Terms of Service

Last updated: 09/14/2026

1. Acceptance of these Terms

By creating an account, accessing, or using Find Your Co-author (the "Service"), you agree to these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Service.

2. What the Service is

Find Your Co-author is a technology platform designed to help users discover potential academic collaborators and opportunities. The Service may support paper and research collaborations, competition teams, tool or method collaborations, hackathon projects, peer review, skill exchange, and discovery of competitions, grants, fellowships, calls for papers, conferences, and other academic or research opportunities.

Features may include user profiles, project listings, collaboration matching, messaging, opportunity discovery, structured collaboration records, automated recommendations, and related services.

The Service is a technology platform. We are not a university, academic department, research institution, publisher, employer, research supervisor, funding agency, legal advisor, or party to any collaboration formed between users.

3. Users are responsible for evaluating collaborators

Find Your Co-author facilitates discovery and communication between users. We do not guarantee that any user is who they claim to be, that a user has the qualifications they claim to have, that a project is legitimate, that a project has received institutional or principal investigator ("PI") approval, or that a potential collaborator is suitable for your project.

You are solely responsible for deciding whether to communicate, collaborate, share information, enter into an agreement, or otherwise engage with another user.

You should independently verify identity, credentials, institutional affiliation, project ownership, institutional or PI approval, funding, authorship expectations, intellectual-property rights, confidentiality requirements, and any other information that matters to your collaboration.

4. Academic identity and verification

Some users may receive verification indicators based on information or evidence reviewed by the Service.

Verification is an informational signal only. It is not a guarantee, certification, endorsement, recommendation, or representation that a user is trustworthy, qualified, authorized to act on behalf of an institution, or suitable as a collaborator.

Information concerning project ownership, PI approval, institutional approval, or academic affiliation may be self-reported unless the Service expressly identifies the information as having been independently verified.

5. Accounts and accuracy

You are responsible for maintaining accurate information about yourself and for keeping your account credentials secure.

You may not impersonate another person, misrepresent your academic credentials or institutional affiliation, falsely claim to be a PI, professor, researcher, or other authority, or misrepresent your authority to share, manage, or recruit collaborators for a project.

In particular, you are responsible for accurately representing the project ownership or approval status of any listing you create, including whether the project is student-owned, PI-approved, not PI-approved, professor-owned, or otherwise subject to institutional or supervisory restrictions.

Misrepresenting project ownership, PI approval, institutional authority, or academic identity is a violation of these Terms and may result in removal of content, suspension, or termination of your account.

6. Your content

You retain ownership of the content you submit to the Service, subject to the rights you grant below and any rights belonging to third parties.

By submitting content, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide license to host, store, reproduce, display, transmit, and process that content as reasonably necessary to provide, secure, and operate the Service and its features, including displaying profiles, project listings, opportunity-related content, and generating matching or recommendation results.

Some content may be publicly viewable depending on the features and visibility settings of the Service. You should not submit information that you do not want other users or the public to see where the applicable feature is publicly visible.

This license does not transfer ownership of your research ideas, manuscripts, inventions, projects, data, or other intellectual property to us.

You represent that you have the rights and permissions necessary to submit the content and to grant the rights described above.

You may delete content or request deletion of your account subject to our Privacy Policy and any information that we are required or reasonably permitted to retain for legal, security, fraud-prevention, or operational purposes.

7. Confidential and restricted information

The Service is not a secure repository for confidential research information. You must not post information that you are prohibited from disclosing, including confidential research data, trade secrets, patient information, protected human-subject information, institution-controlled information, or proprietary information, unless you have the necessary authorization.

Before sharing unpublished research, project information, datasets, inventions, manuscripts, or other potentially sensitive information, you should consider whether a confidentiality agreement, institutional approval, intellectual-property review, publication policy, or other protection is appropriate.

8. Collaboration agreements — important disclaimer

The Service may provide structured tools for users to record expectations concerning authorship order, project ownership, contributions, exit conditions, or other collaboration matters.

These tools are provided for organizational and record-keeping purposes only. They are not legal advice and do not by themselves create, guarantee, validate, notarize, or enforce a legally binding contract.

Find Your Co-author is not a party to agreements or arrangements between users. Disputes concerning authorship, credit, project ownership, contributions, intellectual property, or other collaboration matters are between the parties involved.

Users are responsible for determining whether an agreement is legally appropriate and for obtaining legal, institutional, supervisory, or research-integrity advice when appropriate. For matters involving significant academic, financial, intellectual-property, or legal consequences, we recommend consulting your institution's appropriate office or qualified legal counsel.

