i6eal/Legal

Preservation & sustainability

Open data stays open only as long as somebody is there to serve it. This page therefore answers one question: what is left of the i6eal data if i6eal no longer exists?

  • 16datasets in the open catalogue, each with its source, methodology and update cadence
  • CC BY 4.0on the i6eal compilation and its original descriptions
  • 3archives outside our control: Zenodo, Harvard Dataverse, German National Library
  • 0funding commitments. The project pays for itself, with everything that follows from that

If i6eal disappears tomorrow

A preservation claim is best tested by failure. Switch i6eal off and see what still resolves. The bottom three layers sit with institutions that operate independently of us.

All four layers are currently reachable.

  1. i6eal.de

    online

    Operated by us

    Live tools, API, DCAT catalogue, daily updates

    The only layer that depends on our continued existence. If it goes, currency and the API go with it.

    i6eal.de/tools/data
  2. Zenodo

    online

    Operated by CERN

    Published dataset releases under a concept DOI that always points at the newest version

    Each deposited version also keeps its own version DOI, so a figure cited on a given date stays verifiable.

    10.5281/zenodo.21452970
  3. Harvard Dataverse

    online

    Operated by Harvard University

    Independent mirror of the same dataset

    A second archive on another continent under different governance. An outage at Zenodo does not touch this copy.

    10.7910/DVN/YBXYGQ
  4. German National Library

    online

    Federal public-law institution

    Legal deposit copy of the i6eal Research Notes, catalogued and permanently archived

    A statutory collecting mandate. The archived copy sits with the library rather than with us, and is permanently addressable through a URN.

    d-nb.info/1415328242

Preservation

What is deposited, where it lives, and for how long.

One deposited release, unpacked

  • Result datathe measured values per model and categoryCSV
  • Codebook & categorieswhat each column means, how the rubrics are definedCSVJSONL
  • Citation & licencehow to cite it, and under what termsCFFTXT
  • Methods descriptionhow the numbers were producedPDF

No part of it needs i6eal software. Opening the package in ten years takes a text editor and a PDF viewer.

What is deposited

Published dataset releases are deposited as a complete package: result data, codebook, licence text, and a methods description explaining how the numbers were produced. A dataset without its methodology cannot be interpreted later, so the methodology travels with it.

Where it lives

Primary deposit at Zenodo, operated by CERN, under a concept DOI that permanently resolves to the newest version. Mirror at Harvard Dataverse. The serial publication additionally goes to the German National Library as legal deposit and is addressable there through a URN.

For how long

Retention is set by the archives, not by us. That is deliberate: we cannot withdraw a copy held by the national library if a result later becomes inconvenient.

Formats

Everything deposited is in formats readable without our software: CSV, JSON, JSON-LD, PDF and plain text. No proprietary container, no database that has to be installed first.

Sustainability

Who pays for this, and how much that assurance is worth.

What is committed, and what is not

Solid is what is settled. Dashed is what we cannot promise.

Since 2026, financed out of ongoing businesstodayNo funding commitment: no guaranteed end, no guaranteed continuation
Deposited releasesStay reachable under their DOIs regardless of how the line above continues
  • settled
  • not promised

Who runs it

i6eal is operated by Syka Ventures UG (haftungsbeschränkt) in Hofgeismar, Germany, a two-person company. The same company also sells EU AI Act advisory services. The data and tools are free and published independently of that.

Funding

The project is financed out of ongoing business. There is no grant, no third-party funder, and no project term at the end of which funding would lapse. Equally, there is no secured budget line the operation can rely on.

What follows from it

With no funding commitment there is no guaranteed end date, but equally no guaranteed continuation. That is why this page rests on redundancy rather than on a promise: the data should not need us in order to survive.

Handover

If operations end, the deposited releases remain reachable under their DOIs, and the CC BY 4.0 licence lets anyone continue the compilation. Neither our consent nor our involvement is required for that.

What we do not promise

These limits belong with the commitments above. Without them the picture would be incomplete.

  • No availability commitment for i6eal.de. There is no SLA, no guaranteed uptime, and no assurance that an API address stays the same forever.
  • The live catalogue is not an archive. What is durably citable are the deposited releases with their DOIs, not every intermediate state the website happens to serve on a given day.
  • We archive our compilation, not the official sources. If a register or an authority page disappears, our snapshot of it survives, but that does not bring the original source back.
  • CC BY 4.0 covers the i6eal compilation, its structure and its original descriptions. The underlying datasets retain the rights and reuse terms of their named official source.
  • Not every dataset in the catalogue is already held in an external archive. The deposit grows with published releases; it is not an automatic mirror of all 16 datasets.

Persistent identifiers

If you cite i6eal data, use an identifier from this table rather than an address on i6eal.de. These identifiers keep resolving even when our domain does not.

The compilation is licensed CC BY 4.0. For attribution, i6eal, Syka Ventures UG (haftungsbeschränkt) is sufficient, together with the identifier used and the date of access.