PhoneLab Policies

PhoneLab is an open-access smartphone platform testbed operated by the PhoneLab team (we) at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (UB). It consists of smartphones, participants that use the smartphones, and control software. It is designed to be open-access, meaning that researchers inside and outside of UB will conduct research studies using PhoneLab. It provides realism by having participants use their experimental smartphone as their primary device allowing research experiments to be performed under realistic conditions and with real user inputs. This document contains terms and conditions that each and every experimenter should be aware of and agree to before using PhoneLab.

Access and Administration

The use of the testbed is allowed for most academic purposes. We will reserve the right to grant or deny PhoneLab access depending on the nature of the experiment and the demand of the testbed. The current policy only allows the use of the testbed for research, not for education or development.

Data Release

PhoneLab will only release data to researchers whose requests have been reviewed and approved or marked exempt by their institution’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent human subjects protection body. PhoneLab will assist researchers whose protocols require affirmative consent from PhoneLab participants.

Participation

PhoneLab makes no guarantees about the size of our testbed or how many participants will choose to provide data at your request. Participants may opt in and out of experiments on a per-experiment basis.

Acceptable Use

We require that researchers act within the bounds of the experiment they have had reviewed by their IRB. We reserve the right to define abuse of PhoneLab as broadly as possible in the interest of protecting our participants. Misrepresentation of the purpose for using the testbed or misuse of PhoneLab data will result in experimenters losing access to PhoneLab and having their academic or research institution notified of their behavior.

Policy Changes

We also reserve the right to change our policies at any point of time in the future.

Disclaimer

PhoneLab is provided as-is without any warranty. We disclaim any and all liability of an experiment’s results, its errors, and any of its side-effects, broadly defined. We also disclaim any errors or problems that arise out of security and reliability issues of our software.