Data Sources & Policy
InfectoNET is an independent, non-commercial open-science project that aggregates publicly available genomic surveillance data from multiple international repositories. This page describes the licensing terms, attribution requirements, and privacy practices for all data sources used by the platform.
GISAID Data Acknowledgement
Sequence surveillance data for influenza, SARS-CoV-2, arboviruses, RSV, and mpox are sourced from GISAID. We gratefully acknowledge all data contributors — the Authors and their Originating laboratories responsible for obtaining specimens, and their Submitting laboratories for generating and uploading data to GISAID. Access to GISAID data is governed by the GISAID Database Access Agreement. InfectoNET displays aggregate statistics only — no raw sequences or full metadata records are downloadable from this platform. EPI_SET identifiers for data used in publications are cited in the relevant manuscript Materials & Methods.
Data Sources
NCBI GenBank
OpenPublic domain (US Gov. / CC0)
None from NCBI. Individual records may carry submitter IP claims.
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), U.S. National Library of Medicine
GISAID
DAAGISAID Database Access Agreement (DAA)
Redistribution of underlying sequences and full metadata is prohibited. Aggregate statistics displayed under research use. EPI_SET acknowledgement required.
We gratefully acknowledge all data contributors — the Authors and their Originating laboratories responsible for obtaining specimens, and their Submitting laboratories for generating and uploading data to GISAID.
Nextstrain
CC BY 4.0AGPL v3 (software) · Public domain / CC BY 4.0 (open data builds)
Open data builds sourced from INSDC (NCBI/ENA/DDBJ). Visualisations: CC BY 4.0.
Nextstrain (nextstrain.org). Bedford et al., Bioinformatics 2018.
WHO News / Disease Outbreak News
CC BY-NC-SACC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO
Non-commercial use only. Attribution and ShareAlike required. WHO logo requires written authorisation.
© World Health Organization. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
PAHO
CC BY-NC-SACC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO
Non-commercial use only. Attribution required.
© Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO). Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
ReliefWeb
MixedMixed — per original source
Attribute original publisher. Headline/link display only. Full content subject to each document's copyright.
ReliefWeb (reliefweb.int), a service of OCHA. Content owned by respective originating organisations.
NOAA / Oceanic Niño Index (ONI)
CC0Public domain (CC0 1.0)
No restrictions. Attribution recommended.
NOAA Climate Prediction Center, Oceanic Niño Index (cpc.ncep.noaa.gov).
CHIRPS Rainfall Data
CC BY 4.0Public domain (CC BY 4.0)
No legal restrictions. Academic citation expected.
Funk et al. Climate Hazards InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS). UC Santa Barbara / USGS.
Global Forest Watch (GFW)
CC BY 4.0Per dataset — predominantly CC BY 4.0
Verify individual dataset licence via GFW Open Data Portal. Attribution required.
Source: Hansen/UMD/Google/USGS/NASA via Global Forest Watch (globalforestwatch.org).
ACLED Armed Conflict Data
EULAACLED End User License Agreement (tiered)
Non-commercial, non-redistributable. Attribution mandatory. Commercial/public-sector use requires a specific licence. Contact: data@acleddata.com.
Source: ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), acleddata.com.
Privacy
Independent project
InfectoNET is an independent, non-commercial open-science side project maintained by an individual researcher. It is not affiliated with, operated by, or endorsed by any university, institution, or employer, and is not covered by any institutional policy or governance arrangement.
No personal data collected
InfectoNET requires no login, registration, or form submission, and does not collect names, email addresses, or any information that identifies users. It is designed to process no personal data.
No tracking or analytics
InfectoNET embeds no third-party analytics scripts (e.g. Google Analytics), advertising pixels, or social-media buttons, and server request logging that would record IP addresses is disabled.
Cookies
InfectoNET uses only technically necessary cookies required for the web application to function. These do not track user behaviour across sessions and require no consent under PECR.
Sequence data contains no personal data
Genomic sequence records processed by InfectoNET contain no personal data. Sequences are identified by accession numbers and epidemiological metadata (country, collection date, organism). Individual patient identifiers are not present in public sequence databases.
Outstanding Compliance Actions
Critical Priority
- Contact GISAID via gisaid.org/help to obtain written supplementary dashboard agreement before expanding GISAID-derived visualisations.
- Confirm ACLED access tier — publicly accessible academic dashboards may require a public-sector or research licence (data@acleddata.com).
High Priority
- Keep server request logging disabled so the project continues to process no personal data.
- Add EPI_SET IDs and originating laboratory credits to all GISAID-derived content.
Medium Priority
- Verify individual GFW dataset licences in the GFW Open Data Portal metadata before display.
- Retain a record of NOAA ONI data access dates for citation purposes.
Contact
For data licensing enquiries, attribution requests, or privacy questions:
InfectoNET — an independent open-science project.
Last reviewed: June 2026 · InfectoNET v0.1