Cite and licence

Licence

All published results are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0) (opens in a new tab). terms.json holds the licence, citation, credit and contact in a form your code can read.

CC BY-NC 4.0 covers OpenPhenology's own contribution: its results, and its selection and arrangement of the data. It does not change the terms of what they are built from: source records keep their own licences, and public-domain material, such as the U.S. Census Bureau county outlines and ZIP code files and USGS data, stays in the public domain. The county outlines are for display at small scales only.

The JSON Schemas in each release's schemas/ folder come unchanged from the @openphenology/api (opens in a new tab) package and are also available under the MIT licence.

Cite a release

Cite the release you used, by its DOI. A release without its own DOI names the registered release it builds on in releases.json; cite that DOI and give the release date.

OpenPhenology (2026). OpenPhenology data, release <release>. https://api.openphenology.com/releases/<release>/manifest.json

Credit the sources

Every result is built from records shared by people and institutions. Each result's attribution file lists the datasets, publishers, GBIF download DOIs and links to the records behind it. If you republish records, keep each record's own licence and credit with it; the record's page shows both.

Results are derived from records shared through iNaturalist and GBIF; each result's attribution file lists the datasets, GBIF download DOIs and records behind it. Credit those sources as their licences require.

No warranty

Provided as is, without warranty of any kind. Results show when people recorded a species, not when or where it occurs. Full terms are on the Terms page.

Contact

Questions, corrections or a release you need withdrawn: data@openphenology.com