Please contact us on our support line in case you are in doubt if a specific use of Zenodo is considered within scope.
Overall, Zenodo strives to be as open as possible for research related content and to support the scientific discourse. The following is an overview of classes of content that we consider to be misuse of Zenodo (i.e. unsolicited, irrelevant or deceptive content) and not in line with our mission (content should be understood in the broadest sense here of any content uploaded by a user on Zenodo):
- Non-research content: Submissions that lack a clear connection to research, science, or Zenodo’s scholarly focus. Examples include purely personal or commercial content with no research relevance, as well as very low quality/machine-generated content that cannot be defined as a research output.
- Malicious or harmful content: Content containing links that direct users to phishing sites, malware, or any other potentially harmful online locations.
- Promotional content: Content uploaded primarily for promotion or marketing purposes rather than legitimate research dissemination. This includes CVs, book reviews, or tutorials created solely to promote individual authors, publishers, or products.
- Abstract-only content: Entries that contain only an abstract without providing access to the full research material or digital resource they reference.
- Fake or predatory publishing: Content that originates from journals or publishers using unethical publishing practices such as falsified peer review claims, fabricated editorial boards, charging authors for expedited publication without proper quality checks and other similar practices.
- Journal indexing: Bulk submissions from publishers seeking to use Zenodo primarily as a free journal indexing/archiving service, often for purposes like avoiding DOI registration fees. If you plan to do bulk submission of a journal, please obtain explicit permissions from us by contacting us on support. We do support certain journals when there's a specific research purpose (e.g. FAIR data for a specific domain), or in certain cases when a journal is run from within academic institution without the means.
- Student assignment hands-in: Multiple submissions of similar work from different students, suggesting task assignments submitted to fulfil class requirements rather than for research. Note, this should not be understood as that students cannot submit research-related output to Zenodo (in particular e.g. bachelor or master theses) - it's simply that Zenodo is not a submission system for home-work but for research dissemination. Please feel free to use https://sandbox.zenodo.org to train prospective researchers in data sharing.
The list is not exhaustive and we may review and adapt the list as new cases arrive.
Note: Generally, we consider spam content that's unsolicited, irrelevant or deceptive however it does not necessarily need to be submitted in bulk. Misinformation/disinformation is also a strong concern but poses unique challenges in a scholarly context because it's complex to define and handle especially when trying to be open as possible. Research can sometimes encompass controversial or speculative ideas that, while potentially flawed or disputed, may still be part of scientific discourse. Removing such content too broadly could inadvertently limit academic freedom and discourage open scientific exploration. Misinformation may still be removed or labelled with links to peer reviews if they exist, but they follow a different procedure than our spam removal. We strongly encourage the use of communities as a method for experts to curate content.
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