RQC terms of service

1. Definitions

1.1 RQC itself

• The terms Review Quality Collector and RQC are equivalent
• RQC variously stands for the service offered at https://reviewqualitycollector.org or the operator of that service.

1.2 Users and Roles

• A User is any person or entity using the RQC service. Any action of a User is performed in some role.
• Individuals' roles: The meaning of the terms Author, Editor, Grader, Organizer, Publisherperson, Receiptreceiver, Reviewer, RQGuardian, and Visitor is as defined in the glossary.
• Entities' roles: The meaning of the terms Conference, Publisher, Journal, Research Institution is as defined in the glossary.

1.3 Other

The meaning of the terms Receipt, RQdef, Subjournal, Subjournal year is as defined in the glossary.

2. Purpose of RQC

• The purpose of RQC is improving scientific peer review.
• More specifically, it is primarily a platform for the creation and use of reviewing receipts. A reviewing receipt ("Receipt") is a document that certifies the quantity and quality of work of a reviewer in scientific peer review.
• Quantity is quantified by the number of reviews. Quality is quantified via venue-specific review grading.
• As a secondary purpose, RQC provides data for better understanding of scientific peer review.
• As another secondary purpose, RQC publishes summary statistics on properties of the peer review system and its parts.

Non-Purposes of RQC: - RQC is not concerned with other types of review than scientific peer review. - RQC does not perform judgment, it merely organizes and stores judgment performed by Graders and processes such judgments in well-defined manners.

3. Acceptable Use

3.1 General

• The public parts of the website are for the general public.
  The non-public parts (protected by passwords or authentication tokens) are only for people involved in a scientific peer review process and shall be treated as confidential.

3.2 What you must do when using RQC

• Everybody:
  • Obey the confidentiality of the data processed in RQC.
  • Protect your RQC authentication data (such as username/password, API tokens, or access tokens embedded in links or transmitted otherwise).
  • Use RQC's computing resources parsimoniously.
• As a Grader,
  • make sure all review grading you provide on RQC is well-considered and fair.
• As a Journal,
  • make sure at least two RQGuardians are active members of your editorial organization at all times;
  • obtain agreement from your authors (per submission) and editors (for their entire tenure) that their identities may be transfered to RQC and used in the process of generating reviewing receipts in the manner documented on this website.
• As an Organizer,
  • obtain agreement from your authors and reviewers that their identities may be transfered to RQC and used in the process of generating reviewing receipts in the manner documented on this website;
  • inform reviewers that they can opt out once the RQC process begins.
• As a Publisher,
  • make sure at least two Publisherpersons are active members of your organization at all times;
  • make sure your Journals fulfil the obligations described for them.
• As an RQGuardian,
  • make sure the RQdefs used reflect what is important for a good review at your Journal.

3.3 What you must not do when using RQC

• Use the RQC logo, web site, or service for other than RQC's intended purposes.
• Behave in a manner that a majority of your peers would find clearly inappropriate.
• Retrieve data from RQC en-masse or by automated means.
• Create multiple RQC accounts.

4. Pricing and Payment

• RQC is (and will remain) free to use for all users except Publishers; see Pricing for details. When pricing levels change, they become valid only for the receipts issued for the following year, not the same year.
• Invoicing happens on a yearly basis as follows:
  • Invoicing is based on the number of receipts issued for the Journals of the Publisher.
  • Receipts pertain to a calendar year Y.
    They are issued in March of year Y+1.
    Invoices are sent in April of year Y+1.
    Invoices are payable within 30 calendar days.
• If an invoice has not been paid by the end of June of year Y+1, RQC will display that fact to Users in order to protect the interests of the involved Reviewers (including potential Reviewers) and Graders (including potential Graders).
• If the availability of RQC in a given year was below some minimum, RQC will reduce the amount invoiced as described under Quality of Service.

5. Quality of Service

• RQC cannot guarantee for the completeness or correctness of the reviewing data supplied by Journals nor for the appropriateness of gradings supplied by Graders.
• Except for those limitations, RQC guarantees for the correctness of the receipts.
• RQC strives for service availability of 99.9% per calendar year. It is, however, a best-effort service and may not always reach that goal.
• Availability means that the RQC server provides the service upon request in at least some part of a given 5-minute interval.
• If the availability in a given calendar year was below 98%, RQC will reduce the amounts invoiced by three times the degree of unavailability, but no further than to zero. (For instance, if the availability was 90%, the degree of unavailability was 10% and invoices will be reduced by 30%.)
• RQC intends to hold the Receipts forever. Since this is impossible, it only guarantees for the availability of the Receipts until the end of the year in which they have been issued.

6. Intellectual Property

6.1 Logo

• The logo is protected by copyright.
• You may use the RQC logo only in conjunction with correct statements about RQC, in particular when you state that you use RQC. Also expressing opinions about RQC in the same context is acceptable if and only if they are clearly marked as such.
• Other uses of the logo require prior written permission from RQC.
• The logo: 100px PNG, 200px PNG, 400px PNG, 800px PNG, 1600px PNG, SVG

6.2 Other

• Reviewers hold the copyright in the text of their reviews.
• RQdefs are in the public domain (CC0).
• Gradings (including textual comments provided in the context of such gradings) are in the public domain (CC0).
• Text in the static content on this website can be used according to a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license.

7. Suspension and Termination

RQC reserves the right to suspend or terminate service for any User who violates Acceptable Use. Termination requires 4 weeks advance notice; suspension requires no advance notice.

RQC reserves the right to suspend service and for any Publisher (and their Journals) that have not paid their invoice by the end of the year.

8. Liability

• RQC is liable for a lack of availability of the RQC service and for any consequences of that lack of availability in the manner described in Quality of Service, but not beyond.
• RQC is liable for loss of receipts in the year in which they have been issued. Upon request, it will compensate Publishers the full amount of what they have paid for the lost receipts and the corresponding Reviewers the same amount.
• Other than that, RQC is liable only for damages it has created intentionally or that result from gross negligence, but not for damages due to simple negligence.
• Users are liable for damages that result from their violations of Acceptable Use.
• The owner of an RQC account is liable for actions performed via that account.
• Publishers are liable for damages that result from misbehaviors of the manuscript handling systems of their Journals.

9. Governing Law

These terms shall be governed by and construed in the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany. Place of jurisdiction is Berlin.

10. Severability Clause

The invalidity of any provision of these terms shall not affect the enforceability of any other provision. The invalid provision shall be replaced by one that keeps as close to the spirit of these terms as possible.