NeuroCommons RDF Library - sources and terms

This page lists the contents of the NeuroCommons RDF library with the terms of use of each item. The below provides information that to the best of our knowledge reflects the terms under which Science Commons and others may use these resources. This is not legal advice and does not constitute a license.

The conversions to RDF of some (not all) of the sources listed here were performed as part of the activity of the W3C Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences (HCLS) Interest Group, in which Science Commons participated.

All conversion scripts from Science Commons are available under a BSD license.

See also our FAQ on databases and Creative Commons.

About the MeSH extraction

The Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) information was created and provided, and is maintained, by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The information provided here, which is a conversion to RDF by van Assem's script (ESWC 2006), is from the 2007 version of MeSH.

About the Medline extraction

NLM has asked Science Commons to issue the following notice regarding downloading and subsequent re-use of portions of NLM databases obtained from its products:

"Unless otherwise prohibited, organizations or institutions may download small amounts of NLM-produced citations for redistribution. For MEDLINE, this is about 1,000 per month or 12,000 records for each year of coverage. For other MEDLARS databases, it is approximately 25% of the records in the file except for AIDSLINEŽ, AIDSTRIALS, and AIDSDRUGS which may be downloaded in their entirety. Since NLM makes corrections and enhancements to and performs maintenance on these records at least annually, you should plan to replace or correct the records once a year to ensure that they are still correct and searchable as a group."

"NLM databases are produced by a U.S. government agency and as such the contents are not covered by copyright domestically. They may be copyrighted outside the U.S. Some NLM produced data is from copyrighted publications of the respective copyright claimants. Users of the NLM databases are solely responsible for compliance with any copyright restrictions and are referred to the publication data appearing in the bibliographic citations, as well as to the copyright notices appearing in the original publications, all of which are incorporated by reference. Users should consult legal counsel before using NLM-produced records to be certain that their plans are in compliance with appropriate laws."

"All records must be identified as being derived from NLM databases."

"Some material in the NLM databases is from copyrighted publications of the respective copyright claimants. Users of the NLM databases are solely responsible for compliance with any copyright restrictions and are referred to the publication data appearing in the bibliographic citations, as well as to the copyright notices appearing in the original publications, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference."

Please observe that the RDF for Medline provided by Science Commons does not include the text of any article abstract. The only fields extracted at this time are the subject headings (MeSH) and minimal reference information.

Jonathan Rees
jar@creativecommons.org
20 December 2007, updated 25 July 2008