Terms of Service

1. About these terms#

These terms are an agreement between you and Papex Labs Ltd ("Papex", "we", "us"), a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17438789, with its registered office at 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. They govern your use of papex.org and its related APIs and tools. By creating an account or using Papex, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use Papex.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data. It is part of these terms.

2. What Papex is#

Papex keeps a record of how research is produced. You can create Hypothesis, Discovery, Publication and Author statement records, attach files and sources, sign exact versions, and publish them with a citable Papex identifier. An Author statement concerns a work published elsewhere; by signing one you confirm that you are an author of that work as its source lists you and that what you state about it is true to your knowledge. Papex does not verify authorship.

A Papex record shows who signed which content, when, and with which stated tools, sources and files. It is not:

• peer review, or evidence that a result is scientifically correct;
• proof of ownership, priority or authorship beyond what the signer states;
• proof of a person's real-world identity, or an endorsement by any institution.

Papex does not verify statements made in records. Information marked as stated, declared or self-reported has not been checked by us.

3. Accounts#

• You must be at least 18 years old and able to agree to these terms.
• A personal account represents one person. Do not share it or act for someone else without their permission.
• An organisation, such as a company or a research group, may hold an account in its own name, operated by people it authorises. Open one only if you are authorised to act for the organisation. The organisation is responsible for the account and for what is signed with it. Its records show the organisation's name, and every version is still reviewed and signed by an authorised person.
• You can publish your first three records without a phone number. To publish more, and to challenge, link or contribute to records, you need a phone number, which we verify by text message.
• Keep your sign-in method, signing key and any permissions you give to AI assistants secure. You are responsible for what is done with them.
• Keep your profile and affiliations accurate.

4. Organisations#

Separately from an account held in an organisation's name, you can open a page on Papex for an organisation, such as a company, lab or university, and invite people to it.

• Opening one. You need a verified phone number, and you can open up to two. Open one only if you are authorised to act for the organisation. By opening it, you confirm that you are.
• Private until verified. A new organisation is visible only to its members, the people who have accepted an invitation to it, and Papex. It becomes public only when Papex has reviewed it and marked it Verified. If an administrator changes a verified organisation's homepage to a different domain, it becomes private again until Papex reviews it.
• What Verified means. Papex checked official sources for the organisation and for the person who opened it. It does not show that anyone may act for the organisation in law, that its members work there, or that anything in its records is correct.
• Members. Each member accepts the organisation's policy before joining and chooses whether the membership is shown publicly. Joining does not give the organisation access to your drafts or private records, and does not make your earlier records its own.
• Records. An organisation does not sign, approve or verify records. A member can ask to link one of their public, signed records to the organisation, and an administrator accepts or declines. The link shows the date it was made and never changes a signed version. The member who asked for it can remove it.
• Administrators manage invitations, roles and linked records, and are responsible for what the organisation's page says.
• Names and disputes. Do not open an organisation to hold a name you have no right to, to impersonate an organisation, or to mislead people about who runs it. If you think a page misrepresents your organisation, write to legal@papex.org. We may make the page private or suspend it while we look into it, and decide on the evidence each side gives.

5. Your records#

Drafts are private. Drafts, private notes and checkpoints are visible only to you and to the people you share them with.

Signing is your decision. When you sign a version, you confirm that:

• you have reviewed the exact content you are signing;
• you have the right to publish it, including any files, data and figures;
• the authors, contributors, affiliations and sources you list are accurate, and co-authors agree to be named;
• publishing it does not break any law, confidentiality duty or ethics approval.

Signed versions do not change. A signed version and its signature are fixed. Changes create a new version, and earlier versions stay part of the record.

Publishing makes a record public. A published record, its author names, the signer's Papex ID and signature, and its receipts can be read, cited and verified by anyone.

Withdrawing. Where Papex offers it, you can withdraw a published record. Its content and hosted files leave public view, but a notice that it existed, its identifier and its receipts remain. Signatures and timestamps already made cannot be undone.

