Individual records in GWAS Central remain the intellectual property of the various original data sources, and any questions concerning acceptable use, copying, storage or distribution of individual data items should be directed to those sources. GWAS Central claims ownership and copyright on the total compilation of records in this database, and provides open and free access to portions of the full database content for searching, browsing, download, and further dissemination on the strict understanding that no records are altered in any way other than trivial format changes, and that GWAS Central and the original data sources are acknowledged in any subsequent reporting or sharing of this information.

This service provision is provided on a ‘fair use’ basis, congruent with supporting small to medium scale data investigations. Large scale data supply from GWAS Central can be provisioned, but only in accordance with the GWAS Central Terms of Use policy. The software developed in the GWAS Central project is made fully and freely available under the standard terms of the  GNU General Public License Version3.