Acceptable use policy

This page sets out the acceptable use policy for the COSMIC website. It describes the terms under which visitors may use this website and the data contained within it. COSMIC usage is also governed by the terms and conditions of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Disruptive behaviour

Users of the website are not permitted to interact with the site in such a way that their actions may cause excessive or prolonged load on our servers or database. Such actions can cause the site to slow down or become unavailable for other users, and we reserve the right to block the IP addresses of any user who causes such disruption to others.

Unauthorised use

In general terms, users are expected to use the website via a normal web browser. We strongly discourage the use of automated scripts or other download tools to "scrape" data from the website. We provide a comprehensive set of downloadable data files, available to registered users, and we encourage you to use these files rather than the website when retrieving large volumes of COSMIC data.

Downloading bulk data from the COSMIC website as a means of avoiding registration or license fees is considered to be unauthorised use. We reserve the right to block the IP address of any user breaching our acceptable use policy in this way.

Licensing COSMIC

Academic users may register for a COSMIC account and may use our data for free. However, COSMIC is funded in part through license fees, which are applied to commercial organisations that use COSMIC data. You can read more about licensing COSMIC on our website or you can email the COSMIC team for more information.