Galaxy Australia Feature Catalogue

Galaxy Australia is one of the international UseGalaxy servers that provide a common core set of tools and reference genomes, and are open to anyone. Galaxy Australia has the following core features:

• Hundreds of frequently used community reference genomes and annotation datasets
• Thousands of bioinformatics data analysis and visualisation tools
• A workflow system that allow tools to be chained together
• Sharing of generated content such as data libraries, usage histories, workflows and visualisations
• Extensive online training

The inclusion of additional tools, reference genomes, and annotation data can be requested.

Galaxy Australia features and quotas by account type

Because Galaxy Australia has a regional focus it provides more features and larger quotas to some registered accounts.

Terms of service

Galaxy Australia is an online workbench for manipulating, analysing and interpreting life science data. The service is offered by the Australian BioCommons via its Operational Partners as part of their collective mission to provide access to the digital techniques, data, and tools used by bioscience researchers.

Interaction with the Galaxy Australia website https://usegalaxy.org.au/ denotes agreement with the following terms:

1. Use of service
   1. Galaxy Australia is part of the usegalaxy.* initiative that aims to provide free global access to publicly available Galaxy services. As such, free, anonymous use that respects these Terms of Use is permitted.
   2. You may choose to register an account with Galaxy Australia in order to access advanced features and extended quotas described in the Feature Catalogue.
   3. Your access to Galaxy Australia is provided under the condition that you abide by our Acceptable Use Policy.
   4. You indemnify and hold the Galaxy Australia Operational Partners harmless against loss in connection with your use of the service.
   5. You agree to acknowledge use of Galaxy Australia in your research outputs using the format of our Acknowledgement Statement.
2. Research data hosting and analysis
   1. Galaxy Australia is designed to support data analysis and visualisation. If you choose to upload and host data in Galaxy Australia you shall ensure that you comply with applicable laws of the Commonwealth of Australia, as well as laws of other jurisdictions that might be applicable due to the sensitivity, provenance, intended use, ownership, or licensing imposed on the data being processed.
   2. Galaxy Australia is not designed to host or process Personal or Sensitive data. You are prohibited from using Galaxy Australia to host or process Personal or Sensitive data, including but not limited to personally identifying genetic, genomic or Health data. See the Galaxy Australia Privacy Policy for definitions of Personal, Sensitive and Health data.
   3. Galaxy Australia is not designed for long term hosting of data. Please only host data for the period required for analysis and then export/download your analysed data. Old data are periodically purged in line with the data retention periods described in our Feature Catalogue.
3. Sharing content
   1. Galaxy Australia is designed to support reproducible science. Registered account holders may choose to create and share “content” including data libraries, usage histories, workflows and visualisations.
   2. Shared content will be retained for the lifetime of the service (see Feature Catalogue) and is not subject to research data hosting and retention limits.
   3. You can choose to delete your content at any time.
   4. Download and use of content from Galaxy Australia does not transfer any intellectual property rights in the content to you.
4. Termination
   1. The Australian BioCommons reserves the right, without notice, at its sole discretion and without liability,
      1. to alter, delete or block access to content that it deems to be inappropriate, and
      2. to restrict or remove access where it considers that your use of Galaxy Australia seeks to impede its operations or violates these Terms of Use.
5. Change of Terms
   1. These Terms of Use are subject to change by the Australian BioCommons at any time and without notice, other than through posting the updated Terms of Use on the https://usegalaxy.org.au/ website and communicating the update to registered account holders.

If you have any questions or comments with respect to Galaxy Australia, or if you are unsure whether your intended use complies with these Terms of Use, or if you seek permission for an intended use that does not fall within these Terms of Use, please contact us.

Privacy Policy and Data Collection Statement

Privacy Policy and Data Collection

Galaxy Australia is committed to protecting your privacy. We do not collect, process, retain or share personal data other than for the purposes described below.

