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BMS Creative Commons Licensing notice May 2026

All users on FRDBI can stipulate how their records can be used by other people by setting a Creative Commons licence for their records. The different categories of licence are listed on the FRDBI website, and further details are available on the Creative Commons website. 

The default for records on FRDBI is currently CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). This enables anyone to use, distribute and adapt the records in any medium or format, provided it is for non-commercial purposes and credit is given to the creator of the records; any adaptations must be shared under the same terms. However, many individual FRDBI users have set less restrictive licences for their records.

Effects on using records on NBN Atlas

Using a CC-BY-NC-SA licence limits the use of the FRDBI records. For example, records cannot be provided to the NBN Atlas which only accepts the following licences:

  • CC0: Creative Commons "No Rights Reserved". Records are fully in the public domain and can be used without any conditions.
  • CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution. Anyone can use, distribute and adapt the records in any medium or format, as long as credit is given to the creator of the records
  • CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. As CC-BY, but only non-commercial uses are allowed.

In support of its overall objective to promote fungal science, the BMS believes that fungal records should be made widely available so that they can be used for a range of purposes, including site management, conservation, policy development, scientific research and education.

The record licences of those FRDBI users who have stated their licence wish is shown in this table.

CC BY

525,476

CC0

516,676

CC BY-NC

273,650

ARR

15,121

CC BY-NC-ND

8,762

CC BY-SA

2,627

CC BY-NC-SA

544

CC BY-ND

1

This shows a clear wish for records to have a more open licence. 

We therefore propose to change the FRDBI default licence to CC-BY from 1 June 2026. We also propose to apply a CC-BY licence to records provided by Herbtrack, CABI, Kew, BMS field meetings and literature sources. Records entered online by individuals at BMS field meetings will still show their own account licence.

These records can be viewed by entering the following in the SEARCH box at the top of Explore page.

  • For Herbtrack enter: metadata.created_by_id:193003
  • For FRDBI field meetings enter: metadata.created_by_id:130296 

It is important to note that these proposed changes will not affect individual recorders’ ability to set different licence conditions for their own records, if they wish to.

If anyone has any comments about this proposal please let us know at admin@frdbi.org.uk by 22 May 2026.