CREATE Terms of Use¶

Purpose & Scope¶

King's College London ("the university") hosts the Computational Research, Engineering, and Technology Environment ("CREATE") infrastructure and provides an associated research computing service ("the service") for academic purposes, to support research, learning, and teaching. The service must be used responsibly, in accordance with the law and applicable university policies in ways that do not bring the university or other stakeholders into disrepute. The terms of use set out here stipulate the practices and constraints that apply when accessing and using the system. These terms apply to:

Students, researchers, academics, affiliates, staff, or partners who access and/or make use of the system.
All forms of computing services administered or supported by the service, including third party IT services provided under contract. Contracted services will be the responsibility of the sponsoring King's personnel (e.g. principal investigator).
The use of the system's hardware, software, network storage, data, and resources.
All information held by the service regardless of the format in which it is held

This document provides specific terms and conditions for use of the research computing infrastructure and service. There are other related policies, regulations, and specific subsidiary procedures covering a range of IT user- and researcher-oriented activities, which are aligned with this document, and that must also be adhered to (see Implied and related policies, below).

This document, hosted at https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/termsandconditions, represents the definitive and current effective version, superseding any previous versions. By using the System, users are agreeing to these terms.

Acceptable Use¶

Responsibility and ownership¶

Responsibility for data stored on the system lies ultimately with the principal investigator or equivalent project leader. In the case of students or collaborators, ultimate ownership and responsibility lies with the authorizing user who initially requested the account, i.e., the supervising member of King's staff.

Allocation of resources¶

Use of system storage and resources is engineered and monitored to ensure all users have access to compute resources. We reserve the right to adjust priorities, enforce limits, and otherwise control resources in order to meet this goal. Any attempt to circumvent such measures, e.g., bypassing the HPC scheduler, is in violation of this policy.

Intended purpose¶

Data stored on the system should be for the purposes of active research and teaching only. When a project finishes, and the data is no longer actively processed or required on the system, it should be deleted, moved, or otherwise archived.

Passwords¶

Passwords must comply with KCL Password Procedures. Users must never share their passwords with anyone.

Connected devices¶

User end-point devices must comply with KCL Code of Connection (n.b. King's SOE devices are compliant by default).

Incident Reporting¶

An incident is any potentially destructive event that needs to be controlled to prevent loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information or systems. Any instance of information or systems, particularly related to confidential data, being threatened or made vulnerable must be reported to KCL Cyber Security as soon as possible, either by calling 8888 or emailing the support desk at 88888@kcl.ac.uk.

Acknowledgement¶

Where a communicated output from research or teaching (such as academic publications, conference papers, etc.) is derived from the use of resources on the system, users must acknowledge CREATE in their output. See https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/CREATE/acknowledging/ for details.

Intellectual Property¶

Users should familiarize themselves with the KCL Code of Practice for Intellectual Property and understand the ownership, licensing, and restrictions of any databases, software, applications, and other content used or produced on the platform.

Service Level Definition¶

Authentication¶

The system defers authentication of accounts to the general KCL authentication system; responsibility for, e.g., passwords or King's account status, lies with the user and King's IT. Please visit the King's IT site for issues with the management of a King's account, such as resetting the password.

Authorisation¶

Access to resources is authorized based on group membership which is approved by PIs or authorized persons via a self-service portal which has an audit log.

Infrastructure¶

The infrastructure is located in Virtus commercial data centers, which are secure, off-campus environments, operated and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The provision is built to Uptime Tier III standard.

Support¶

All support requests should be initiated by logging a ticket on the self-service portal (category: e-research) or emailing e-research@kcl.ac.uk. Response times and service hours vary across the individual sub-systems.

Monitoring¶

The System, including various user activities within the System, is monitored, and logs preserved, for reasons of security, capacity management, and uptime.

End/Renewal of Service¶

A maximum of 5 years of service can be arranged at the outset of a project, after which point the arrangements must be reviewed. Users must communicate any long-term storage requirements (e.g., cold storage/archiving) to the e-Research team, who will facilitate implementation. Inactive accounts and associated storage will be cleaned (moved, archived, deleted, or otherwise removed, as appropriate) in consultation with the principal investigator or department head. Thus, please keep the CREATE team informed if you are going to be inactive for an extended period of time (e.g., longer than 6 months) but wish to keep your account and associated projects open.

User data¶

Usage data (e.g., authentication information, actions executed within a system, system usage metrics, etc.) at the user level and in aggregate is collected, stored, and processed to support effective delivery of the System and associated services. This data may be used to conduct management reporting; identify patterns and trends; target relevant communications to appropriate user groups; identify misuse; investigate potential incidents; and/or similar purposes related to the security, functionality, availability, and sustainability of the System. This data is stored in logs and dashboards on UK-based systems managed and secured by King's. Logs are expired according to log retention rules as managed by system administrators, but other data may be retained longer where required for legitimate interests such as analyzing historical usage patterns.

Backup and Recovery¶

The System has built-in resiliency to hardware failure (e.g., in the event of catastrophic and total system failure) and specific backup provisions are in place for the Trusted Research Environment, Research Data Store, and HPC home directory. However, there is no default provision for data stored on other parts of the System to be recovered. If you are using a different system and require backups, contact the e-Research team for this to be arranged.

Costing and Fees¶

See https://docs.er.kcl.ac.uk/costing_grants/

As a King's College London System, the University's policies and procedures must be applied. The following are high-level documents relevant to work carried out under these Terms of Use. Guidance specific to the sub-systems are available on the associated e-Research web pages.

Data Breach Management Procedure
Data Governance Policy
Data Protection Policy and Procedures
Identity Management Policy and Procedures
Information Classification Procedures
Information Security Policy
Information Security Risk Management Policy
KCL IT Acceptable Use Policy and Procedures
Research Data Management Policy

Violation of These Terms¶

Violation of these Terms may result in suspension or termination of account access and cases of misconduct will be reported and investigated in accordance with the KCL Disciplinary Policy and Procedure. Examples of violations include but are not limited to:

Using the Service for illegal or unauthorized activity
Sharing account credentials with others
Using the Service for personal gain, e.g., cryptomining

Changes to the Terms of Use¶

The University reserves the right to update these terms of use at any time and without notice. Significant changes will be communicated via the user mailing list.

Contact Information¶

For questions or concerns about the Service or the terms of use, please contact the e-Research support team at e-research@kcl.ac.uk.