Data contribution and CC0 policy

Who must follow this policy

This policy applies to every person, lab, center, or group that contributes data to Scaling Neuro. A requester who selects “I plan to contribute data” accepts this policy in advance. Before any transfer, neuro-sync separately requires acceptance of the current policy and confirmation that the contributor is authorized to share the specific selected data. Accepting this policy does not itself authorize an upload or dedicate unspecified data.

What neuro-sync shares

neuro-sync searches the selected folder for functional echo-planar imaging time series. Only series supported by standard EPI and temporal DICOM metadata and the local privacy checks are uploaded. Structural scans, localizers, diffusion, field maps, secondary captures, non-image objects, and ambiguous series stay on the workstation.

Your authority to contribute

By continuing, you confirm that you are the owner of the selected functional MRI data or are authorized by the owner and your institution to deidentify the data, share it publicly, and apply the CC0 dedication described below.

For each upload, you confirm that the participant consent and approvals for the specific data expressly permit: (1) irrevocable sharing, (2) commercial reuse by any party, and (3) public-domain redistribution without conditions. You understand that CC0 cannot be revoked and that withdrawal cannot retrieve copies already distributed. This confirmation does not replace any consent, ethics, IRB, data-use, contractual, or institutional review or permission.

CC0 public-domain dedication

During the beta period, an uploaded archive is held in a restricted staging area for seven days after Scaling Neuro receives it. At receipt, neuro-sync provides the contributor with the upload ID and notice of this staging period. Until the seven-day period ends, no public-domain dedication has occurred and researchers cannot access the archive. The contributor may cancel the upload during this period by emailing [email protected] with the upload ID.

Unless Scaling Neuro or the contributor cancels the archive during staging, CC0 dedication and researcher access take effect automatically seven days after receipt. At that time, you dedicate all copyright and related rights in the archive that you are authorized to grant to the public domain under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal. CC0 is irrevocable and permits anyone to copy, modify, distribute, and use the data for any purpose, including commercial purposes, without conditions.

CC0 applies only to rights you own or are authorized to grant. It does not make the data anonymous, waive participant privacy or publicity rights, or replace compliance with applicable law and ethical obligations.

What leaves the workstation

• Functional EPI Pixel Data. Pixel Data is preserved in the rewritten DICOMs.
• Acquisition metadata. A conservative allowlist retains fields needed to decode and interpret the acquisition.
• Pseudonymous linkage. Patient, study, series, instance, and reference identities are replaced with site-scoped values.
• Integrity evidence. The archive contains counts, policy versions, classifier evidence, and hashes.

What is removed locally

Direct identifiers, dates and times, clinical and administrative fields, institution, station and operator identity, descriptions, comments, source paths and filenames, overlays, graphics, and unreviewed private metadata are removed before transfer. The rewritten files are recursively audited before an archive can be uploaded.

Storage and access

One deidentified DICOM archive per selected series is stored in Cloudflare R2. Researchers can request access, download the DICOM archives, and choose their own conversion and preprocessing workflow. Scaling Neuro does not run conversion, preprocessing, or analysis. Access is governed by the separate archive access and privacy agreement. Those access conditions do not narrow the CC0 dedication or become conditions on the public-domain data.

Withdrawal

During the seven-day staging period, a lab may cancel an upload before CC0 takes effect by contacting [email protected] with the pseudonymous upload ID from its local report. After publication, a lab may request workstation revocation or removal of Scaling Neuro's hosted copy through the same address. Removing a published hosted copy does not revoke CC0 or retrieve copies already received by others.

Stopping is safe. Cancelling before the authorization prompt uploads nothing. neuro-sync prepare also uploads nothing, allowing a lab to inspect or edit the local deidentified DICOMs before a separate upload command. Interrupted work resumes only when the same folder command is run again.