Shared work. You can take part in shared work on a problem by running units of a list on your own computer and sending the results. Taking part brings no payment, no ownership of the result and no authorship: you are listed as a contributor, in the way you choose, for the units that are accepted. Send only results that your own run produced. The list's leader may withdraw accepted units, and the ledger shows when and why.

6. Rights in your content#

You keep the rights you have in your content.

To run Papex, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display, format, index and distribute your content, and to produce receipts, PDFs and other renderings of it. For private content, this licence covers only what is needed to provide the service to you and to the people you share with. For published content, it lasts as long as the record is kept, including after withdrawal for the parts that remain.

Readers can use a published record under the terms you chose for it, such as public reading or the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). Files may carry their own licence.

7. AI assistants#

You may use AI assistants to prepare drafts, suggest changes and read records. An assistant acts only within the permissions you give it, with a limited scope and expiry, and you can revoke them.

If you connect an AI app through Papex's hosted connector, Papex holds that connection's key and uses it only within the permissions you give. You can end the connection at any time in Connected AI.

An AI agent may also start research on Papex before anyone owns it, without an account, within the limits Papex sets (a few private drafts and notes, no files, for up to 30 days). Its work stays private, is agent-reported, and is deleted after 30 days unless a person claims it. If you claim an agent, you confirm that you are the person it worked for or that you take responsibility for its work. Its private drafts move to your account, and from then on it acts only within the permissions you give it. Nothing it prepared becomes public unless you review and sign it. Papex may limit or stop agent registration at any time.

An AI assistant cannot sign, publish or make rights statements for you. You are responsible for everything you sign, however it was prepared. AI systems are never listed as authors, and the model and tool names shown are as reported.

8. Signatures and timestamps#

Papex uses cryptographic signatures and hashes so that anyone can check a record independently, and may timestamp a record's hash in a public blockchain. Only the hash leaves Papex. These proofs rely on open standards and networks we do not control.

9. Acceptable use#

Do not use Papex to:

• publish fabricated, falsified or plagiarised research, or misstate authorship or contributions;
• publish something as a research record that is not one, such as a hoax, a prank or an advert;
• impersonate a person or institution, or claim an affiliation you do not have;
• publish content you have no right to publish, or other people's personal data without a lawful basis;
• upload malware, or attack, overload, probe or bypass the security of Papex;
• harass others, send spam, or post unlawful content;
• collect data from Papex at a volume or in a way that harms the service or its users;
• mass-produce records with automated tools in a way that misleads readers.

10. Reports and moderation#

Anyone can report content: signed-in users through the Report action, and anyone else by writing to legal@papex.org.

Where content breaks these terms or the law, we may hide it from public view, limit features or suspend accounts. Hiding content does not change what was signed, and the record may show a notice that it was restricted. Where we can, we tell the owner what we did and why. You can contest a decision by writing to legal@papex.org. We do not hide research for being wrong.

11. Papex software and brand#

Papex's software, design and name belong to us or our licensors. These terms do not give you rights to them, except to use the service as intended.

12. Other services#

Some features rely on third-party services, whose own terms may also apply.

13. Fees#

Papex is currently free. We will tell you before any paid feature applies to you.

14. Disclaimers#

Papex is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we make no warranty that Papex will be uninterrupted, error-free or fit for a particular purpose, or that content published by users is accurate.

15. Limitation of liability#

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of data, profits or reputation. Our total liability for any claim relating to Papex is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim or £100. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law.

16. Suspension and closing your account#

We may suspend or close accounts that break these terms or the law, or to protect users or the service.

You can delete your account at any time in your account settings. We then erase your account and private content. Published records stay public as signed, because others cite and rely on them; where Papex offers withdrawal, you can withdraw them first. The Privacy Policy explains what is erased and what is kept.

17. Changes#

We may update these terms. For material changes, we will give notice by email or in the app before they take effect. If you keep using Papex after that, the updated terms apply.

18. Law#

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you use Papex as a consumer and live elsewhere, you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of your country and may also bring proceedings in your local courts.

19. Contact#

• Terms and reports: legal@papex.org
• Privacy: privacy@papex.org
• Security: security@papex.org
• Everything else: hello@papex.org
• Post: Papex Labs Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom