Privacy Policy

RFF.org is owned and operated by Resources for the Future (RFF). Please read these terms and conditions before using our website. Using RFF.org indicates that you agree to these terms and conditions. RFF reserves the right to update these terms and conditions at any time without notice. Please check back periodically for the latest version of RFF’s terms and conditions.

All content included on RFF.org is the property of RFF or its content suppliers unless otherwise noted. All content on this site is intended for informational and educational purposes and may be used only for these purposes. RFF content can be shared per the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives license unless otherwise indicated. Materials posted and clearly cited from other sources are the property of those sources and are used here for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed in RFF publications—including discussion papers, reports, issue briefs, Common Resources blog posts, Resources magazine articles, and Resources Radio podcast episodes—are those of the contributors and should not be attributed to RFF, its directors, or its officers. RFF does not take positions on specific legislative proposals.

RFF.org contains links to third-party websites. RFF is not responsible for the content or policies of those websites. Please refer to the third party’s terms of use and privacy policy.

RFF web content, publications, and other content may be printed for individual use on an educational or informational basis, by referencing the Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives license. If you are interested in using RFF content for another purpose, see below.

Resources for the Future (RFF) respects and protects the privacy of our website visitors and our donors. Our privacy policy describes when and what information RFF.org collects from you and how we use this information.

Donor Privacy Policy

RFF does not share, sell, or exchange information on its donors with any other nonprofits or other third parties. Whether donors contribute to RFF online or through other means, directly or through a third-party service provider (such as Network for Good), these are private transactions and any personal information gathered at the time of a donation will be used only to complete said donation. RFF respects the wishes of those donors who prefer to remain anonymous.

Generic User Information

When you visit RFF.org, certain generic user information is collected automatically. This information includes your Internet Protocol (IP) address, the browser version and type of machine you are using, the URL of the page that referred you, the pages you request, and the date and time you request them. This information is referenced only to help us improve the usability of our website. We may use various technologies, including cookies, to collect and store this information when you visit RFF.org.

Note: You may enable restrictions on the use of cookies by adjusting your browser’s privacy options.

Personally Identifiable Information

RFF.org collects personally identifiable information only if you provide it in the process of signing up to receive RFF email content, such as newsletters, press releases, notices of new research, and other announcements; registering to attend an event; making a donation; applying for employment; or by contacting us. In these cases only, we require you to provide your name, email address, and any other information necessary to fulfill your request. This information will never be sold or rented. We may use third parties to perform services related to RFF.org, such as database management, donation processing, and email distribution. These third parties have access to your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf.

Reprint and Reuse Information and Permissions

All work on the rff.org and Resources.org websites (working papers, reports, issue briefs, explainers, Common Resources blog posts, Resources magazine articles, Resources Radio podcast episodes, graphs, charts, photographs, audio, and video) are listed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives International license. This license allows our website content to be copied, used, and redistributed without explicit permission for most common uses, while requiring that the content is attributed to RFF, used in its original form (hence, “No Derivatives”), and used for noncommercial purposes.

Anyone wishing to create derivative works, or use research from RFF scholars for commercial purposes, still must ask for explicit permission by contacting the editorial senior manager at [email protected].

RFF Press is an imprint of Routledge. For more information about RFF Press books, visit www.taylorandfrancis.com/rffpress/. Portions of works published by RFF Press may be reproduced only with permission. For more information, visit the Copyright Clearance Center at www.copyright.com, or call 978.750.8400.

Anyone wishing to cite an RFF research product can find the authors’ first and last names, product publication date, title, series number, and URL at the webpage (and corresponding PDF) of each research product. For citation styles that require a publication location, note that RFF is based in Washington, DC.

When RFF staff cite other RFF products in their publications, they italicize report titles and place the titles of all other product types in quotation marks. This convention is consistent with RFF’s adherence to the Chicago Manual of Style, though it also may be useful information for users of other citation styles.

For example, RFF staff cite other RFF products using this general format:

Elkerbout, Milan, Raymond Kopp, and Kevin Rennert. 2023. “Foreign Pollution Fee Act: Design Elements, Options, and Policy Decisions.” Resources for the Future. Issue Brief 23-09. https://www.rff.org/publications/issue-briefs/foreign-pollution-fee-act-design-elements-options-and-policy-decisions/.

Author Last Name, Author First Name[, Second Author First Name Last Name, Third Author First Name Last Name, etc]. Publication Year. Publication Title. Resources for the Future. Working Paper/Report/Issue Brief XX-XX. URL.

[Note: “XX-XX” represents digits, such that the last two digits of the publication year comes before the hyphen, with the series number after the hyphen.]

Permissions for Reuse of RFF Intellectual Property

Data licensing will be determined on a case-by-case basis. By way of example, the E4ST model was released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 with a request for citation. In contrast, the Mimi and GIVE models were released under the MIT license. Note that GNU offers a “copyleft” license, whereas MIT does not; copyleft is a little more restrictive and forms some substantive rationale for choosing one over the other.

Shared Intellectual Property between RFF and Others

Some intellectual property may originate at RFF but becomes shared property when a coauthor leaves RFF for another institution—or some intellectual property may be shared from the start by RFF and coauthors at other institutions. In these cases of shared intellectual property, RFF and the coauthor(s) jointly own the product until the cooperation ends, at which point ownership forks into two products, one owned by RFF and one owned by the coauthor(s).