Terms of Service

Effective date: [EFFECTIVE_DATE] Last updated: 27 July 2026

Welcome to Offprint. These terms are a contract between you and [LEGAL_ENTITY] ("Offprint", "we", "us"). They explain what you can expect from us and what we expect from you. We have tried to write them in plain language rather than legalese.

By creating an account or continuing to use Offprint, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use Offprint.

1. What Offprint is

Offprint is a discovery feed for academic research. We aggregate metadata about published papers from public sources, and we let researchers repost, comment on, and discuss that work with each other.

Offprint is not a publisher. We do not host the papers themselves, and we are not a substitute for peer review, professional advice, or your own judgement about the quality of a piece of research.

2. Who can use Offprint

You must be at least 16 years old to use Offprint. By using it, you confirm that you are.

Offprint is intended for researchers and others with a genuine interest in academic work. You may hold one account for yourself. Accounts are personal to you — do not share your account or let someone else use it.

3. Your account

You sign in with a link or code sent to your email address. There is no password. This means anyone with access to your email inbox can access your Offprint account, so please keep your email account secure. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has used your account.

4. Your name and identity

Offprint uses real names. When you create a profile you agree to give your real name, not a pseudonym or the name of someone else.

You may optionally link your ORCID record to your account. If you do, we verify that link with ORCID and may show a verification badge and sync your name and affiliation from your ORCID record. Linking ORCID is entirely optional and you can unlink it at any time in the app.

Impersonating another researcher — real or invented — is a serious violation of these terms and is grounds for immediate termination.

5. What you post is public

Reposts, comments, and discussion contributions on Offprint are public. Your name, profile, and anything you post can be seen by anyone using Offprint, and may be visible on the public web. Please do not post anything you are not comfortable being public and attributed to your real name.

Direct messages between users are not public, but see section 10 for how they are handled.

6. Content rules — zero tolerance for objectionable content

Offprint has no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive behaviour. You agree not to post, send, upload, or share any content, and not to behave in any way, that:

• harasses, bullies, threatens, intimidates, or targets any person;
• is hateful or discriminatory, or attacks or demeans a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or serious disease;
• is sexually explicit or pornographic, or sexualises any person;
• depicts, promotes, or glorifies violence, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, or cruelty;
• promotes or facilitates terrorism, violent extremism, or organised criminal activity;
• is illegal, or encourages or instructs others in illegal activity;
• involves the sexual exploitation or abuse of children in any form;
• infringes anyone's copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, moral rights, or other intellectual property;
• discloses another person's private or identifying information without their permission ("doxxing");
• is knowingly false, fraudulent, deceptive, or designed to mislead — including fabricated or manipulated research, fake citations, and misrepresented results;
• impersonates any person or organisation, or misrepresents your identity, affiliation, credentials, or authorship;
• is spam, unsolicited advertising, or bulk or automated promotional content;
• contains malware, viruses, or anything designed to damage or disrupt software, hardware, or data; or
• is otherwise obscene, abusive, or objectionable.

You also agree not to scrape, crawl, or harvest data from Offprint by automated means; not to attempt to access accounts, systems, or data you are not authorised to access; not to probe, disrupt, or overload our infrastructure; and not to circumvent any rate limit, filter, block, or other protective measure.

7. Reporting and blocking

If you see content or behaviour that breaks these rules, please report it using the reporting option in the app. You can also block any user, which prevents them from contacting you or interacting with your content.

We aim to review every report and act on objectionable content within 24 hours — by removing the content, and by suspending or removing the account responsible.

8. Enforcement and termination

If you break these terms, we may — with or without notice, and at our discretion:

• remove or hide any content you have posted;
• limit the visibility of your content or your ability to post;
• suspend your account temporarily; or
• terminate your account permanently and bar you from Offprint.

We may act immediately and without warning where the violation is serious — including harassment, hate speech, sexual content involving minors, threats of violence, impersonation, doxxing, or coordinated abuse — or where we are required to by law.

We may also suspend or terminate accounts that are inactive for an extended period, that we reasonably believe are fraudulent or automated, or where we stop operating the service.

You can close your own account at any time from the app. See section 12.

9. Your content stays yours

You keep ownership of everything you post. You are responsible for it, and you confirm that you have the right to post it.

By posting on Offprint, you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, display, and distribute your content for the purpose of operating and promoting Offprint — for example, showing your comment in another user's feed. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except where the content has already been shared with others, and except for backup copies which are removed on our normal retention cycle.

We do not sell your content, and we do not use it to train AI models.

10. Direct messages

Direct and group messages are delivered through Stream, a third-party messaging provider. Messages are not public, and we do not read them routinely.

However, messages are not end-to-end encrypted. We can access message content where we need to — to investigate a report, to comply with the law, or to protect someone's safety. The content rules in section 6 apply to messages just as they do to public posts.

11. Papers, metadata, and third-party content

Paper titles, abstracts, author lists, and other metadata come from public sources including Crossref and publisher records. That material belongs to its authors and publishers, not to us, and it is made available to you for research and discovery purposes.

Some paper summaries on Offprint are generated automatically using AI. Automatically generated summaries may be inaccurate or incomplete. Always read the original paper before relying on it.

Links from Offprint to publisher sites, DOIs, and other external pages are outside our control and we are not responsible for their content.

12. Deleting your account

You can delete your account from within the app at any time. When you do, we delete your profile, your reposts, your comments, and your messages, as described in our Privacy Policy.

Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone.

13. Service availability and changes

Offprint is provided as-is and we are still actively building it. We may add, change, or remove features, and we may suspend or discontinue the service, at any time. We will try to give reasonable notice of significant changes but cannot always do so.

14. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Offprint is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that any content on Offprint — including paper metadata and AI-generated summaries — is accurate, current, or complete.

Content posted by other users is theirs, not ours. We do not endorse it and are not responsible for it.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, revenue, reputation, or research opportunity, arising from your use of Offprint.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law — including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If we make a material change, we will notify you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and we may ask you to accept the updated terms before continuing to use Offprint. The "last updated" date at the top tells you when these terms last changed.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], and the courts of [JURISDICTION] have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute — except that if you are a consumer resident elsewhere, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections of your local law.

18. Contact us

Questions, reports, or legal notices:

Email: [CONTACT_EMAIL] Postal address: [POSTAL_ADDRESS]

We aim to respond to all reports of objectionable content within 24 hours.