Terms and Conditions
General Terms of Use for the ArmLifeBank Portal
1. Application Domain
These General Terms of Use apply to the use of the ArmLifeBank portal, accessible at https://armlifebank.am/, by registered users, researchers, institutions and other contributors who upload, publish, share or manage scientific contributions through the portal.
They also apply, where relevant, to users who access, view, search, cite or download materials made available through the portal.
2. The ArmLifeBank Portal
ArmLifeBank is operated by the Institute of Molecular Biology NAS RA (the “operator”). The portal is provided as a platform for the collection, description, publication and sharing of publicly available life-science and biomedical research information, including datasets, metadata, projects, publications, protocols, sample descriptions, links and related scientific materials.
The operator may also upload to ArmLifeBank datasets, publications, protocols, metadata, project descriptions, sample descriptions, other relevant scientific materials, or links to such materials, provided that they are already publicly available and, to the operator’s knowledge, covered by licences or terms that permit their indexing, linking, display or other use through the portal. Where such materials are hosted by third parties, the applicable third-party licence, citation requirements and terms of use remain in force.
Use of upload, editing or management functions by users may require registration and login. Users must provide accurate registration information, keep login data confidential and notify the operator in case of suspected misuse of their account.
ArmLifeBank is an information and data-sharing portal. Unless expressly stated otherwise, it does not provide medical advice, clinical interpretation, ethics approval, regulatory approval, or controlled-access data-management services.
3. Content of Scientific Contributions
The content of scientific contributions is the responsibility of the contributing user or institution. The operator does not exercise editorial control over all uploaded content before publication, but may review, restrict or remove content where necessary.
The contributor is responsible for ensuring that uploaded content:
- does not violate the rights of third parties, including copyright, database rights, confidentiality obligations, personal rights, image rights, trademark rights, patent rights or other intellectual property rights;
- does not violate applicable laws, ethical approvals, institutional rules, consent forms, data-sharing agreements or funding-agency requirements;
- does not contain insulting, defamatory, discriminatory, pornographic, racist, hateful, misleading, unlawful or otherwise inappropriate material;
- does not contain viruses, malware, harmful code or technical elements that may impair the functioning or appearance of the portal;
- is not suitable to cause serious or unjustified harm to the reputation, security or lawful operation of the operator, ArmLifeBank, contributors or third parties.
Human, clinical, genomic or other sensitive data must not be uploaded unless the contributor has all required rights, approvals, consents and lawful grounds for such sharing, and unless the data are appropriately anonymized, de-identified, aggregated or otherwise prepared for the intended access level. Direct identifiers such as names, personal identification numbers, contact details or other information that can directly identify individuals must not be uploaded unless this is expressly permitted by law and by the operator.
If biological samples or sample descriptions are referenced in the portal, access to physical materials, transfer of samples or further use of such materials may be subject to separate agreements, approvals and conditions.
In case of violation or suspected violation of these requirements, the operator reserves the right to make contributions fully or partly unavailable, restrict access, request corrections or delete the relevant content.
4. Rights of Use
By uploading contributions and related data, the contributor grants the operator a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to store, reproduce, display, index, technically process and make the contributions accessible through the ArmLifeBank portal for the purposes of operating, maintaining, improving, preserving and promoting the portal.
The contributor determines, through the available portal settings, whether a contribution is private, restricted, shared with selected users, or publicly accessible. If the contributor selects a licence or access setting that permits third-party use, the contribution will be made available to other users under that selected licence or access condition.
Further rights for users, including downloading, re-use, editing or management rights, are granted only to the extent permitted by the selected licence, access setting, contributor instruction or applicable law.
The contributor remains the owner or lawful holder of the intellectual property rights in their contributions and may re-use them elsewhere, unless restricted by third-party agreements or other legal obligations.
The contributor agrees that the operator may continue to use the above rights if the portal is migrated to another technical infrastructure, domain, website or database operated or designated by the operator, or if the name, design or technical format of the portal is changed.
5. Ascertaining Rights and Guarantees
Before uploading content, the contributor must clarify all rights, permissions and restrictions, including copyright, database rights, image rights, research-participant consent, ethics approval, data-protection obligations, sample-use restrictions, confidentiality obligations and contractual limitations.
The contributor guarantees that they are entitled to grant the rights described in these Terms of Use and that the uploaded content does not infringe the rights of third parties or violate applicable laws, approvals or agreements.
The contributor bears the risks associated with the publication and use of their contributions. If third parties assert claims against the operator because of content uploaded by the contributor, the contributor shall support the operator in defending such claims and, to the extent legally permissible, release the operator from resulting claims, costs and damages.
The contributor must provide documents, declarations or information reasonably required by the operator to clarify rights, permissions, ethics approvals, data-protection status or legal compliance of uploaded content.
6. Reliability and Liability
The operator aims to provide reliable portal access but does not guarantee uninterrupted availability, permanent storage, absence of technical errors, or compatibility with all devices, browsers or external services.
The operation of the portal may be changed, updated, restricted, suspended or discontinued at any time without liability. Planned maintenance will be announced where reasonably possible, and technical malfunctions will be addressed within the operator’s available technical and operational capacities.
The operator is not responsible for loss of access, loss of data, data corruption, service interruption or other damage caused by circumstances outside the operator’s reasonable control, including network failures, cyberattacks, third-party service failures, force majeure or unauthorized interventions by third parties.
Contributors are responsible for keeping their own backup copies of all uploaded content. Where contributors grant other users rights to edit or manage content, the operator is not responsible for edits, deletions or data loss resulting from those permissions.
Materials available through ArmLifeBank are provided for scientific information and research purposes. The operator does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, quality, legality, suitability or scientific validity of user-contributed content.
7. Blocking Access to the ArmLifeBank Portal
The operator may deny, suspend or restrict a user’s access to the portal, or restrict access to specific content, if the user violates these Terms of Use, applicable laws, ethical requirements, data-protection obligations, security requirements or other legitimate interests of the operator or third parties.
8. Data Protection
Personal data collected and stored during registration for the portal or during use of ArmLifeBank are processed in accordance with the portal’s data privacy policy and applicable data-protection laws.
Users must not upload personal data, sensitive personal data, identifiable human data, clinical data or genomic data unless they have a lawful basis, all required approvals and consents, and the upload is compatible with the intended access setting and the portal’s policies.
9. Final Rules
These Terms and Conditions may be changed at any time. The version published on the ArmLifeBank portal applies to use of the portal from the date indicated below, unless otherwise stated.
If any provision of these Terms of Use is invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain valid. The invalid provision shall be replaced by a valid provision that comes as close as possible to the intended purpose.
As of: April 2, 2026