1. Usage data
   1. In order to monitor and enhance Galaxy Australia, we track and retain information about your interaction with the service (i.e. IP addresses, cookies, pages visited, tool invocation parameters, data uploads, etc).
   2. The Galaxy Australia Operational Partners may share log files of your interactions with the service.
   3. We may share tool usage data with the usegalaxy.* initiative to improve their Galaxy tool recommender system. When we do, we aggregate and anonymise this data to protect your privacy.
   4. For promotional reasons, Galaxy Australia periodically creates public usage reports. When we do, we aggregate and anonymise this data to protect your privacy.
2. Registration data
   1. If you choose to register an account with Galaxy Australia, we collect registration data (i.e. email address, institutional affiliation and public name).
   2. The Galaxy Australia Operational Partners may store and examine registration data to provide access to advanced features, extended quotas, and specialised computing facilities.
   3. Galaxy Australia may contact registered account holders using the email address they provide for operational reasons, including:
      1. checking user account security including email verification,
      2. communicating service downtime,
      3. communicating service improvements,
      4. communicating actions we are taking with respect to data quotas and retention periods,
      5. communicating actions we are taking with respect to jobs that are taking a large share of service capacity,
      6. responding to your support requests,
      7. surveying existing and planned use in order to improve and promote the service,
      8. discussing breaches of these Terms of Use, and
      9. communicating updates to Galaxy Australia policies
   4. Galaxy Australia may contact registered account holders using the email address they provide for promotional reasons, such as seeking consent and content for newsletters, annual reports or media releases by operational partners and funding partners.
3. CloudStor app data
   1. If you choose to link Galaxy Australia with CloudStor, we retain the CloudStor username and App password you shared with us.
   2. This data is transmitted to AARNet when you use the Galaxy Australia - CloudStor integration to upload or download data.
4. Data you upload and share
   1. Galaxy Australia stores data which you provide to us voluntarily when you upload a dataset for hosting and analysis.
   2. You are prohibited from using Galaxy Australia to host or process sensitive data, including but not limited to personal data.
   3. We may examine data you upload and share for alignment with our Acceptable Use Policy.
5. Support requests
   1. When you submit a support request with Galaxy Australia, we collect your email address, and may ask for personal data as part of the support process.
   2. Data collected as part of a support request is stored in our instance of Freshdesk - please refer to the Freshworks Privacy Policy for more information.
6. Cookies
   1. Galaxy Australia uses cookies to identify users/computers in order to maintain user sessions.
   2. Galaxy Australia cookies are not linked to your Registration data.
   3. If you prefer not to receive cookies, you may set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies or you may also refuse all cookies by turning them off in your browser. Not accepting Galaxy Australia cookies will limit the functionality of the service.
7. Analytics
   1. Galaxy Australia uses Google Analytics to analyse usage and improve the service. Google Analytics uses cookies to generate data which is transmitted to Google. You can view Google’s Privacy Policy and options for controlling the data collected here.
   2. Galaxy Australia uses PostHog to analyse usage and improve the service. PostHog may use cookies to collect some of this information, but does not not track your usage to perform product analytics. You can view PostHog’s Privacy Policy and options for controlling the data collected here.
8. Data location
   1. Galaxy Australia hosts and shares open community reference, open annotation data, tool metadata, and anonymised tool usage data with international Galaxy Servers as part of the usegalaxy.* initiative.
   2. Google Analytics uses cookies to generate data which may be transmitted and stored in Google servers outside Australia.
   3. User support data managed by Freshdesk may be stored outside Australia.
   4. All other data is stored and processed in Australia by the Galaxy Australia Operational Partners, and will not be provided to any third party unless
      1. you choose to share content through the service, or
      2. we are required to do so by law.
9. Modifying and removing personal data
   1. Registered account holders can see and modify the personal information collected by Galaxy Australia by logging into the service and navigating to User > Preferences > Manage Information.
   2. Registered account holders can request removal of personal information at any time. Please contact us if you are in this position.

