Terms

Terms of Service

Last updated 2026-08-08

These terms govern use of the OpenNIH website at opennih.org and the public MCP endpoint at https://mcp.opennih.org/mcp. The service is free and anonymous. Its data views and MCP tools are read-only; the only things you send are text you choose to submit — a correction report, or a question to the AI research feature. By using the service you accept these terms; if you do not accept them, do not use it.

Not NIH. Not official NIH data.

OpenNIH is an independent project. It is not affiliated with the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or any other government agency, and it is not endorsed, sponsored, certified, or reviewed by them. Nothing here is an official government publication. The figures OpenNIH shows are derivedfrom public NIH ExPORTER bulk files and the NIH RePORTER API through OpenNIH's own ingestion, entity resolution, and aggregation steps — they are not the official NIH record. For the official record, consult NIH RePORTER directly.

1. The service

OpenNIH provides search, ranking, profile, trend, and insight views over the NIH grant corpus, on the website and through a public MCP server. Access requires no account, no API key, and no payment. The service is provided as a public good and may change, be limited, or be withdrawn at any time.

2. Availability is best-effort

There is no uptime commitment and no service-level agreement. The service may be unavailable, slow, incomplete, or interrupted for maintenance, deployment, upstream NIH data problems, or any other reason, without notice. Do not build anything that requires OpenNIH to be reachable.

3. Rate limits

The public MCP endpoint applies a per-client-IP limit of 120 requests per 60-second window; requests past that limit receive HTTP 429. Searches that page deep into a result set (an offset above 10,000) are additionally limited to 12 such calls per 60-second window by default, counted per caller where the caller can be distinguished and otherwise against a single shared bucket; past that allowance the call returns an error asking you to partition the query by fiscal year instead. The website's AI research feature carries its own separate per-client daily quota and returns HTTP 429 once that quota is used up. These limits are operational settings and may be adjusted without notice. Do not attempt to evade them — for example by rotating source addresses or forging client-identifying headers.

4. Acceptable use

You may query the service, and you may use its output in your own research, reporting, products, and analysis. You may not:

  • exceed or circumvent the rate limits, or bulk-scrape the corpus through the API — the underlying data is published by NIH in bulk, so download it from NIH rather than draining this endpoint;
  • attack, overload, probe for vulnerabilities in, or otherwise degrade the service or the infrastructure it runs on;
  • use the service to violate any applicable law, or to harass or target an individual;
  • present OpenNIH output as official NIH data, or imply NIH endorsement of you, your product, or your conclusions;
  • submit personal, confidential, or sensitive information in queries — see the privacy policy.

Access may be blocked, throttled, or withdrawn if use threatens the availability of the service for others.

5. Data, licensing, and attribution

The underlying NIH ExPORTER / RePORTER data is U.S. Government public domain material (17 U.S.C. §105). OpenNIH's own source code is released under the MIT License. Derived values — rankings, scores, normalized institution names, aggregates — are the product of OpenNIH's published methodology, not of NIH. When you reuse OpenNIH output, attribute it to OpenNIH and to NIH ExPORTER / RePORTER as the underlying source, and state the fiscal-year coverage you used; the methodology and data coverage pages document how every figure is produced.

6. Accuracy and corrections

OpenNIH aims for figures that trace back to official NIH source data, and publishes its known limitations — including institution entity resolution that can still fragment multi-campus organizations. Errors are nevertheless possible. Values shown here are not guaranteed to be accurate, current, or complete, and must not be relied on for funding, hiring, investment, compliance, or any other consequential decision without independent verification against NIH RePORTER. If you find a wrong value, report it through the correction intake form; the correction process is described on the trust page.

7. No warranty

THE SERVICE AND ALL DATA IT RETURNS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

8. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE OPENNIH CONTRIBUTORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE OR ITS DATA, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. The service is free of charge; you have no payment on which a refund or credit could be based.

9. Changes to these terms

These terms may be updated. The current version always lives at this URL, and the “last updated” date above moves when it changes. Because the service has no accounts, there is no way to notify you individually; continued use after a change means you accept the updated terms.

10. Contact

Questions about these terms go through the channels on the support page.