9. Intellectual property and authorship

Find Your Co-author does not determine who should receive authorship, intellectual-property rights, ownership of research results, patent rights, inventorship, academic credit, or other benefits arising from a collaboration.

These matters may be governed by institutional policies, funding agreements, employment or student agreements, publisher policies, applicable law, and agreements among collaborators.

Users are responsible for discussing and documenting authorship, contributions, ownership, inventorship, intellectual-property rights, and related matters before beginning work when appropriate.

10. Artificial intelligence and recommendations

The Service may use automated systems or third-party artificial intelligence services for matching, recommendations, summarization, classification, moderation, verification support, or other functions.

AI-generated outputs and automated recommendations may be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, or inappropriate. They should not be treated as professional, institutional, legal, scientific, or academic advice.

Users remain responsible for independently evaluating information and recommendations provided through the Service before relying on them.

11. Opportunities and third-party information

The Service may display competitions, grants, fellowships, calls for papers, conferences, and other opportunities from third parties.

Opportunities may be collected from official sources, community submissions, automated systems, or other third-party sources. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, availability, eligibility requirements, deadlines, funding amounts, or outcomes of third-party opportunities.

Users should confirm important information, including deadlines and eligibility requirements, with the official source before applying or relying on it.

12. Prohibited conduct

• Impersonating another person or falsely representing academic credentials or institutional affiliation.
• Falsely claiming ownership of a project or authority to recruit, represent, or manage collaborators.
• Falsely representing PI approval, institutional approval, project authorization, or other supervisory permission.
• Posting confidential, restricted, unlawful, or unauthorized information.
• Harassment, threats, discrimination, stalking, or abusive conduct.
• Spam, scams, fraud, phishing, or other deceptive activity.
• Using the Service to collect sensitive information for unrelated purposes.
• Automated scraping, bulk downloading, or unauthorized data collection.
• Attempting to compromise, disrupt, reverse engineer, or gain unauthorized access to the Service or another user's account.
• Using the Service in violation of applicable law or institutional rules.

13. Reporting abuse

If you believe another user is impersonating someone, engaging in fraud, violating these Terms, or creating a safety or security risk, please contact us at contact@findyourcoauthor.com.

We may investigate reports and take actions that we reasonably determine are appropriate, including removing content, limiting visibility, suspending accounts, or terminating accounts.

14. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Service is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not guarantee that the Service will always be available, secure, accurate, complete, or error-free.

We do not guarantee that you will find a collaborator, that a collaboration will succeed, that another user will perform as promised, or that any academic, professional, financial, research, authorship, or other outcome will result from use of the Service.

We also do not guarantee the accuracy or reliability of information submitted by users, including profiles, credentials, project descriptions, ownership declarations, approval status, or other user-generated information.

15. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, [LEGAL ENTITY NAME] and its officers, directors, employees, contractors, and service providers will not be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, data, research opportunities, academic credit, or business opportunities arising from or related to use of the Service.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we are not responsible for disputes, misconduct, representations, omissions, lost work, intellectual-property disputes, authorship disputes, or other actions or failures of users with whom you interact through the Service.

Any liability limitation in these Terms is subject to applicable law and should be reviewed by legal counsel before launch.

16. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Find Your Coauthor and its officers, directors, employees, contractors, and service providers from claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and reasonable expenses arising from your violation of these Terms, your unlawful conduct, or content you submit to the Service.

17. Account suspension and termination

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate access to the Service if we reasonably believe that you have violated these Terms, created a security or safety risk, engaged in fraud or abuse, or otherwise misused the Service.

We may also remove or restrict access to content that we reasonably believe violates these Terms, creates legal or security risks, or threatens the safety or integrity of the Service.

You may stop using the Service at any time. Account deletion may be requested through contact@findyourcoauthor.com, subject to our Privacy Policy and applicable legal, security, fraud-prevention, or operational retention requirements.

18. Changes to the Service and these Terms

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features of the Service as we develop the product. We may also update these Terms from time to time.

When we make material changes, we may provide notice through the Service or other reasonable means. Updated Terms will be posted on this page with a revised "Last updated" date.

Your continued use of the Service after updated Terms become effective constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

19. Governing law and disputes

[JURISDICTION — TO BE COMPLETED AFTER LEGAL REVIEW]

20. General provisions

If any provision of these Terms is determined to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in effect to the extent permitted by law.

These Terms, together with any additional terms expressly incorporated into them and our Privacy Policy, constitute the agreement between you and Find Your Coauthor concerning your use of the Service, to the extent permitted by applicable law.

No waiver of any provision of these Terms will be effective unless made in writing or otherwise permitted by applicable law.

21. Contact

Questions about these Terms: contact@findyourcoauthor.com