Terms of Use
Be nice. We are a community-run effort and open source project and do not have resources to deal with possible legal repercussions of our users' actions. On the other hand, we are trying to be nice to you and other users as well, possibly being not so nice only when we have to protect some users or content from other users. If you have any concern with how PeerLibrary operates and this terms of use, please contact us, open a ticket for public discussion, or open a pull request with a proposed change.
Terminology
In this document we are using the following terminology:
PeerLibrary
This site, installation and instance of PeerLibrary software. Not the PeerLibrary software itself, its source code, nor PeerLibrary open source project, PeerLibrary team or PeerLibrary source code contributors developing the PeerLibrary software.
Data
Data in the broad (broadest?) sense of this word. Not just facts but data as something general processed and stored by computers. In PeerLibrary context this means any data processed and stored by PeerLibrary, from publications, their metadata, to annotations, comments, etc.
PeerLibrary Content
PeerLibrary content represents public contributions contributed, federated, stored, aggregated, processed, and otherwise collected by PeerLibrary site itself and its users, PeerLibrary community. It represents commons and is freely available to use, reuse, and share under the CC0 (public domain) license (version 1.0 or newer), unless otherwise noted.
PeerLibrary Community
Users of this site, installation and instance of PeerLibrary software. Not the contributors to the PeerLibrary source code and PeerLibrary open source project. That is a community as well and it overlaps with users and community of this site, but we are not addressing it here.
Contributions to PeerLibrary
Contributions to PeerLibrary is public data contributed to PeerLibrary content by PeerLibrary community and can be roughly categorized into:
- publications (full-text content of publications)
- publications metadata
- annotations, comments and other data related to publications
- other data
Importing a Publication
Importing is a process of adding a publication to your personal virtual/cloud library providing a PDF file of a publication. It can be used to import publications published elsewhere, as a step of publishing a publication through PeerLibrary, or to import a private publication.
Public Data You Contribute
An important part of PeerLibrary is collaboration on commons, PeerLibrary content. We do not want your contributions to human knowledge to be locked away ever again by anybody, including us. To assure this, by using PeerLibrary, participating, and contributing to PeerLibrary content, you irrevocably license worldwide all your public contributions under the CC0 (public domain) license (version 1.0 or newer), including releasing any patents therein. In other words, all public data you contribute is seen as a common good and dedicated to the public domain. Your public contributions will be publicly available, including their history, for everyone to use. On the other hand, this means you can use everything contributed by others as well. Although under the CC0 license there is no legal requirement of attribution, do not forget that using works of others without properly citing sources can be seen as plagiarism.
Make sure that you have all necessary rights to any data you publicly contribute to be able to license it under the CC0 license. This often means that you authored/created it and retained the copyright. Alternatively, you should assure that data you publicly contribute is already licensed under the CC0 license, is in public domain, or is not copyrightable to begin with. Please do not submit public contributions with unclear copyright status or data you do not own or have necessary rights to. It is better that we lack some data than that we have data of dubious copyright status. PeerLibrary provides easy ways of linking to data stored online, so alternatively you could just link to the data.
We are proactively federating all public data with our partners and pushing public data to them and many others. We want public data to be seen, used, reused, and shared, and we are making an active effort to do so. Having data copied many times around the Internet is the best way to preserve data for future generations, too. But once data is copied around the Internet it is practically impossible to revert that. This is another reason why the default for all data on PeerLibrary is private access and you have to explicitly make it public, publish it.
Publications You Import
You can import any publication you want to use and work with in PeerLibrary. If you are the first user importing a given publication make sure you set access settings properly. This assures that PeerLibrary accordingly allows or restricts access to those publications. Importing a publication does not necessary mean that you are contributing it to PeerLibrary content and commons nor that you are licensing it under the CC0 license. PeerLibrary is designed to support various use cases, like:
importing a publication published elsewhere, which is published open access and can be freely shared and distributed – set it to "open access" and anyone will be able to find it in PeerLibrary and access publication in full
importing a publication published elsewhere, which is published closed access and cannot be freely shared and distributed – set it to "closed access" and anyone will be able to find it in PeerLibrary, access its metadata, annotations, comments and other PeerLibrary content, but to access full-text content of the publication they will have to import the publication as well, showing that they have independent access to the publication
publishing a publication through PeerLibrary – import it and set it to "open access"; by publishing a publication through PeerLibrary you are making it part of PeerLibrary content and commons and are licensing it under the CC0 license so make sure you have necessary rights to do so
importing a private publication, eg. a draft of a paper you are working on, or some other private document – set it to "private" and only you and those you decide to give access to will be able to find it, access it and any related content; do not forget that if you later on decide to publish it and make it public, public annotations will become visible to anyone
Please do not make PeerLibrary provide unrestricted access to full-text content of closed access publications without authorization by their copyright holder.
Private Data You Store
We do not claim any rights over private data you store in PeerLibrary, nor require you to license it under the CC0 license. We are just helping you store this data online, providing you with an easy and familiar way to access it from anywhere and read and work with publications. This is like working on your personal computer, just online and in the browser, and possibly collaboratively with those you decide to give access to.
We Are Dealing With Your Data
Please read our privacy policy for more information.
No Warranty
Add your favorite no-warranty-to-largest-possible-extent-permitted-by-law statement here. We try our best, but sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes our software and/or our hardware fail, or sometimes there are some other issues which will cause you inconveniences. Please bare with us and report any issues you encounter.
Be Cooperative
Let us all be cooperative, collaborative, and considerate.
Do No Harm
Do no harm to the site, other users, or yourself.
Code of Conduct
Please adhere to the code of conduct when using PeerLibrary and interacting with others.
Do Not Use For Sensitive Data
We are building a site which operates based on collaboration, mutual trust, and proactive data sharing. As such, some design decisions are made preferring openness and lack of control instead of tight security practices. Please do not use the site for anything sensitive. We might not be able to protect it.
Accepting Terms of Use
You are accepting these terms of use by using the site. By continuing using the site you accept the changes to these terms as they occur.
Terms of Use History
History of our terms of use is available in our source code repository.