What is the licence of NCBI RefSeq database?

Question

[krassowski.michal]

This might not be a usual question here, but I struggle to find terms & conditions of use of NCBI RefSeq database and licence of the database. I think I managed to find it somewhere a long time ago but cannot recollect where it was. I checked https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21091/ (it only says that "The RefSeq collection is available without restriction" and "RefSeq collection is a freely accessible database" - does it mean it is in public domain?), readme's in FTP download, looked over lot of pages and found nothing more specific.

Does anyone know what is the NCBI RefSeq licence or where to find it? What about other databases from NCBI?

PS. I know that I can ask them, but I think this post (if answered) might help someone else in the future. Also, I already wrote a feedback message asking to clarify the licence for download files some three months ago.

Answer 1

[tdmurphy]

You can find this under "Policies and Guidelines" at the bottom of most NCBI pages: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/about/policies/

Answer 2

[Devon Ryan]

Yes, it's public domain. That's what "available without restriction" means. In general, you can expect things from NCBI to be public domain, since it's a governmental agency.