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The Data Provider Agreement, Explained

· 5 min read

If you have ever hesitated to join Genesys because the word "agreement" made you nervous, you are not alone. Legal documents can feel intimidating, especially when they involve your institute's valuable data. But the Data Provider Agreement (DPA) is simpler and friendlier than it sounds, and it exists to protect you as much as it protects the platform.

The DPA is a one-time, standard agreement between your institute and the Crop Trust. It authorizes us to publish your genebank's accession data on Genesys. Without it, your data cannot go live on the portal. But here is the good news: you can still register an account, browse Genesys, and test uploads in the Sandbox without a signed DPA. You only need it when you are ready to publish.

What the DPA does (and doesn't do)​

The DPA accomplishes three things. It authorizes the Crop Trust to publish your data by granting a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use your accession data to build and operate Genesys. In plain terms, this lets us make your data available to users of the portal under the Terms and Conditions of Use. It confirms in writing that you retain ownership. And it defines the responsibilities of both parties regarding data quality, attribution, and the broader operation of the portal.

Equally important is what the DPA does not do. It does not transfer ownership of your data to the Crop Trust. It does not give the Crop Trust permission to alter, modify, or redistribute your data outside Genesys. And it does not involve any financial transaction: there are no licensing fees, royalties, subscriptions, or service charges in either direction. The Crop Trust cannot republish your data in another medium without your written permission.

You can read the full breakdown in our DPA introduction guide.

You keep ownership of your data​

This is the legal heart of the agreement, and we want to say it plainly: signing the DPA does not transfer ownership to the Crop Trust. The Crop Trust explicitly acknowledges that it will not claim any copyright, intellectual property rights, or proprietary interest in your data. When making your data available to third parties through Genesys, the Crop Trust must include that same condition downstream.

The license you grant is also revocable. You can withdraw your data at any time.

You can walk away at any time​

If you ever decide to remove your data from Genesys, the DPA makes that straightforward. You submit a formal written request to the Crop Trust, and your data is removed within three calendar months. The request needs to be formal (a special delivery letter to the Executive Secretary), not just an email, because the three-month window allows for an orderly removal including communications with end users who may rely on the data.

Either party can also terminate the entire DPA with six months' written notice. One important detail: existing end-user licenses for data that has already been downloaded are not affected. People who already downloaded your data keep their license to use it, but no new downloads happen after removal.

For the full details, see the key characteristics of the DPA.

It's one agreement in a framework of three​

Three legal documents together govern what happens on Genesys, but you only sign one of them. The DPA is between you and the Crop Trust. The Terms and Conditions of Use bind all end users, defining how they can use the data they access and explicitly prohibiting them from redistributing it. The Citation and attribution policy sets out how end users must acknowledge the source of any data they use.

Here is the key reassurance: by signing the DPA, you benefit from the protections built into the other two documents without having to manage them yourself. The Crop Trust takes on the responsibility of displaying those terms and enforcing citation requirements. You can review the Terms and Conditions of Use and the Citation and attribution policy at your convenience.

Who signs, and what you'll need​

The signatory must be someone with legal authority to bind your institute into agreements, typically the Director-General, Rector, or Chief Executive Officer, not the genebank curator. One DPA covers all genebanks operated by the same institute, so you only sign once even if your organization runs multiple collections.

To get started, you will need to provide six items to the Crop Trust:

  1. Full legal name of your institute
  2. Mailing address of the institute
  3. Name of the genebank
  4. FAO WIEWS institute code (INSTCODE), the globally unique identifier assigned by FAO's World Information and Early Warning System on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (WIEWS)
  5. Name and email of the primary focal point (your day-to-day contact)
  6. Name and position of the authorized signatory

You can find the full onboarding procedure in our guide to joining Genesys.

If your genebank is ready to share its data with the world, we would love to hear from you. Reach out to the helpdesk at helpdesk@genesys-pgr.org, or dive into the full DPA guide to learn more. We are here to help every step of the way!