Dataset Sharing Guidelines for the Education and Research Basic Program

Planet’s Education and Research Basic program provides access to satellite imagery for non-commercial, academic, and research purposes. This program is designed to support educational and research projects while safeguarding Planet’s proprietary imagery. Please note that datasets containing raw or original Planet imagery data cannot be made publicly accessible under this program.

Terms of Service for Public Sharing

According to the Terms of Service for the Education and Research Basic program, which users must accept upon joining, Planet’s imagery and datasets containing raw image data are restricted to private, project-specific use only. Public sharing is only permitted in the form of “Permitted Imagery” and specific types of “Derivative Products” that do not retain Planet’s raw data values. Here is a breakdown of these terms:

• Derivative Products: Defined in the Terms of Service, derivative products include textual or graphical reports, maps, or summaries that are based on Planet content but do not contain raw image data. Importantly, these products must be created in a way that ensures the original imagery cannot be extracted or recreated. These types of products are allowed for public sharing and may include visualized results, maps, or statistical findings derived from the imagery data.

• Permitted Imagery: This refers to visual representations that do not contain or preserve the actual data values of Planet’s imagery, such as red-green-blue, red-edge, or near-infrared values. Examples of permitted imagery include:

  • Screenshots
  • JPEGs
  • Annotations
  • Printed copies

Under these guidelines, while raw datasets or high-resolution images created from Planet content cannot be shared, generalized representations that comply with the Permitted Imagery and Derivative Product definitions may be shared publicly.

Key Takeaway

For Education and Research Basic program participants, only data representations that do not retain underlying imagery data values—such as screenshots, JPEGs, and certain reports—are allowed for public sharing. Sharing original or processed datasets that contain raw Planet imagery data is not allowed.

For further details, please review Planet’s Terms of Use. For citing instructions, please see Citing Planet Data.