It is not ethical to publish data without proper attribution or co-authorship. The data are the intellectual property of the collecting investigator(s).
The intellectual investment and time committed to the collection of a data set entitles the investigator to the fundamental benefits of the data set. Publication of descriptive or interpretive results derived immediately and directly from the data is the privilege and responsibility of the investigators who collect the data.
Any person making substantial use of a data set must communicate with the investigators who acquired the data prior to publication and anticipate that the data collectors will be collaborators on and co-authors of published results. This extends to model results and to data organized for retrospective studies.
The purpose of a data archive is to facilitate collaboration between scientists, the combination of multiple data sets for interdisciplinary and comparative studies, and the development and testing of new theories. The data contained in the archive are made available even though they may not be "final" (i.e. error free) data, so it is the responsibility of the user to verify the status of the data and to be aware of its potential limitations.
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