Terms of Service

Welcome to BioWorkflows.com, a marketplace for biomedical data analysis workflows and related services.

The following terms of service (these "Terms of Service"), govern your access to and use of the BioWorkflows websites, including any content, functionality and services offered on or through bioworkflows.com and any of its subdomains (e.g. www.bioworkflows.com, edu.bioworkflows.com, all referred to as the "Site") by BioWorkflows LLC hereto as "BioWorkflows" "we" or "us" and “you” or “user” means you as an user of the Site.

Please read the Terms of Service carefully before you start to use the Site. By using the Site, opening an account or by clicking to accept or agree to the Terms of Service when this option is made available to you, you accept and agree, on behalf of yourself or on behalf of your employer or any other entity (if applicable), to be bound and abide by these Terms of Service and BioWorkflows Payment Terms, found here (“Payment Terms”), which is incorporated herein by reference. You further acknowledge, you have read and understood our Privacy Policy, found here. If you do not want to agree to these Terms of Service or the Privacy Policy, you must not access or use the Site. For more detailed policies surrounding the activity and usage on the Site, please access the designated articles herein.

This Site is offered and available to users who are at least 18 years of age and of legal age to form a binding contract. If you are under 18 and at least 13 years of age, you are only permitted to use the Site through an account owned by a parent or legal guardian with their appropriate permission. If you are under 13 you are not permitted to use the Site or the BioWorkflows services. By using the Site, you represent and warrant that you meet all of the foregoing eligibility requirements. If you do not meet all of these requirements, you must not access or use the Site

Our Customer Support team is available if you have any questions regarding the Site or Terms of Service. Contacting our Customer Support team can be performed by submitting a request here.

Buyers are users who purchase products or services on BioWorkflows.

Sellers are users who offer workflows and services through BioWorkflows.

Workflows are biomedical data analysis workflows provided by Sellers on BioWorkflows.

Free Workflows that are Workflows that can be purchased for free.

Premium Workflows are Workflows that are sold for a price.

Tags, Keywords, and Expertise refer to tags attached to forum posts, Workflows, and Sellers.

Services are short-term services provided by Sellers on BioWorkflows to adapt or apply Workflows for Buyers.

Customized Workflows are deliverables that Sellers created for Buyer through their Services to buyers.

Bounties are requests of Workflows or Services created by Buyers on BioWorkflows.

Workflow Page is where Buyers list workflows and related services.

Service Center is where Buyers and Sellers communicate with each other in connection with an ordered Workflow or related Services.

Community Forum is where Users discuss workflow related issues and request services in the format of Bounties.

Workflow Orders are the agreements between a Buyer and Seller after a Workflow purchase was made from the Seller’s Workflow Page.

Service Orders are the formal agreements between a Buyer and Seller after a Service purchase was made from the Service Center.

• Only registered users may buy and sell on BioWorkflows. Registration is free. In registering for an account, you agree to provide us with accurate, complete and updated information and must not create an account for fraudulent or misleading purposes. You are solely responsible for any activity on your account and for maintaining the confidentiality and security of your password. We are not liable for any acts or omissions by you in connection with your account.
• Buyers can purchase listed workflows directly, or pay BioWorkflows in advance to create a bounty or an order for Service, after negotiating with the Sellers.
• Workflows are listed under the Workflow Pages, and can be available for free ("Free Workflows") or for a price ("Premiun Workflows"). Copyright of Workflows can belong to Public Domain ("Public-Domain Workflows") or Sellers ("Copyrighted Workflows")
• Visitors and Buyers have full access to Contents of free Workflows and only limited access to Premium Workflows, with only description and sometimes workflows with masked source code.
• Workflows are purchased through the Order button found on a Workflow Page.
• Services are purchased through the creation of a Service Order in Service Center.
• For fees and payments please read the Payment Terms
• Sellers must fulfill their Service Orders, and may not cancel orders on a regular basis or without cause. Cancelling orders will affect Sellers’ reputation and status.
• Sellers gain account statuses (Levels) based on their performance and reputation.
• Users may not offer or accept payments using any method other than placing an order through BioWorkflows.com.
• When purchasing a Workflow, Buyers are granted limited rights to the Workflow and may not share the Workflow with others, unless explicitly permitted by the Copyright and License. See our “Ownership” and “ Extended License” sections below for more information.
• BioWorkflows retains the right to use all published Workflows or delivered Services for BioWorkflows marketing and promotion purposes.
• We care about your privacy. You can read our Privacy Policy here.
• Users use BioWorkflows solely for the creation, discussion, purchase, and selling of Workflows and related Services. BioWorkflow reserve the right to remove discussions, Workflows, and disallow Services that, at our discretion, are impropriate or unrelated to these missions.

