Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools, just signed the Bouchout Declaration in line with its vision and commitment to open science Data.

Creator and steward of the legal and technical infrastructure that allows open licensing of content, the non profit organization entirely supports the Declaration which exhorts the use of licenses or waivers to grant all users a free right to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly, as well as to build on the work and to make derivative works, subject to proper attribution consistent with community practices.

Creative Commons, which has participated in the activities that led to the Joint Declaration of the Data Citation Principles and advocates the use of persistent identifiers to allow discovery and attribution of resources, encourages the Declaration to promote tracking the use of identifiers in links and citations. This methods ensures that sources and suppliers of data are assigned credit for their contributions and Persistent identifiers for data objects and physical objects such as specimens, images and taxonomic treatments with standard mechanisms to take users directly to content and data.

Creative Commons, which works assiduously on fostering the promulgation of open policies and practices, naturally encourages the declaration calls for Policy developments to foster free and open access to biodiversity data.

If you too believe that open biodiversity information is crucial for science and society, join the movement and sign the Bouchout Declaration!