The International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) was initiated by the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) and the European Space Agency (ESA) to promote scientific studies on calibration and validation of satellite based and modeled soil moisture products. For a smooth and successful use of the ISMN, data users must follow the Terms and Conditions below:

1. Registration. Users of the ISMN are required to register before being able to download data from the ISMN. The registration will provide full access to the data hosting facility. Data downloaded by the registered user can be used by the user and the associated organisation, no onward distribution is permitted.
2. Scientific use only. Data provided through the ISMN shall be used for scientific purposes only. Commercial use is not permitted.
3. No onward distribution. Re-export or transfer of the original data (as received from the ISMN archive) by the data users to a third party is prohibited. This is in the best interest of both the individual data providers and the potential users as unrestricted copying of the original data by multiple, independent users may lead to errors in the data.
4. Intellectual Property Rights: User acknowledges the respective data owner’s full title and ownership of the data and nothing in these terms and conditions shall be construed as granting or implying any rights to, or interest in copyrights or intellectual property rights of the respective data owners.
5. Acknowledgement and citation. Whenever data distributed by the ISMN are being used for publication, the data's origin (i.e. the original data provider and the ISMN) must be acknowledged and referenced. A reference both to the ISMN and to all networks providing data for the study in question shall be given. The official reference to the International Soil Moisture Network is:
   
   Dorigo, W. A., Wagner, W., Hohensinn, R., Hahn, S., Paulik, C., Xaver, A., Gruber, A., Drusch, M., Mecklenburg, S., van Oevelen, P., Robock, A., and Jackson, T. (2011). The International Soil Moisture Network: a data hosting facility for global in situ soil moisture measurements, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 15, 1675-1698, doi:10.5194/hess-15-1675-2011.
   
   References to the individual networks are provided on the “Contributing networks” page of the ISMN site and in the readme.txt files accompanying every data download.
6. User feedback. For all questions and remarks concerning the data hosting facility or the data themselves, users should contact the ISMN hosting organisation. Currently this is the Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (I.P.F.) of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). Contact person here is Wouter Dorigo (E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Tel: +43-(0)1-58801-12243). If necessary, the hosting organisation will forward the comments to the respective data providers.
7. No warranties. The data distributed through the ISMN are provided for free and “as is”, i.e. without any warranty as to their condition or consistency or suitability for a particular purpose. Neither the I.P.F., nor ESA or the individual networks can be held responsible for any errors or inconsistencies in the data provided through the ISMN or for a timely delivery of the data sets. Moreover, they are deprived of any obligations relating to updates of the data sets or service commitments.
8. Termination. The delivery of data may be suspended or terminated at any moment.