Buyer Basics

• Buyers can purchase Workflows directly as a digital product.
• If offered by Sellers of Workflows, Buyers can request Services related to Workflows, with additional cost agreed upon between Seller and Buyer.
• Buyers can ask questions in Community Forum and create Bounties for the creation of customized Workflows or Services.
• Buyers pay Bioworkflows in advance for Bounties and Service Orders.
• Buyers may not offer direct payments to Sellers using payment systems outside of the BioWorkflows platform.
• BioWorkflows retains the right to use all publicly published delivered works for BioWorkflows marketing and promotional purposes.

Buyer Ratings

• Sellers can leave feedbacks on buyers after the completion of Service orders.
• Buyer reviews and ratings are publicly available and may affects the willingness for Sellers to provide services to Buyers.
• Excessive returns, lack of communications, and delays in accepting completed orders may result in lower buyer ratings.
• BioWorkflows reserve the rights to disable accounts for Buyers with excessive low buyer ratings.

Seller Basics

• Sellers create Workflows on BioWorkflows to allow Buyers to purchase their services.
• Sellers may also offer Services to Buyers in addition to their Workflows.
• Each Workflow and Service you sell and successfully complete, accredits your account with a revenue equal to 80% of the purchase amount.
• BioWorkflows accredits Sellers 30 days after an Workflow is completed, regardless of the return policy offered by the Sellers. See our "Return Policy" section below for return policies that can be offered to Workflows.
• BioWorkflows accredits Sellers once an Service is completed. See our "Service Orders" section below for a definition of a completed Service order.
• For more information about receiving payments, fees and taxes see the Payment Terms.
• Sellers may not promote their Workflows or any BioWorkflows content via the Google Ads platform.
• For security concerns, BioWorkflows may temporarily disable a Seller’s ability to withdraw revenue to prevent fraudulent or illicit activity. This may come as a result of security issues, improper behavior reported by other users, or associating multiple BioWorkflows accounts to a single withdrawal provider.
• Sellers are responsible for obtaining a general liability insurance policy with coverage amounts that are sufficient to cover all risks associated with the performance of their services.

Seller Ratings

BioWorkflows is all about helping Sellers leverage their skills. We seek to empower top performing Sellers to provide better services to Buyers and grow their business. Sellers who invest in self-promotion may achieve greater customer satisfaction. And, if they create high-quality Workflows and/or deliver Services on time and maintain high quality and ratings, BioWorkflows may reward them with new statuses, special opportunities, and benefits.

• Feedback reviews provided by Buyers while completing an Order are an essential part of BioWorkflows's rating system. Reviews demonstrate the Buyer's overall experience with the Sellers and their service. Buyers are encouraged to communicate to the Seller any concerns experienced during their active order in regards to the service provided by the Seller.
• Leaving a Buyer's feedback is a basic prerogative of a Buyer. Feedback reviews will not be removed unless there are clear violations of our Terms of Service and/or our Community Standards.
• To prevent any misuse of our Feedback system, all feedback reviews must come from legitimate sales executed exclusively through the BioWorkflows platform from users within our Community. Purchases arranged, determined to artificially enhance Seller ratings, or to abuse the BioWorkflows platform with purchases from additional accounts, will result in a permanent suspension of all related accounts.
• Feedback comments given by Buyers are publicly displayed on a Seller’s Workflow page.
• Withholding the delivery of services, files, or information required to complete the Workflow’s service with the intent to gain favorable reviews or additional services is prohibited.
• Responding and posting a review: Once work is delivered, the Buyer has three days to respond. If no response is provided within the response period, the Order will be considered completed.
• Users are allowed to leave reviews on Orders up to 10 days after an Order is marked as complete. No new reviews may be added to an Order after 10 days.
• Sellers may not solicit the removal of feedback reviews from their Buyers through mutual cancellations.
• Once the Buyer submits his/her review, the Seller will receive a notification and will also have the opportunity to leave a review about working with the Buyer. Please Note: At this stage, Sellers cannot see the Buyer's review.
• Once both Seller and Buyer have completed their reviews, or the 10 days have passed, all posted reviews are made public.
• Responding to a review: Once both reviews from the Buyer and Seller have been published, the Seller can reply to the Buyer’s review from the Order page, seen on the Seller’s Workflow page, beneath the Buyer’s feedback.

