Terms of Service

Stomics.io is a public repository for depositing, discovering and downloading spatial transcriptomics datasets, operated by The Allman Institute for Personalized Medicine (“the Institute”, “we”, “us”). These terms apply to the website at stomics.io, the API at api.stomics.io, and the published Python and R SDKs. Using any of them means you accept these terms. If you are using the service for an employer or institution, you confirm you may accept these terms on its behalf.

1. Accounts

Browsing and downloading public datasets needs no account. Submitting data, commenting, and requesting access to embargoed datasets do.

Give accurate registration details and keep them current. An account belongs to one person; do not share credentials. API keys carry the same authority as your password, so store them the way you would store a password and revoke any key you think has leaked. You are responsible for what happens under your account until you tell us it has been compromised.

2. What you may submit

By submitting data you confirm all of the following.

• You hold the rights needed to deposit the data and to grant the licence in section 3, or you have permission from whoever does.
• Human subject data was collected under appropriate ethical approval and participant consent, and that consent extends to open publication of the data as you have supplied it.
• Human subject data has been de-identified. Do not upload names, contact details, medical record numbers, dates of birth, or any other direct identifier, whether in metadata fields, file names, or inside the files themselves.
• Your submission complies with the export control, biosecurity and data protection rules that apply to you.
• The metadata you supply describes the data honestly, including its organism, tissue, technology and processing.

You keep ownership of what you submit. Nothing here transfers your copyright or your rights in the underlying research.

3. Licence you grant

To run the repository at all we need permission to store your submission and hand it to other people. By submitting, you grant the Institute a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to host, copy, convert between formats, index, display and distribute your submission and its metadata through the service, including through the API and any successor service the Institute operates.

When a dataset is released, you also grant every user of the repository the right to download, analyse, and build on it for any lawful purpose, subject to the citation expectation in section 5 and to any dataset-specific licence you have attached to the record.

Metadata for released datasets, including titles, abstracts, author names and affiliations, is made openly available so the repository can be indexed and searched.

4. Curation, accessions and embargo

Submissions go to curators before release. We may ask for changes, correct obvious metadata errors, or decline a submission that does not meet the requirements above. Curation is a check on completeness and format. It is not peer review, and it is not validation of your science.

A released dataset receives a permanent accession in the STD0001 form. Accessions are not reissued and not reused. You may request an embargo of up to 24 months, during which the record is discoverable but the data is released only to people you approve. When the embargo expires the dataset becomes public automatically.

Corrections after release are made as new versions with the earlier version preserved. If a dataset must be withdrawn, we keep the accession resolving to a notice explaining the withdrawal, because published work may already cite it.

5. Using data you download

Cite the datasets you use. Give the accession and, where one exists, the DOI, so that the people who deposited the data get credit for it. Each dataset page provides a formatted citation.

Do not attempt to re-identify any individual whose data appears in the repository, and do not combine repository data with other sources for that purpose. If you discover that a dataset contains identifying information, stop using it and tell us.

Embargoed data released to you under an access request is for the purpose you stated in that request. Do not redistribute it before the embargo ends.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• circumvent embargo periods, access controls, rate limits or authentication;
• place load on the service that degrades it for others, whether by scraping, by parallel bulk downloads, or otherwise; the API and SDKs are the supported route for automated access;
• upload malware, or content that infringes someone else’s rights;
• use the discussion features to harass anyone or to post material unrelated to the science;
• probe or test the security of the service without written permission, beyond reporting what you find through the address in our Privacy Policy;
• misrepresent your identity, your affiliation, or your authority to deposit data.

7. Availability

We aim to keep the repository available continuously and we take backups, but we do not promise any level of uptime, and we may take the service down for maintenance. Features may change. We give notice before removing anything that submitters depend on, and we will give substantial notice, with a route to retrieve deposited data, if the Institute ever discontinues the repository.

8. Disclaimer

The service and everything in it are provided as they are, without warranty of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

Datasets are deposited by their submitters. The Institute does not verify the accuracy, quality, legality or completeness of deposited data, and does not endorse any conclusion drawn from it. Analyses and visualisations offered by the service are exploratory tools. None of the content here is medical advice, and none of it is approved for clinical or diagnostic use.

9. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Institute is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, nor for lost profits, lost research time, or lost or corrupted data arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to one hundred US dollars.

Keep your own copies of anything you deposit. The repository is a place to publish data, not a backup of your only copy.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, so parts of this section and section 8 may not apply to you.

10. Indemnity

If a third party brings a claim against the Institute because of data you submitted or because you broke these terms, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and any damages awarded, provided we tell you about the claim promptly and let you take part in the defence.

11. Suspension and termination

You may close your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that is used to attack the service, or where the law requires it, and we will explain why unless we are prevented from doing so. Released datasets stay published after an account closes, as described in the Privacy Policy. Sections 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10 survive termination.

12. Copyright complaints

If you believe material on the repository infringes your copyright, write to support@stomics.io with the accession, a description of the work, and a statement of your rights in it. We will investigate and, where the complaint holds up, remove or restrict the material.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Disputes go to the state and federal courts sitting in California, and both sides consent to their jurisdiction. If a mandatory consumer protection law where you live gives you a different forum, that law prevails.

14. Changes to these terms

We may revise these terms. The date at the top shows the current version. For a change that materially affects submitters or account holders, we will give notice by email or on the site before it takes effect, and continuing to use the service afterwards means you accept the revised terms.

15. General

If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our not enforcing a term on one occasion does not waive it. These terms, with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between you and the Institute about the service.

Contact

The Allman Institute for Personalized Medicine
support@stomics.io