Terms of Use

Effective Date: October 10, 2026

Welcome to the BIOPEP-UWM database (hereinafter referred to as the “Database”), developed, maintained, and owned by the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland (hereinafter referred to as “UWM”).

By accessing or using this Database, you agree to comply with and be bound by these Terms of Use. If you do not agree to these terms, you must immediately cease using the Database.

1. Intellectual Property and Intellectual Protection (Sui Generis)

The Database represents over 25 years of continuous, expert scientific work, data curation, annotation, and verification by its creators. The Database as a whole, including its structure, compilation, selection, and arrangement of data, is protected under international copyright laws and the European Union Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases (sui generis database right). All rights are reserved by UWM.

2. Permitted Use (Non-Commercial & Academic)

• Academic Research and Education: Access to the Database via the public web interface is provided free of charge strictly for personal, educational, and non-commercial scientific research purposes.

• Individual Queries: Users are permitted to perform individual, manual queries to search for peptide sequences, bioactivities, and literature data for their academic work.

• Citation Requirement: Any academic publication, presentation, or research output that utilizes data obtained from the Database must properly cite the official BIOPEP-UWM publications i.e. for BIOPEP-UWM database of proteins and BIOPEP-UWM database of bioactive peptides: Minkiewicz P., Iwaniak A., Darewicz M., BIOPEP-UWM database of bioactive peptides: Current opportunities. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2019, 20, 5978, doi: 10.3390/ijms20235978; for BIOPEP-UWM database of allergenic proteins and their epitopes: Dziuba M., Minkiewicz P., Dąbek M., Peptides, specific proteolysis products as molecular markers of allergenic proteins – in silico studies. Acta Scientiarum Polonorum Technologia Alimentaria, 12, 2013, 101-112; for BIOPEP-UWM database of sensory peptides and amino acids: Iwaniak A., Minkiewicz P., Darewicz M., Sieniawski K., Starowicz P. BIOPEP database of sensory peptides and amino acids. Food Research International, 91, 2016, 155-161 () and include the official URL of the Database.

3. Strictly Prohibited Actions

Any automated, commercial, or unauthorized extraction of the Database content is strictly prohibited. You explicitly agree not to:

• Web Scraping and Automated Extraction: Use any robot, spider, crawler, scraper, script, or other automated means, software, or interface to access the Database, extract data, or harvest data samples in bulk.

• Commercial Utilization: Use the Database, or any data extracted from it, for any commercial purposes, commercial platforms, corporate research, or for-profit applications without an explicit, written commercial licensing agreement from UWM.

• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Training: Use the Database content, peptide sequences, metadata, or derived datasets to train, fine-tune, or evaluate machine learning models, deep learning networks, neural networks, or any artificial intelligence systems intended for commercial or non-academic platforms.

• Redistribution and Mirroring: Redistribute, publish, sell, sub-license, repackage, or mirror the original Database content, in whole or in significant part, on any other website, public repository, or data platform.

4. Technical Protection Measures and Enforcement

To safeguard the integrity of the Database and protect it from unauthorized bulk extraction, UWM employs technical protection measures, including but not limited to rate limiting, bot detection, and IP address monitoring.

• UWM reserves the right to temporarily or permanently block access to any user, IP address, or organization that exhibits automated querying behavior or otherwise violates these Terms of Use.

• Any unauthorized bulk extraction or commercial use of the Database constitutes a violation of international law and UWM intellectual property rights, and will be subject to legal prosecution.

5. Commercial Licensing and Inquiries

Entities interested in securing a complete, machine-readable version of the dataset, utilizing the data within a commercial research platform, or using the data for machine learning model training must obtain a formal written Commercial License Agreement.

For all commercial inquiries, data use agreements, or licensing requests, please e-mail:  cwo@uwm.edu.pl (Centre for Collaboration with Socio-Economic Stakeholders of University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland)