

Submitters of non-original work may use the Letter to Copyright Holders to obtain permission from original copyright holders. A signed copy of this letter must be sent to ESA, either to EcoEdDL@esa.org or to the following address:

Ecological Society of America
Office of Education and Diversity Programs
Attn: Jessica Johnston
1990 M St. NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036

All users and submitters will be asked to agree to the  LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library copyright policy and terms of use when creating an account with LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library or through any of the partner society portals.

Terms of Use

Copyrighted materials are licensed by the Ecological Society of America, Botanical Society of America, Society for the Study of Evolution and Society for Economic Botany under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License, represented by the symbol above. Under this license, registered users of LifeDiscoveryDL are free to use, copy, distribute, and adapt resources under the following conditions:

1.   All resources must be attributed to the original copyright holder, but not in any way that suggests that the copyright holder endorses the user or their use of the resource.
2.   No resource shall be used for any commercial purpose.
3.   Any alteration, transformation, or derivation of a resource may only be distributed using the same terms as this license.

Exceptions:
The above conditions may be waived if permission is obtained from the copyright holder.
The above conditions do not apply to any works that are part of the public domain.

We strongly suggest that users read through the full provisions of the license before uploading any submissions to LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library or any of the partner portals to ensure that all conditions are met. Email any questions to EcoEdDL@esa.org.