Intellectual property

Guidelines of data sovereignty and autorship of the AI Incubator participant's projects

Data sovereignty

Each team retains full ownership of its data. It is shared only with the assigned mentor and Incubator collaborators, solely for program purposes, and never disclosed to third parties without the team's consent. No personally identifiable patient data may be shared unless anonymised and approved. This reflects the data sovereignty principles of the African Union Data Policy Framework.

Autorship

Authorship follows internationally recognised standards by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors following Nature Portfolio criteria, based on contribution and accountability rather than seniority or participation alone, with an author contribution statement agreed before submission. Mentors and collaborators are listed as co-authors only when their contribution meets these criteria, and acknowledged otherwise.

Scientific results ownership

Each team retains ownership of the scientific results and IP from its own project and data, subject to its host institution's policies.

All outputs generated during the program must credit the AI Incubator Program, the Ersilia Open Source Initiative, and any collaborating institutions as appropriate.