eMammal Costs for Researchers

eMammal provides a set of software tools and long term data storage for free, however there are some costs for using eMammal cloud computing services. eMammal uses commercially available cloud computing services to process your photos and metadata. These cloud services make it possible for users to upload and process data from anywhere with an internet connection and share that data with experts anywhere else in the world. Unlike other camera trapping software, all the images and metadata are stored and backed up in the Smithsonian Data Repository. Once the data is in the Repository it is freely available to researchers regardless of subscription status.

eMammal is charged for commercial cloud services for data procesing and in turn asks each project to share the costs through a subscription. We use subscription fees to pay for and maintain these services. Click here to submit your payments!

What do you get with a subscription?

• Your project is setup for you on the eMammal website, which gives you access to tools for managing team membership, communication, and camera deployments

• Desktop image processing app with customized bird and mammal species lists for tagging images

• Cloud application for reviewing and approving animal identifications

• Free, long-term image and data storage in the Smithsonian data repository

• Lifetime free access to data and data export

• Embargo of data for up to 3 years and open data access after the embargo period

• Public project page with your organization’s logo

• Protection by Data User agreement after agreeing to our Data Provider Agreement

• All uploaded information goes through storage buckets in Amazon Web Services. Please read their privacy policy here. (Note: Our teams are currently working together to move our storage to Microsoft Azure, and their privacy statement can be found here.) 

What is the breakdown of subscription fees?

• $150 setup fee for new projects

• $3.87 - $4.19 per "camera month" of data, which is the data collected by a camera trap within a 30 day period. The more camera months purchased the lower the per camera month fee. We use camera months because we have found that to be the easiest way to estimate the amount of data from a project.

• eMammal does not refund any fees

Who estimates the subscription fee?

The short answer is you do. Project managers wanting to use eMammal services calculate camera months and pay in advance. Projects using more camera months than estimated will be charged for the extra camera months, unused camera months can be used later in the project.

What happens if I use more camera months than my subscription?

The eMammal research teams monitors our commercial cloud services, and if any group uses more than their current subscription they will be reminded to extend their subscription. All access to the eMammal software tools, apps, and member areas will be suspended until the account is current.

What if my study does not use an entire camera trap month?

Users must calculate their needs to the nearest camera month, round up if necessary. As an example, a study deploying 20 camera traps with a field season of 75 days would need 50 camera months [(20*75)/30=50]. The project would be charged $4.19 x 50 = $209.50. If your project only deployed 15 cameras you would only use 38 camera months, and you may use the remaining 12 camera months the following season. eMammal does not refund any fees.

How do I pay?

You can pay via Paypal here.

Camera month processing fees: