Data Use Policy

Data use

Please be aware that the data you are accessing are intended for internal research purposes only. The video assets and related annotation data contain information that may be embargoed or confidential (e.g., data may be the subject of current research, show proprietary content, contain confidential audio recordings) and lack the necessary copyright markings. As such, these data should not be distributed to external colleagues, collaborators, contractors, or other requestors as is. Please contact the Video Lab (videolabadmin@mbari.org) to discuss how to best fulfill external requests.

By accessing and downloading data from the internal VARS Query, you are agreeing to these terms of use.

Data characteristics and quality control

We use our internal VARS annotation system to characterize all video observations as consistently as possible. Our annotation staff continually enrich the database contents by adding concept names, descriptive, and visual information as our knowledge grows over time. Due to this dynamic process, the VARS data are continuously undergoing updates to reflect new information as well as quality control and other improvements.

Though they have proven to have great inherent and inferred scientific value, the observational data found in the VARS database were not always collected using systematic research procedures. Among other factors, biases have been introduced as a result of changing camera capabilities, mission objectives, resource constraints, environmental conditions, observational techniques, and taxonomic classifications over time. For these reasons, if you are considering using VARS for your scientific publication or project, we advise you to work with us directly so we can ensure you have the most up-to-date and complete dataset available.

Our full VARS Data Use Policy is available on MBARI's external site.