Last updated: June 24, 2026
Please read these Terms and Conditions ("Terms") carefully before using the Service.
These Terms and Conditions govern Your access to and use of sigscape ("the Service"), the website at sigscape.org and the in-browser sigscape studio. sigscape is an open-source software hub and documentation site for tools that detect, classify, and explore somatic mutational signatures in cancer, developed and maintained by the Park Lab and the Gülhan Lab at the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, and operated by the President and Fellows of Harvard College ("the Company", "We", "Us", or "Our").
By accessing or using the Service You agree to be bound by these Terms. If You disagree with any part of these Terms, You may not access the Service.
The words whose initial letters are capitalised have meanings defined under the following conditions. The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.
These Terms set out the rights and obligations of all users regarding the use of the Service. Your access to and use of the Service is conditioned on Your acceptance of and compliance with these Terms. These Terms apply to all visitors, users, and others who access or use the Service.
Your access to and use of the Service is also subject to Our Privacy Policy, which describes how information is handled when You use the Service. Please read Our Privacy Policy carefully before using the Service.
You represent that You are over the age of 16. The Company does not permit those under 16 to use the Service.
sigscape is an academic resource that (i) presents information, documentation, and links for open-source mutational-signature software, and (ii) provides the sigscape studio, a browser-based workspace for visualising and exploring mutational spectra and signature exposures.
The Service does not require You to create an account, sign in, or register. There are no user accounts, logins, purchases, subscriptions, or paid features within the Service.
All analysis in the studio runs locally in Your web browser. Files You load into the studio are read and processed entirely on Your own Device using standard browser APIs and are never uploaded to, transmitted to, received by, or stored on Our servers. The studio also ships with a small set of example datasets derived from published or publicly released data, provided solely for demonstration.
The Service is provided at no charge for non-commercial academic research and educational purposes. Commercial use requires a separate licence (see “Commercial Use Requires a Licence” below).
The Packages documented on the Service (including MuTopia and SigMA) are independent open-source projects distributed through third-party channels such as GitHub, PyPI, Bioconda, and CRAN. Your use of any Package is governed by the open-source licence that accompanies that Package, not by these Terms.
Where these Terms and a Package's own licence both apply to materials on the Service, the Package's licence governs that Package's source code and the rights it expressly grants. Nothing in these Terms is intended to limit rights granted to You under an applicable open-source licence.
We make no representation that the Packages are fit for any particular purpose, and We provide them and their documentation on the same “as is” basis described under “Disclaimer of Warranties” below.
THE SERVICE AND ALL DATA, RESULTS, VISUALISATIONS, AND INFORMATION PROVIDED THROUGH IT — INCLUDING ANY OUTPUT OF THE STUDIO — ARE INTENDED FOR RESEARCH USE ONLY (RUO). THEY ARE NOT INTENDED FOR, AND MUST NOT BE USED AS THE BASIS FOR, CLINICAL DECISION-MAKING, MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS, PATIENT TREATMENT, OR ANY OTHER CLINICAL APPLICATION.
Any results or insights derived from the Service should be independently validated through appropriate experimental and/or clinical methods before being relied upon in any clinical, diagnostic, or therapeutic context.
Example data presented in the Service is derived from published or publicly released datasets. While We make reasonable efforts to ensure accuracy, We do not guarantee the completeness, correctness, or currency of any data, annotations, signature assignments, or analytical results displayed or computed in the browser.
You retain all rights in any files or data You load into the studio. Because that processing happens entirely within Your browser, the Company neither receives nor stores Your data and acts as neither a controller nor a processor of it.
You are solely responsible for ensuring that You have the right to use any data You load into the studio, and for complying with all consents, approvals, and laws (including data-protection and human-subjects regulations) that apply to that data. Do not load data You are not authorised to use.
Data You load persists only in Your browser's session storage for the duration of Your session and is not synchronised, backed up, or recoverable by Us. You are responsible for retaining Your own copies of any inputs and outputs.
The Service and its contents — including the sigscape name, logos, visual design, graphical assets, curated text, example datasets, and the website's own source code (except components released under a separate open-source licence) — are and will remain the property of the Company and its licensors, protected by copyright, trademark, and other applicable laws of the United States and foreign countries.
You may not use Our trademarks, trade dress, or branding in connection with any product or service without the prior written consent of the Company. This restriction does not affect any rights expressly granted to You under an applicable open-source licence.
Subject to these Terms, the Company grants You a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to access and use the Service for non-commercial academic research and educational purposes. This includes:
For the avoidance of doubt, "non-commercial" means use that is not intended for, or directed toward, commercial advantage or monetary compensation. Use by employees of a for-profit entity is considered commercial use unless it is conducted solely for the purpose of peer-reviewed academic research with no direct commercial application. Use of the Packages remains governed by their respective open-source licences.
Any commercial use of the Service, its website source code, example data, visualisations, or any derivative work is prohibited without a separate written licence agreement from the Company. Commercial use includes, but is not limited to:
This section governs the Service. Commercial use of a Package is instead governed by that Package’s open-source licence. To enquire about a commercial licence for the Service, please contact the Company at the address in the "Contact Us" section below, or the Harvard Office of Technology Development (https://otd.harvard.edu).
If You use data, results, or visualisations from the Service — or any Package documented on it — in academic publications, presentations, or other scholarly works, You agree to cite the relevant publications as indicated on the Service or in the relevant Package's documentation. Proper attribution is a condition of the permitted academic use described above and supports the continued development and funding of these resources.
