VALEP:Privacy policy

VALEP contains two different types of data: (a) digital reproductions of archival sources that typically belong to either an academic or a private institution or person; (b) metadata that describe these archival sources using categories such as title, description, author, date, location (in all, VALEP uses 48 different metadata categories). International copyright legislation stipulates that it is permissible to make all types of metadata publicly available, whereas reproductions may be published online only if (α) the copyright was granted to the publishers by the copyright holder(s), or (β) a legal situation exists that allows publication without explicit transfer of copyright. Typically, (β) consists of two types of cases : (β-1) publication of a document is possible if all involved authors died at least 70 years ago, rendering the material into public domain; (β-2) publication is possible if the publishers can prove that the copyright holders could not be identified despite all reasonable efforts. Therefore, in cases where the copyright situation is not yet resolved, VALEP only makes available metadata of archival sources, not the reproductions themselves. However, even in those cases, the reproductions are available for internal use, which includes use at the Institute Vienna Circle, by members and visitors, as well as friends and close cooperative partners of the institute.