The PLACE has been developed by a coalition made up of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Crossref, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), (further known as “The PLACE coalition”). They share values and goals to work more effectively together to better support the needs of our communities.

These terms govern use of the Internet forum at http://theplace.discourse.group. To use the forum, you must agree to these terms with The PLACE coalition, the coalition of organisations that run the forum.

The individual organisations that make up the coalition may offer other products and services, under different terms. These terms apply only to use of the forum.

In addition to these terms, read through and act in accordance with The PLACE Community Guidelines while using this forum.

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Important Terms

These terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, limits on the coalition’s liability to you in Limits on Liability, your agreement to cover the coalition for damages caused by your misuse of the forum in Responsibility for Your Use, and an agreement to arbitrate disputes in Disputes.

Your Permission to Use the Forum

Subject to these terms, the coalition gives you permission to use the forum. Everyone needs to agree to these terms to use the forum.

Conditions for Use of the Forum

Your permission to use the forum is subject to the following conditions:

  1. You must be at least thirteen years old.

  2. You may no longer use the forum if the coalition contacts you directly to say that you may not.

  3. You must use the forum in accordance with Acceptable Use and Content Standards.

Acceptable Use

  1. You may not break the law using the forum.

  2. You may not use or try to use another’s account on the forum without their specific permission.

  3. You may not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the forum.

  4. You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the forum, or use the forum to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases.

  5. You may not automate access to the forum, or monitor the forum, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser. You may crawl the forum to index it for a publicly available search engine, if you run one.

  6. You may not use the forum to send e-mail to distribution lists, newsgroups, or group mail aliases.

  7. You may not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by the coalition.

  8. You may not hyperlink to images or other non-hypertext content on the forum on other webpages.

  9. You may not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the forum.

  10. You may not show any part of the forum on other websites with an iframe.

  11. You may not disable, avoid, or circumvent any security or access restrictions of the forum.

  12. You may not strain infrastructure of the forum with an unreasonable volume of requests, or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on information systems underlying the forum.

  13. You may not impersonate others through the forum.

  14. You may not encourage or help anyone in violation of these terms.

Content Standards

  1. You may not submit content to the forum that is illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful to others. This includes content that is harassing, inappropriate, or abusive.

  2. You may not submit content to the forum that violates the law, infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, violates anyone’s privacy, or breaches agreements you have with others.

  3. You may not submit content to the forum containing malicious computer code, such as computer viruses or spyware.

  4. You may not submit content to the forum as a mere placeholder, to hold a particular address, user name, or other unique identifier.

  5. You may not use the forum to disclose information that you don’t have the right to disclose, like others’ confidential or personal information.

Enforcement

The coalition may investigate and prosecute violations of these terms to the fullest legal extent. The coalition may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these terms.

The coalition reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the forum in violation of these terms, contact us immediately.

Your Account

You must create and log into an account to use some features of the forum.

To create an account, you must provide some information about yourself. If you create an account, you agree to provide, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address, and to keep that address up-to-date. You may close your account at any time by e-mailing feedback@crossref.org. Details on how we store personal data and for how long we retain personal data after you have requested that your account be closed can be found in the Privacy Policy.

You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorized by you or not, until you either close your account or notify the coalition that your account has been compromised. You agree to notify the coalition immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised. You agree to select a secure password for your account, and keep it secret.

The coalition may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the forum according to its policy for handling copyright-related takedown requests, or if the coalition reasonably believes that you’ve broken any rule in these terms.

Your Content

Nothing in these terms gives the coalition any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with the forum, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to the forum. Nothing in these terms gives you any ownership rights in the coalition’s intellectual property, either.

Between you and the coalition, you remain solely responsible for content you submit to the forum. You agree not to wrongly imply that content you submit to the forum is sponsored or approved by the coalition. These terms do not obligate the coalition to store, maintain, or provide copies of content you submit, and to change it, according to these terms.

Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license the coalition to provide content that you submit to the forum to other users of the forum. That special license allows the coalition to copy, publish, and analyze content you submit to the forum.

When content you submit is removed from the forum, whether by you or by the coalition, the coalition’s special license ends when the last copy disappears from the coalition’s backups, caches, and other systems. Other licenses you apply to content you submit, such as Creative Commons licenses, may continue after your content is removed. Those licenses may give others, or the coalition itself, the right to share your content through the forum again.

Others who receive content you submit to the forum may violate the terms on which you license your content. You agree that the coalition will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.

Your Responsibility

You agree to indemnify the coalition from legal claims by others related to your breach of these terms, or breach of these terms by others using your account on the forum. Both you and the coalition agree to notify the other side of any legal claims for which you might have to indemnify the coalition as soon as possible. If the coalition fails to notify you of a legal claim promptly, you won’t have to indemnify the coalition for damages that you could have defended against or mitigated with prompt notice. You agree to allow the coalition to control investigation, defense, and settlement of legal claims for which you would have to indemnify the coalition, and to cooperate with those efforts. The coalition agrees not to agree to any settlement that admits fault for you or imposes obligations on you without your prior agreement.

Disclaimers

You accept all risk of using the forum and content on the forum. As far as the law allows, the coalition and its suppliers provide the forum as is, without any warranty whatsoever.

The forum may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. The coalition does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide. Use of services run by others may be governed by other terms between you and the one running service.

Limits on Liability

Neither the coalition nor its suppliers will be liable to you for breach-of-contract damages their personnel could not have reasonably foreseen when you agreed to these terms.

As far as the law allows, the total liability to you for claims of any kind that are related to the forum or content on the forum will be limited to $50.

Feedback

The coalition welcomes your feedback and suggestions for the forum. See the Contact section below for ways to get in touch with us.

You agree that the coalition will be free to act on feedback and suggestions you provide, and that the coalition won’t have to notify you that your feedback was used, get your permission to use it, or pay you. You agree not to submit feedback or suggestions that you believe might be confidential or proprietary, to you or others.

Termination

Either you or the coalition may end the agreement written out in these terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use the forum also ends.

The following provisions survive the end of our agreement: Your Content, Feedback, Your Responsibility, Disclaimers, Limits on Liability, and General Terms.

Disputes

Any disputes over content or the terms laid out on this page will be settled between both parties in a best effort to resolve the matter quickly and efficiently, without defamation or cost. Users of this forum are urged to always contact the coalition first so that matters may be resolved together.

General Terms

These terms embody all the terms of agreement between you and the coalition about use of the forum. These terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of the forum, written or not.

Contact

You may notify the coalition under these terms, and send questions to the coalition, at feedback@crossref.org.

The coalition will notify you under these terms using the e-mail address you provide for your account on the forum, or by posting a message to the homepage of the forum or your account page.

Changes

The coalition last updated these terms on 1st February, 2023, and may update these terms again. The coalition will post all updates to the forum. The coalition may also announce updates with special messages or alerts on the forum.
Continuing to use the forum once you get notice of an update to these terms, means you agree to the update.