docs/DATA_POLICY.md

Dataset release policy

AutoMedBench reports benchmark results but does not redistribute the upstream dataset content referenced by the benchmark website. A private repository does not override source licenses or data-use agreements.

manifests/data_policy.csv freezes one policy record for each of the 48 tasks:

• redistributable: a source appears to grant redistribution under the listed license; attribution and all license conditions still apply;
• download_required: users must obtain the data from the upstream source;
• restricted: access is gated or credentialed or redistribution is prohibited;
• unknown: no sufficient redistribution grant has been verified.

The release rule is conservative: no dataset bytes are embedded in any of the 48 task packages, the eight shared runtime images, or the 96 thin task-tier images. Every uploaded artifact is code-only. Runtime data is mounted from a local directory prepared independently by the authorized user. The shared runtime inventory is frozen in manifests/runtime_images.csv; task-tier image and archive identities are frozen in manifests/cell_images.csv and manifests/cell_archives.csv.

manifests/dataset_resolution.csv resolves every task to one auditable state: 23 task rows are locally staged and layout-hashed, 16 are acquisition-ready from a frozen source/recipe, and nine are externally blocked by an approval, DUA, or mixed-source permission requirement. These local readiness records do not grant redistribution rights and no staged dataset directory is uploaded.

Before any task can be called release-ready:

1. the upstream source and immutable revision must be frozen;
2. its license or access agreement must be retained with the release audit;
3. selected case IDs and deterministic staging checksums must be recorded;
4. restricted users must acquire the data independently;
5. the staged layout must pass the exact-secret and personal-path scan.

Known immediate gates include the declared LiTS versus pinned MSD liver provenance distinction; FeTA, PANTHER, fastMRI, BraTS, Kvasir-VQA, OmniMedVQA, MIMIC-CXR, and VinDr-CXR access restrictions; and unclear CheXpert Plus and ISIC subset licenses. PathCap is staged for authorized local use with distinct 100/500 ID lists but remains prohibited from redistribution. The 15 website tasks absent from locked source branches now have explicitly identified release_owned_v1 harnesses rather than being reported as missing.