Service You Can Trust

AOSIS Legal Centre

Online Access Services

← Back to Legal Centre

1. Application

 

These specific terms apply to you where you:

 

  • have registered on our websites;
  • have selected for us to provide you with our eCPD or publishing services under an order; or
  • begin using the services or exercising any rights granted to you under the agreement.

2. Introduction

 

We provide various services through our websites, including publishing services, eCPD services, and more. To receive such services, you must register on our website, and request them. We are prepared to give you access to our online platform, as our client, based on our terms of service and these specific terms, both of which are incorporated by reference when you order these services from us via our websites.

3. Definitions

 

In these specific terms:

author means any individual who, in relation to a work, has:

  • made a substantial contribution to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
  • drafted the manuscript or critically revised it for important intellectual content; and
  • approved the final version to be published.

but excludes those individuals who have only acquiring funding, collecting data, or generally supervising the research group.

editor means an editor of the relevant journal appointed by us or the journal owner to manage the editing of a work;

journal owner means the person or entity that owns the majority stake in the scholarly journal into which an author has submitted a work for publication;

reviewer means a reviewer appointed by us or the editor to review the academic or scientific merits of a work;

work means a scholarly book or journal article that an author submits to us to be published under our publishing terms, including any abstracts, alterations, addendums, comments, errata or supplementary material related to it;

you means the user who has registered on our websites.

4. Duration

 

These terms start when you accept them and continue until terminated in terms of this agreement.

5. Our services to you

 

5.1. Right to use our services. We grant you a right to use our services subject to the following limitations:

 

  • duration of agreement – you may only use the services for the duration of the agreement;
  • limited to terms – you may only use the services according to these terms;
  • non-exclusive – we may allow anyone else to use the services;
  • non-transferable – you may not transfer the right to anyone else; and
  • specified purposes – you may only use the services for the specified purposes that we’ve communicated to you in writing from time to time.

 

5.2. Access conditions. We will only provide service access to you on the conditions that you or each one of them will:

 

  • accurately provide us with any information that we ask for on registration or account creation;
  • create or have the necessary credentials (such as a username and password) assigned to them on registration or account creation;
  • look after their credentials and not give them to anyone else;
  • not interfere with or introduce any malicious software into the services or otherwise misuse them;
  • be responsible for any activity that happens under their account, even if someone else was actually acting under their credentials;
  • have the necessary infrastructure, equipment, and software to access the services; and
  • abide by the agreement and any policies that we communicate to them in writing.

 

5.3. Availability. We will do our best to make the services available at all times, however we cannot guarantee that they will always be available. We may make them unavailable for scheduled and emergency maintenance.

 

5.4. Applications to be editor. Editors are appointed by journal owners through a specific and separate recruitment process managed by us or the journal owner whenever vacancies become available.

 

5.5. Applications to be reviewer. You may apply to us to be a reviewer on a journal that we publish by registering as a reviewer when prompted to do so during the user registration process, or by sending us an email requesting to be registered as a reviewer.

6. Your responsibilities

 

6.1. User content. You are responsible for any and all content that you post or submit for publishing on our websites, including any opinions expressed in such content. You may not upload to the website or our services any content which in our sole opinion is:

 

  • false or misleading (including impersonating or making statements on behalf of our business or personnel);
  • disruptive to our services (including advertising other services or websites);
  • illegal or unlawful under any applicable law (including inciting others to commit a crime or breach these terms);
  • defamatory, discriminatory or harassing (including posting someone’s personal information without their consent);
  • obscene (including content of a violent or sexual nature); or
  • infringes on another party’s rights (including copyright or trademark rights).

 

We will remove any content that breaches this clause.

 

6.2. Uploaded information. Where you upload information to our website or the service, you warrant that you have the required right or authority to do so, and that such information is not confidential or proprietary in any way. You grant us the right to use such information in any way as may be necessary to provide the services. You further agree that we are not responsible for this content, and you hold us harmless and indemnify us for any loss, damage, harm or other claims that may arise as a result of any such content or information that you upload to our website or service.

 

6.3. Monitoring and records. You give us permission to monitor how you use the services, for security and stability purposes. You agree that our records are undisputed evidence of the services provided to you.

 

6.4. Inactive accounts. If your account with us has been inactive for 180 days, we may suspend or terminate this agreement without notice to you. If you ask us to re-activate your account, we may choose to do so in our absolute discretion.

 

6.5. Suspension. We may limit, suspend or terminate your access to and use of the website at any time without notice to you if:

 

  • you attempt a denial of service attack on any of the services;
  • you seek to hack or break any security mechanism on any of the services or access data outside of that which belongs to your organisation;
  • we determine in our sole discretion that your use of the services poses a security threat to us, or to any other user of the services;
  • you otherwise use the services in a way that disrupts or threatens the services;
  • we determine, in our sole discretion, that there is evidence of fraud with respect to your account;
  • we receive notice, or we otherwise determine, in our sole discretion, that you may be using the services for any illegal purpose or in any way that breaches the law or infringes the rights of any third party;
  • we determine, in our sole discretion, that our provision of any of the services to you is prohibited by applicable law, or has become impractical or infeasible for any legal or regulatory reason; or
  • for any other reason that we determine is reasonable within our exclusive discretion.

 

7. Editors and reviewers

 

7.1. Application. This clause applies to you where you are an editor or reviewer.

 

7.2. Accept and follow our publication policies. Publishing a work involves various people following a standard set of rules, many of which are subject to change in order to keep up to date with industry best practice. As such, you confirm that you have read and agree to follow our publishing policies. Despite anything to the contrary in this agreement, we may change these policies from time to time in our discretion. If we do so, we will notify you of any such changes by emailing you or placing a notice on our websites, and these changes will apply to you. These policies include our:

 

  • Editorial Policy
  • Ethics Policy
  • Peer-Review Policy

 

7.3. Responsibilities. Where you are an editor or reviewer, you agree to:

 

  • follow our publishing policies (as updated from time to time), which will detail your powers and duties as an editor or reviewer;
  • perform your duties within the timelines described in the Editorial Policy, or as otherwise agreed between the parties;
  • notify us and recuse yourself from editing or reviewing a work in which you have a potential competing interest, being any relationship between yourself or any other person or organisation which inappropriately influences your opinions or actions in editing or reviewing the work.

 

7.4. Confidentiality. You must treat as confidential any work that you are engaged with, as well as any correspondence between yourself and any author, reviewer, or editor.

 

7.5. CrossCheck. We are a member CrossCheck, and will help you verify the originality of works by comparing them with the CrossCheck database.

 

8. Changes

 

8.1. We may change the terms relating to the services described in these specific terms at any time and where this affects your rights and obligations, we will notify you of any changes by placing a notice in a prominent place on our website or by email. If you do not agree with the change you must stop using the services. If you continue to use the services following notification of a change to the terms, the changed terms will apply to you and you will be deemed to have accepted such terms.

 

Back To Top