Mark2Cure is a citizen science project stemming from the Su Lab at the Scripps Research Institute. By contributing to Mark2Cure or using any part of the Mark2cure site, you agree to become bound by the terms and conditions of this agreement. Please read this Agreement carefully before accessing or using the Website. If you object to any term or condition for the use of the website or contained in the Terms Of Use, your only recourse is to discontinue using the website.

User Agreement

Mark2Cure intends to use your contributions to build a knowledgebase from biomedical research literature. If you contribute to Mark2Cure, you grant the Su Lab and its collaborators, permission to use your contributions however necessary in order to further this goal.

Legal Terms

By submitting your contribution to Mark2Cure, you agree to grant the Su Lab a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sub-licensable license to: use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to your contribution worldwide and/or to incorporate your contribution in other works in any media now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in your contribution.

By interacting with the Mark2Cure you:

• Warrant that your contribution contains are your own and for all intents and purposes specified above, is not defamatory, and does not infringe any law; and
• Indemnify the Su Lab and the Scripps Research Institute against all legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be incurred by the the Su Lab and the Scripps Research Institute as a result of your breach of the above warranty; and
• Waive any moral rights in your contribution for the purposes specified above.

This license does not apply to data about you, covered in the Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

In addition to the contributions you make towards the scientific goals of Mark2Cure, we may collect additional data about you to support and improve the operation of the project. We may also conduct experiments on the design of the website that we evaluate based on your reactions and behavior. This Privacy Policy describes what data we collect, how we use it and how we protect it.

Types of information we collect

Identifying information: A username, password, and your e-mail address is required in order to create an account with Mark2Cure. Your e-mail address will not be visible to other users; HOWEVER, your username and your contributions may be viewed by other users. For example, a proxy for your overall contributions (user level) may be displayed along with your contribution on a particular document to another user and used for scoring purposes.

Optional information: You have the option of supplying additional information (name, disease are of interest, etc.) which you may choose to display/share or hide (by adjusting your privacy settings).

Usage information: We may monitor how users, like yourself, use our website, and aggregate general statistics about users and traffic patterns as well as data about how users respond to various site features. Your username will be associated with the following information that we collect:

• Your log in time stamps.
• Your contributions (words you’ve marked).
• Other contributions, such as posts on the Blog/Talk pages.

What we do with the information we gather

Usage information is collected to help us improve our website in particular for the following reasons:

• Internal record keeping.
• We may periodically send email promoting new research-related projects or other information relating to our research. Information about these contacts is given below. We will not use your contact information for commercial purposes.
• We may use the information to improve the design of the site.
• We may use the information to conduct experiments regarding the use of various site features.

What is shared with third parties

We respect your privacy and will never release e-mail addresses to third parties without your explicit permission. We may share aggregated and anonymized data that we collected from you with researchers, or in scholarly work describing our research. For example, we might use your classifications to illustrate a point in a paper or blog publication, or publish statistics about user interaction. Your username, level, and contributions to a particular document will be shared with other users for comparison and scoring purposes.

Contributions you make to the Blog or Talk pages are widely available to others. Aside from the above, information is held as confidentially as is practical within our secured database. If you contribute to the blog or talk pages, you will hold the following additional responsibilities:

Responsibility of Blog/Talk page Contributors. If you post material to the Website, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available by means of the Website (any such material, “Content”), You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content. That is the case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text, graphics, an audio file, or computer software. By making Content available, you represent and warrant that:

• the Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;
• the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);
• the Content is not libelous or defamatory (more info on what that means), does not contain threats or incite violence towards individuals or entities, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;
• your login is not named in a manner that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your login name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own;
• your content is not getting advertised via unwanted electronic messages such as spam links on newsgroups, email lists, journals and web sites, and similar unsolicited promotional methods

How we use cookies

In some areas of our site, a cookie may be placed on your computer. A cookie is a small file that resides on your computer's hard drive that allows us to improve the quality of your visit to our websites by responding to you as an individual.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used and improve our website. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes, they are not shared with other sites and are not used for advertisements.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. However, if you choose to decline cookies from Mark2Cure then functionality, including your ability to log-in and participate, may be impaired.

Acceptance of cookies is implied if you continue to access our website without adjusting your browser settings.

Where we store your data

We use Amazon Web Services so we can quickly and reliably serve our website to an unpredictable number of people. This means that your data will be stored in multiple locations, including the United States of America (USA). Amazon is a participant in the Safe Harbor program developed by the USA Department of Commerce and the European Union (EU). Amazon has certified that it adheres to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles agreed upon by the USA and the EU.

Security measures

Members of the research teams are made aware of our privacy policy and practices by reviewing this statement upon joining the team. We follow industry best practices to secure user data, and access to the database and logs are limited to members of the research group and system administrative staff.

Removing your data

Due to the way in which we archive data, it is generally not possible to completely remove your personal data from our systems. However, if you have specific concerns, please contact us and we will see what we can do.

When we will contact you

If you register or sign up on our interest list, we will contact you by e-mail in the following circumstances:

• Occasionally, we will send e-mail messages to you highlighting a particular aspect of our research, announcing new features, explaining changes to the system, or inviting you to special events.
• We may also use your information to contact you for the purpose of research into our site's operation. We may contact you by email. We may ask for additional information at that time. Providing additional information is entirely optional and will in no way affect your service in the site.
• We may contact you with a newsletter about the progress of the project.
• Please note that we may use a third party service provider to administer any email lists. Any such provider may not use your email information for any purpose other than in connection with providing and monitoring our email alerts to you.

You are unlikely to receive more than two messages per month.

Further information and requests

Please contact the project team at contact@mark2cure.org