Seller Levels

• The Seller's rating is calculated based on the order reviews posted by Buyers, which consists of rating for both Workflows and Services. High ratings allow Sellers to obtain advanced Seller levels (see Levels below). In certain cases, exceedingly low ratings may lead to the suspension of the Seller’s account.
• BioWorkflows Sellers can gain account Levels based on their activity, performance and reputation.
• Advancement in Levels are updated periodically by an automated system.
• The current Levels a Seller can achieve are, Level 1, 2, and Top Rated.
• Sellers who cannot maintain their high quality service, experience a severe drop in ratings, or stop delivering on time risk losing their Seller status and the benefits that come with it. For example, retracted workflows due to low quality or copyright infringement, late deliveries, warnings to the Seller’s account and cancellations can cause a Seller to move to a different Level.

Workflows as Digital Products

• Workflows created on BioWorkflows are User Generated Content.
• Workflows are digital products that can contain:
  • Meta Information (Mandatary) such as title, and description.
  • Main Document (Mandatary) that descrive in details the workflow, including but not limited to description of data, steps, and sample output. Detailed steps can be omitted for Workflows that are listed purely for related Services.
  • Keywords (Mandatary) that lists at least the topic and tools used by the Workflow. Keywords that describe Method, Input, Output are also recommended. New Keywords can be proposed by Buyers but will only be publicly available after administrative review.
  • Banner Image(s) (Mandatary) includes one or more banner images that are displayed with workflows. They could be automatically generated from Main Document if a Jupyter Notebook is provided.
  • Attachments (Optional) consist of digital documents in any file format. Attachments of Premium Workflows are accessible only by Buyers who purchased the workflows.
• Free Workflows can contain only verbal descriptions of the Workflows, especially when they are listed for the sole purpose of providing related Services.
• Premium Workflows should contain detailed description of workflows that allow Buyers to reproduce and apply Workflows with reasonable amount of effort.
• "Bait Workflows" with intentionally missing or misleading information as a way to promote Services are strictly prohibited. Workflows with content that don’t match their descriptions may lead to the Seller’s account losing Seller status or becoming permanently disabled.
• Statements on the Workflow Page that undermine or circumvent these Terms of Service is prohibited.

Workflow Submission and Publication

• All workflows are reviewed by our adminstrative stuff before they can be listed publicly.
• If a Workflow is denied, Sellers can revise the Workflows and request another round of review.
• If a Workflow is accepted for publication, it will be publicly accessible shortly after the review is done.
• The content of published workflows cannot be changed after the publication of the workflow, but many of the meta information, such as keyword and price can still be changed.
• Sellers can create another version of the Workflow by forking the workflow and editing its content. The forked workflow will share the same name with the original workflow but with a different version number.
• The publication of a new version of the workflow automatically hide the older version, althoug the older versions will still be accessible to their buyers.
• The seller can archive a published workflow. Archived workflows will not be listed but are still accessible by their Buyers.

Workflow Orders

• Please refer to the Payment Terms for making Payments through the BioWorkflows platform and to learn about fees and taxes.
• If provided by Sellers, Buyers can request a Service Order which addresses specific Buyer requirements.
• Once payment is confirmed for the purchase of a listed Workflow, your order will be created and given a unique BioWorkflows order number (#FO).
• Once the order is processed, Sellers will be able to view and download all files related to the workflow.
• Unless the workflow is retracted in which case a full-refund will be processed, purchased Workflows will be available for download at BioWorkflows.
• Purchase of a workflow grants the buyer access to all future or alternative versions of the workflow, regardless of the selling price of these workflows.

Workflow Extended Use License

• By purchasing an “Extended License” with your Workflow Order, the Seller grants you a license to use the purchased Workflow for all member of the Teams that the Buyer owns.
• The purchases must be made by owner of the Teams. The extended licenses follow the Buyer and applies to all teams that the Buyer creates in the future.
• Team members will lose access to these workflows after they leave your team.