We welcome feedback, bug reports, suggestions, and ideas ("Feedback") about the Service. By submitting Feedback — whether via email, GitHub issues, or any other channel — You grant the Company a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable licence to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exploit the Feedback in any manner and for any purpose without acknowledgement, compensation, or obligation to You. Feedback is considered non-confidential.
You agree not to use the Service:
The Service contains links to third-party websites and resources (including GitHub repositories, package registries such as PyPI, Bioconda, and CRAN, published papers, and external laboratory websites) that are not owned or controlled by the Company. The Company has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, licences, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.
We reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service (or any part thereof) at any time, with or without notice, for any reason. We shall not be liable to You or any third party for any modification, suspension, or discontinuation of the Service.
We may update the content, documentation, example data, or features of the Service at any time without prior notice. Such updates may change the results or information previously displayed.
We do not guarantee that the Service will be available at all times. The Service may be subject to downtime for maintenance, updates, or circumstances beyond Our control.
We may terminate or suspend Your access to the Service immediately, without prior notice or liability, for any reason whatsoever, including without limitation if You breach these Terms. Upon termination, Your right to use the Service will cease immediately.
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITH ALL FAULTS AND DEFECTS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, THE COMPANY, ON ITS OWN BEHALF AND ON BEHALF OF ITS AFFILIATES AND ITS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE LICENSORS, FACULTY, RESEARCHERS, STAFF, AND SERVICE PROVIDERS, EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND WARRANTIES THAT MAY ARISE OUT OF COURSE OF DEALING, COURSE OF PERFORMANCE, USAGE, OR TRADE PRACTICE.
WITHOUT LIMITATION TO THE FOREGOING, THE COMPANY PROVIDES NO WARRANTY OR UNDERTAKING, AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OF ANY KIND, THAT: (I) THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR ACHIEVE ANY INTENDED RESULTS; (II) THE DATA, RESULTS, SIGNATURE ASSIGNMENTS, OR ANALYTICAL OUTPUTS WILL BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, RELIABLE, OR CURRENT; (III) THE SERVICE WILL BE COMPATIBLE WITH ANY OTHER SOFTWARE, SYSTEMS, OR SERVICES; (IV) THE SERVICE WILL OPERATE WITHOUT INTERRUPTION OR ERROR; OR (V) ANY ERRORS OR DEFECTS CAN OR WILL BE CORRECTED.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain types of warranties or limitations on applicable statutory rights, so some or all of the above exclusions may not apply to You. In such cases, the exclusions and limitations shall be applied to the greatest extent enforceable under applicable law.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COMPANY, ITS AFFILIATES, FACULTY, RESEARCHERS, STAFF, LICENSORS, OR SERVICE PROVIDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF DATA OR OTHER INFORMATION, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, PERSONAL INJURY, LOSS OF PRIVACY, OR ANY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE, EVEN IF THE COMPANY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED AT NO CHARGE FOR NON-COMMERCIAL ACADEMIC USE. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE COMPANY'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED ZERO DOLLARS ($0.00 USD). IF YOU HAVE ENTERED INTO A SEPARATE COMMERCIAL LICENCE AGREEMENT WITH THE COMPANY, LIABILITY SHALL BE GOVERNED BY THAT AGREEMENT.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the limitation of liability for incidental or consequential damages, in which case each party's liability shall be limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Company, its Affiliates, and their respective officers, directors, faculty, researchers, employees, agents, licensors, and service providers from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to: (i) Your use of the Service; (ii) any violation of these Terms by You; (iii) any data You load into or process with the studio, including any rights, consents, or laws applicable to that data; (iv) any use of results or information obtained from the Service, including any clinical or diagnostic application thereof; or (v) any violation of applicable law by You.
These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, without regard to its conflict of law principles. Any legal action or proceeding arising under or relating to these Terms shall be brought exclusively in the federal or state courts located in Boston, Massachusetts, and You consent to the personal jurisdiction of such courts.
If You have any concern or dispute about the Service, You agree to first attempt to resolve the dispute informally by contacting the Company at the address below.
If You are a European Union consumer, You will benefit from any mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which You are resident.
You represent and warrant that: (i) You are not located in a country that is subject to a United States government embargo or that has been designated by the United States government as a "terrorist supporting" country; and (ii) You are not listed on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
If any provision of these Terms is held to be unenforceable or invalid, such provision will be modified and interpreted to accomplish its objectives to the greatest extent possible under applicable law, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.
The failure to exercise a right or to require performance of an obligation under these Terms shall not affect a party's ability to exercise such right or require such performance at any time thereafter, nor shall the waiver of a breach constitute a waiver of any subsequent breach.
We reserve the right, at Our sole discretion, to modify or replace these Terms at any time. If a revision is material, We will make reasonable efforts to provide notice prior to any new terms taking effect, for example by updating the “Last updated” date on this page. What constitutes a material change will be determined at Our sole discretion.
By continuing to access or use the Service after revisions become effective, You agree to be bound by the revised Terms. If You do not agree to the new Terms, in whole or in part, please stop using the Service.
If You have questions about these Terms, please contact:
Prof. Peter J. Park
Department of Biomedical Informatics
Harvard Medical School
10 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115
Email: peter_park@hms.harvard.edu
© 2026 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.