OSCR

Removal and takedown

OSCR publishes records of papers and copies of code that their licences allow. Anyone may still ask for a record, or part of it, to be removed: published rules decide every request, in the safe direction, and the answer comes back in words. There is no human moderator on duty at the moment: what the rules cannot decide waits for the operator, 30 days at most — or, asked for personal data, until the operator answers, within one month.

What may be removed

  • a paper's whole record;
  • the copies of its authors' scripts, all of them, one repository's, or one file's — or, for code OSCR does not copy, their display from their source (the files stay listed with their links to the source);
  • its tracing map, with its matches, validations and DOI on the site.

A record's links are better corrected than removed, by its authors (how). Data about you, including the contact details kept privately, follow the privacy page, through the same form.

Who may ask

Anyone signed in: an author of the paper (marked verified when their ORCID iD is on the paper), the holder of the rights, a person named in the record, or someone else. Signing in is required until the site has its own bot check; it asks for no email address, it lets the answer reach you, and it tells the rules who asks.

How to ask

From the paper's page, "Request removal", or the removal page: who you are, what to remove, why (copyright or licence, personal data, wrongly attributed or not your work, a retracted paper, an incorrect record, another reason), a justification of 30 to 2,000 characters, an optional evidence link, and two confirmations; then a review before sending (the guide).

How requests are decided

OSCR's machine applies published rules to each request within minutes; the moderation policy gives them in full. In short:

  • from a verified author of the paper: applied at once, whatever it names;
  • for the copies of code its requester maintains as the repository's owner or a public member of its organization on GitHub, or as a maintainer the operator made (not as a contributor): applied at once;
  • for copies of the authors' code, for copyright or personal data, from anyone: hidden at once, within daily limits, pending the operator's review;
  • anything else — a whole record, a tracing map, another reason: nothing is removed; the request waits for the operator, 30 days at most, to be read with the record it names, the requester's role and the evidence given. Unreviewed, it is closed without removal, with how to ask again — except a request made for personal data, which the operator answers within one month, as the GDPR requires, and which is never closed unanswered.

Every decision comes with a few words the requester reads on the request's page and on their account page. The rule that made it is recorded, so that the operator can check it.

What an accepted request does

What it names leaves every public output at the next nightly publication (04:17, the operator's local time): the site, the DOI lookup, the search, the facts the sign-in uses, and the open data.

  • A whole record: the paper leaves as an off-topic paper does, everywhere; the operator's computer keeps it, marked withdrawn, with when and why, so that the harvester does not bring it back.
  • Copies: their text leaves the site's files, the public database and the scripts' dataset (its manifests), and the files OSCR does not copy are no longer fetched from their source; the files stay listed, with their links, and the reader says "withheld at a removal request".
  • A map: its section says it is withheld, with neither digest (nothing left to validate), matches, validations nor DOI, on the site, in the open data and in the search.

What cannot be undone elsewhere

  • A copy already in a published Parquet block on Hugging Face stays in that block, since a published block never changes: the manifest that points to it is withdrawn, so no reader of the dataset finds it.
  • A DOI given to a validated map stays on Zenodo, since a DOI is permanent; the site no longer shows it.
  • Copies others made while it was public are beyond the registry's reach.

A rejected request

Nothing changes; the requester reads the reason. One request per account and record: a refused or closed request can be asked again through the form only in a way the rules decide at once — as a verified author of the paper, as a maintainer of the code it names, or for the copies only, for copyright or personal data. The operator may also override the rules and accept it. A new fact can be brought to the operator through a correction, or, when you are an author, a claim.

Coming back

A record withdrawn or a copy withheld comes back only by the operator's hand: when the operator reverses what the rules did (copies hidden without reason, for instance), or at the request of the person who asked for its removal.