Acceptable Use Policy

1. You may use Galaxy Australia to manipulate, analyse and interpret life science data for the purposes of research, or research training.
2. You agree to interact with the Galaxy Australia Community (defined as other users of the service, technical support staff, operational staff, and those involved in governance of the service) in a responsible and respectful manner at all times, consistent with the Australian BioCommons Code of Conduct.
3. The following uses of Galaxy Australia are explicitly forbidden:
   1. The deliberate or reckless creation, transmission, storage, downloading, or display of any offensive or menacing images, data, metadata or other material, or any data capable of being resolved into such images or material
   2. Use which constitutes an infringement of any intellectual property rights of another person
   3. The creation of duplicate user account and/or double registration by a single user for the purposes of intentionally receiving increased quota on the Galaxy Australia Service
   4. Attempt to or circumvent the appropriate authentication or access control measures, security or restrictions on the use of a registered account, including the unauthorised distribution or use of tools of any kind for compromising security
   5. The storage or processing of any sensitive data, including but not limited to potentially personally identifying genetic, genomic or medical data
   6. Communications which would be actionable under the law of defamation
   7. Use for private or business purposes other than scientific research
   8. Deliberate or reckless undertaking of activities which seek to or result in:
      1. the imposition of (or attempted imposition of) an unreasonable burden on the Galaxy Australia Operations and Support teams,
      2. corruption of or disruption to data stored on the Galaxy Australia Platform, or to the data of another user,
      3. disruption to other users, and/or
      4. introduction or transmission of malware into Galaxy Australia’s systems.
4. Other uses of Galaxy Australia are only permitted with the written permission of the Galaxy Australia Service Manager - please contact us if you feel that this is neccessary.

Service commitments

Best effort operations

We realise that the jobs you submit to Galaxy Australia are important to you. For that reason, we commit to making best efforts to keep the service as reliable and responsive as possible, and to keep your data intact.

Our operational staff work normal Australian East Coast office hours. During those hours we aim to triage tickets, tool requests and reference data requests within one business day. Resolution of tickets, requests, outages and issues will take longer outside normal office hours, on weekends, and on public holidays.

Galaxy Australia runs on a combination of research-grade and commercial-grade infrastructure contributed by our Operational Partners. Galaxy Australia reliability and capacity may be impacted if partner infrastructure unexpectedly becomes unavailable.

Service capacity

Galaxy Australia is underpinned by significant compute and storage capabilities, allowing you to scale analysis beyond your desktop computer. We periodically expand capacity, taking into account growth in users, jobs and community requests for new types of analysis that might need specialised hardware.

From time to time Galaxy Australia may reach capacity, usually resulting in longer job run times.

Galaxy Australia aspires to operate a “fair share” system, where capacity is distributed amongst researchers using the service. For that reason, we may at times work with researchers to halt and reconfigure jobs that are taking too large a share of service capacity.

Service lifetime

Services operations are currently funded until December 2026.

In case of closure of the service, registered account holders can download their hosted data and content via Galaxy’s existing export mechanisms.

Maintenance

The maintenance and administration of Galaxy Australia is a balance between service uptime and the health of the service. From time to time, the service may become unavailable during planned or unscheduled maintenance events.

Planned maintenance

Galaxy Australia Operational Partners plan upgrades and security patches to the service. During these planned maintenance periods, the service may not be available.

Notification of planned service unavailability will be made via a notice on the Galaxy Australia website https://usegalaxy.org.au/ and via email to registered account holders. The period of notice varies depending on the length of the planned service unavailability:

Unscheduled maintenance

On occasion, the Galaxy Australia Operational Partners may need to perform urgent maintenance (e.g. for urgent security patching) resulting in Service downtime outside of scheduled and planned maintenance windows. In this case Galaxy Australia will make every effort to give users as much advance notice as is possible to limit disruption.

Managing hosted data quotas

Galaxy Australia is not designed for long term storage of data. Please only host data for the period required for analysis, and export/download and delete your analysed data. Any data marked by you as "deleted" will be permanently removed within 5 business days. If you decide to "purge" a dataset, it will be removed immediately and permanently.

Old data are periodically purged in line with the data retention period described above. We will notify you via email (to the email address used for registration) with instructions on how to download your data one week before purging your old data.

An increased data storage quota can be requested for a limited time period in special cases.

If your data is likely to be used by other researchers, you may request its addition to Galaxy Australia as reference or annotation data for community use. Reference and annotation data does not count towards your research data quota.

What happens when I go over my hosted data quota?

Your data and histories are still accessible, but you are not able to run new jobs or import more data.