Collaboration Policy

Updated July 29, 2022

Background

This document describes CyVerse’s policy on establishing collaborations and any cost recovery fees applicable to cyberinfrastructure support services provided by CyVerse to collaborators.

A collaborator is an individual, group, organization, or institution that formally engages with CyVerse through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), an External Collaborative Partnership agreement, a Letter of Collaboration/Letter of Support, a Data Services Agreement, or a mutually understood collaboration agreement. A collaborator may be an academic or non-academic researcher or research institution and may be located domestically or internationally. Definitions used in this policy include the following:​

• "Domestic" means residing or located within the United States.

• "International" means residing or located outside of the United States.

• "Academic" means an organization or institution whose primary function is basic research and/or secondary/graduate education.

• "Non-academic" means an organization or institution whose primary function is other than basic research and/or secondary/graduate education.

Consistent with its mission, CyVerse will provide cyberinfrastructure support for domestic or international individual researchers or lab groups with small data storage needs (<1 terabyte [TB]) and small computational demands (<1,000 SUs) with no need to establish a formal collaboration. It is assumed that such researchers are conducting research with the intention of publishing their analysis results and making the relevant data available to the global research community. Most CyVerse users will fall into this category and the current limits may increase over time, at CyVerse's sole discretion, as data storage and compute resources improve in capacity and efficiency. See our Data Policy for full details on storing data in CyVerse.

Domestic Collaborators

• CyVerse will provide cyberinfrastructure support free of charge for individual and collaborating research groups supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) or other U.S. national funding agencies (e.g., DOE, USDA, etc.) or humanitarian foundations (e.g., The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, etc.) provided the individuals or groups are engaged in efforts that benefit the public.

• Upon publication of the analysis supported by CyVerse cyberinfrastructure, collaborators agree to release all relevant data used in the analysis to allow third-party researchers to replicate and confirm the published results, and to benefit the global public research community. If the analysis is not published within 18 months of the establishment of the collaboration (or within a mutually agreed timeline established at the beginning of the collaboration), the collaborator agrees to pay a cost recovery fee (see Table 1) for data and analysis held confidential at CyVerse.

Non-academic Collaborators

• CyVerse will provide cyberinfrastructure support for non-academic collaborators who plan to publish their analysis results and publicly release the relevant data used in the analysis to allow third-party researchers to replicate and confirm the results, and to benefit the global research community.

• CyVerse will provide cyberinfrastructure support on a fee-for-service basis for non-academic users who choose not to release analysis or data publicly. Fees will equal total cost recovery for all services rendered, based on the values listed in Table 1. These values are subject to change as data storage and compute capability and efficiency change.

International Collaborations

• CyVerse will provide cyberinfrastructure support free of charge for international collaborators making large datasets publicly available to the domestic and international research communities.

• CyVerse will provide cyberinfrastructure support on a cost recovery basis (see Table 1) for international projects operating without NSF or U.S. funding until the data and/or results are made publicly available and provided CyVerse has sustainable support.

• Individual users (academic or non-academic) from the international research community may use CyVerse cyberinfrastructure and analyses for typical single user or small lab group needs as stated above. Additional CyVerse support for such users will be determined case-by-case and based on the value of the analysis to understanding biological mechanisms and to NSF-supported research as determined by the CyVerse Executive Team in consultation with NSF.

Cost Recovery

• Direct support for personnel: Projects needing more resources or expertise within CyVerse may provide direct support for developer time or technical assistance. Approximately 20% of this co-funded effort is spent on integrating the tools or data sources with CyVerse CI as a whole.

• Data allocations for data aggregators: For projects making use of the CyVerse infrastructure to store aggregations of data (structured databases for community use, data for community analyses), a waiver for cost recovery may be provided depending upon data accessibility, ease of searchability, and access of the data for all CyVerse community members. One example of such a scenario is Powered by CyVerse services, which are tightly integrated with CyVerse's data, authentication, and job execution APIs. These cases are reviewed on a regular basis.

† Fees may be subject to change as data storage and compute capability and efficiency improve.

* Assumes 96% uptime over 4 years, and fully loaded system cost (annual depreciation, staffing, building, and power).

** Assumes a replicated, 2-copy environment, and fully loaded system cost (annual depreciation, staffing, building, and power).

Note: Direct access to XSEDE resources through an XSEDE allocation request independent of CyVerse will require users to comply with applicable XSEDE policies.

Please contact info@cyverse.org for questions or comments about this policy.