Removal of Workflows

• Workflows and/or users may be removed by BioWorkflows from the Site for violations of these Terms of Service, which may include (but are not limited to) the following violations and/or materials:
  • Copyright Infringement, Trademark Infringement, and violation of a third party's terms of service reported through our Intellectual Property Claims Policy found here
  • Intentional copies of Workflows
  • Irrelevant content (not for biomedical data analysis)
  • Workflows misleading to Buyers or others
  • Offering to prepare academic works on behalf of Buyers
  • Exceedingly low quality Workflows
  • Promoting BioWorkflows and/or BioWorkflows Workflows through activities that are prohibited by any laws, regulations, and/or third parties' terms of service, as well as through any marketing activity that negatively affects our relationships with our users or partners.
• Workflows that are removed for violations mentioned above, may result in the suspension of the Seller’s account.
• Workflows that are removed for violations are not eligible to be restored or edited.
• Workflows may be removed from our Search feature due to poor performance and/or user misconduct.

Services for Purchased Workflows

• Services are listed under Workflow pages and are negatiated and finalized in the Service. Services may or may not result in additional Workflows.
• Not all Sellers are able to provide Services the workflows they sell at BioWorkflows.
• Buyers must purchase a Workflow before purchasing services related to the Workflow.
• Unless otherwise indicated on the Service order, Buyers owns customized Workflows that Sellers create for Buyers.

Service Orders

• Service Orders can be created from Bounties or Workflow Services.
• Once payment is confirmed, your order will be created and given a unique BioWorkflows order number (#FO).
• Sellers must deliver completed files and/or proof of work using the Deliver Work button (located on the discussion thread Service Center) according to the service that was purchased and advertised on their Workflow.
• The Deliver Work button may not be abused by Sellers to circumvent Order guidelines described in these Terms of Service. Using the “Deliver Work” button when an Order was not fulfilled may result in a cancellation of that Order after review, affect the Seller’s rating and result in a warning to Seller.
• An Order is marked as Complete after it is marked as Delivered and then accepted by a Buyer. An Order will be automatically marked as Complete if not accepted and no request for modification was submitted within 3 days after the Order was marked as Delivered.
• We encourage our Buyers and Sellers to try and settle conflicts amongst themselves. If for any reason this fails after using the Resolution Center or if you encounter non-permitted usage on the Site, users can contact BioWorkflows's Customer Support department for assistance here. For more information about disputes, Order cancellations and refunds please refer to the Payment Terms.

Handling of Service Orders

• When a Buyer orders a Service, the Seller is notified by email as well as notifications on the site while logged into the account.
• Sellers are required to meet the delivery time they specified when creating their Workflows. Failing to do so will allow the Buyer to cancel the Order when an Order is marked as late and may harm the Seller's status.
• Sellers must send completed files and/or proof of work using the Deliver Completed Work button (located on the Order page) to mark the Order as Delivered.
• Users are responsible for scanning all transferred files for viruses and malware. BioWorkflows will not be held responsible for any damages which might occur due to site usage, use of content or files transferred.
• Buyers may use the "Request Revisions" feature located on the Order Page while an Order is marked as Delivered if the delivered materials do not match the Seller's description on their Workflow page or they do not match the requirements sent to the Seller at the beginning of the order process.
• You may not offer Sellers to pay, or make payment using any method other than through the BioWorkflows.com site. In case you have been asked to use an alternative payment method, please report it immediately to Customer Support here.

Purpose of the Community Forum

• The Community Forum is provided for Buyers to request Workflows or related Services. Users should use
  • Workflow comments section for discussions pertain to particular Workflows.
  • Workflow support section for one-to-one discussions about purchased workflows.
  • Other discussion forums such as "Stack Exchange" for general questions.
  BioWorkflows may remove topics and posts that should be discussed elsewhere.
• Sellers with relevant expertise or have published workflows in relevant areas will be notified if the Posts are tagged properly.
• Anyone can answer questions directly in the Forum, with discussions viewable by all visitors. Posts from novice users may be moderated before posting.

Posting of Bounties

• Buyers can post bounties in relevant topics, even if the topics are created by some other users.
• Multiple bounties can be created by the same or different users for a topic.

Creation and refund of Bounty Orders

• An order will be created and paid upfront for the creation of a bounty.
• Bounties can be canceled, typically if they are not answered at the end of the bounty period.
• No refund is issued for canceled bounties. The balance will be credit to bounty posters as store credits that can be used to create new bounties.

Claim of Bounties

• Bounty poster and other users can up or down vote answers, indicating if the answers are helpful to answer the question.
• Not all votes are counted. In particular, only trusted users are allowed to vote for answers and votes from bounty answers are ignored.
• Bounties are shared by all answerers of the question according to the number of votes their answers receive. "Downvotes" are deducted from "Upvotes" for the calculation of votes.
• Management fees (currently 20%) are applied to bounties before they are distributed to answerers.