Intellectual property
The exclusive aim of the DASI project is to provide an instrument for scholarly research. The contents of DASI are the
result of scholarly work, drawing on the literature and on agreements with research, educational, and cultural heritage institutions.
Data are intellectual property of the University of Pisa and the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, and of the individual scholars and students that have collaborated to the archive over the years.
How to cite
To cite the entire archive:
To cite a record, use the citation provided in the particular record's page. Here is an example:
- Irene Rossi, Giulia Buono. Maʿīn 115: a DASI Epigraph resource. Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions. https://doi.org/10.82194/dasi-epi-11016. First published: 2025-02-05
License
DASI has always been committed to the principles of open access and open science. The release since 2026 of the archive's data under a CC-BY 4.0 license is a direct expression of this commitment, and we welcome its reuse for scholarly and educational purposes.
The CC BY 4.0 license applies to data in the CSAI records, but not to any images displayed in the website. Visual materials on this website, unless otherwise stated, are protected by laws of copyright that may change depending on the country. The images are the property of third parties and are either used in DASI with permission or reproduced from publications (see the credits below each image).
Data reuse
DASI is committed to the
sharing of data for scholarly and educational purposes. We encourage responsible reuse grounded in scientific rigour, transparency, and collaboration.
DASI inscriptional records are exposed in an
OAI-PMH repository for data harvesting by service providers and in an
API endpoint, accessible upon request (see below).
DASI currently acts as a
data provider only to the following initiatives, under institutional agreements:
Europeana;
Trismegistos; the
Digital Atlas of Ancient Arabia and the
Gazetteer of Ancient Arabia of the Ancient Arabia portal (stemming from the MAPARABIA Project).
The following guidance outlines
best practices for reusing DASI data in accordance with its licensing framework:
- First, anyone wishing to reuse DASI data is invited to get in touch through DASI's contact person in order to explore the possibility of institutional agreements — which may also include access to the DASI API endpoint.
- Second, the CC-BY 4.0 license applies only to the data in the DASI records and not to the images (see above).
- Third, the CC-BY 4.0 license requires that the attribution information accompanying each record — the names of the contributing scholars, the date of publication, the date of last revision, and the record's DOI — be retained and made available with the record when reused. Except for initiatives based on formal institutional agreements which pre-date the release of DASI data under CC BY 4.0, a general acknowledgement of the DASI archive, or a mere link back to it, is not a substitute for retaining this per-record attribution.
- Fourth, we object to any use of bots for indiscriminate automated crawling and scraping of content on the DASI website and its related web services, especially regarding massive AI training activities. These cause slow-downs of DASI services, severely affecting the work of our scientific community.
- Fifth, we also discourage the reuse of DASI data in third-party resources which may offer responses, summaries, or interpretations generated by AI, on which we have no scientific control.
Disclaimer
We disclaim all warranties as to the accuracy of information in the website;
materials constitute work in progress which may be changed without notice. We will not be liable for any loss or damage deriving from their use or reliance on their veracity. Users are encouraged to report errors and malfunctions to the contact person.
Even though every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders and seek permission,
if you recognize visual materials for which the authorization has not been granted, please contact us via email.
We recognize that websites, applications, and other digital resources — including those that incorporate artificial intelligence in varying capacities — that draw on DASI open materials may be developed without our knowledge.
Third-party resources drawing on DASI data are not necessarily synchronised with DASI. Their content may be a static copy taken at a given moment, which does not reflect the ongoing development of the archive: records added, corrected, or revised in DASI after such a copy was made may not be reflected there, and the data may therefore be incomplete or outdated.
The fact that any other initiative than those stemming from institutional agreements (see above) draws on DASI as a data source should not be understood as implying any intentional provision of data, or any endorsement, on the part of DASI or the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR).