Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) apply to the lifescienceeditors.com website (“Site”) and any products, information, or other services that are offered through the Site (cumulatively the “Service”). By using the Site and/or the Service, you accept and agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not accept these Terms, do not use the Site or the Service. We may change these Terms at our discretion, which will be posted to this site so you should review them on a regular basis.

About us

The Site and the Service are operated by Life Science Editors BV, (“Life Science Editors”, “us”, “we” or “our”), with headquarters in the Netherlands.

Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Life Science Editors, referred to as “we” or “us”, collects, stores, and uses personal data.

What personal data do we collect?

You may give us your personal data when you submit an application or when you contact us by email. These data may include your name, email address, and postal/work address.

How will we use your data?

We process your information to answer your enquiries and provide you with our services. These purposes are based on our legitimate business interests.

We will also use your data to help us evaluate the success of our services and to inform you of additional services from us that we think you may be interested in. This may involve requesting your feedback and sending you emails. You can opt out of this at any time by emailing editors@lifescienceeditors.com, or by informing us in response to our request.

If the way we use your data changes in the future, we will make this clear on our website, or by contacting your directly.

How do we store your data?

Your data will be stored electronically for as long as is necessary for the purposes that it was collected, i.e., to answer your request, and to monitor our performance. We respect your privacy, and work to ensure that your data is stored and protected by using established servers, secure procedures, and maintaining rigorous confidentiality within our organization. However, we cannot fully guarantee its security, particularly during transmission via Internet connection, which is not completely secure.

Sharing of personal data

We will not share your personal data with any third parties unless you give us permission to do so, for example on our website or through social media channels to highlight the work.

We may disclose and transfer your data in the event of a merger, acquisition, consolidation, or asset sale.

Legal requests

We may disclose your personal data to authorized governmental authorities if legally required to do so, or if we believe in good faith that not doing so would violate the law or expose us to liability.

For California residents

Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83, California residents using our Site can request information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for such parties’ direct marketing purposes. We do not do this, but if you wish to invoke one of these rights, please contact us at editors@lifescienceeditors.com.

For residents of the European Economic Area (EEA)

EU law requires a “lawful basis” for us to collect, use, and share personal data. It allows us to process your personal data on the basis of your consent, and our legitimate business interests, which are administration and operational management (i.e., responding to your enquiries and providing the requested services).

Life Science Editors is responsible for controlling and processing your personal data. We have editors based in the US and so your data may be transferred to the US in order to provide you with the services you have requested. We will ensure that your data is still treated in accordance with this privacy policy.

Under EU law, residents of the EEA using our Site have the right to request access to their stored personal data, to amend these data, to restrict our processing of these data, for example on the basis of a legitimate interest, to erase the data, and to receive a copy of the data in a commonly-used format. If you wish to invoke one of these rights, please contact us at editors@lifescienceeditors.com.

Cookie policy

Cookies are small text files commonly used when you visit a website, including this Site, and are stored on your device (computer, tablet or mobile). For more information, please consult the following link: http://www.aboutcookies.org.

You can easily adjust the settings of your browser to deactivate cookies. Please refer to the Help Function of your browser for detailed instructions.

Accessing our site

We reserve the right to withdraw or amend the Service we provide on our Site without notice. We will not be liable if for any reason parts of our Site, or our entire Site, is unavailable at any time or for any period.

Linking to our site

We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission. Where our site contains links to other sites, these links are provided for your information only. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.

Our intellectual property rights

Unless otherwise indicated, this Site, the Services and its contents are the property of Life Science Editors.

Limitation of liability

You understand and agree that neither Life Science Editors nor any third party subcontractors shall be liable for any damages relating to or resulting from your use of or inability to use this Site or the Services. We shall not be liable for any delay or failure to perform any obligation under these Terms if the delay or failure is caused by any circumstances beyond our reasonable control. Under no circumstances will the total liability of Life Science Editors or any of its third party subcontractors to you for any reason relating to your use of this Site or the Services exceed an amount equal to the fees paid by you to Life Science Editors in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

Your Order

Once we have accepted your order, you agree that we may process your order and begin the Service. When you place an order, you will receive a communication from us, by email or otherwise, informing you that an order has been accepted. We reserve the right to delay or refuse orders where a transaction contains incomplete details or details that cannot be verified, where the balance has not been fully paid, or where fraud is suspected.

Your intellectual property rights

Life Science Editors and its third party subcontractors make no claims on any work submitted by you for editing and proofreading. Any draft papers and documents (“Documents”) submitted will remain your intellectual property. You represent, warrant and agree that you own all intellectual property rights in the Documents or otherwise have obtained sufficient rights to grant the rights you grant by these Terms; that nothing in the Documents will cause injury to any person or entity; that the Documents do not contain any content that (i) is libellous, defamatory, obscene, threatening, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, infringing on intellectual property rights, abusive, illegal or otherwise objectionable, (ii) may constitute or encourage a criminal offence, violate the rights of any party or otherwise give rise to liability or violate any law, (iii) may contain software viruses, trojan horses or any other malware (iv) may adversely affect the public image, reputation or goodwill of Life Science Editors or (v) is plagiarised.

You will be responsible for making back-up and archival copies of your Documents. In no event will Life Science Editors be responsible to you or any other person for any loss, corruption or alteration of documents.

Figures and Illustrations

As defined under U.S. and international copyright laws, all of our illustrations are protected by copyright. This is so that we can protect the quality of the original image and re-use common components in other illustrations.

Data figures:

For pure data figures that we create or modify, we generally transfer all rights to the author free of charge. We request acknowledgement of the Illustrator and Life Science Editors.

Illustrations (e.g., covers, schematics, 3D animations):

We provide a non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-assignable license as detailed below:

Standard license (free): for use of the unmodified, final illustration for the intended purpose or similar purposes (e.g., for manuscripts/grants, presentations and social media) with mandatory attribution to the Illustrator and Life Science Editors.

An unlimited license (fee may apply) may be available upon request for unlimited use and modification of the electronic file with mandatory attribution stating that it is a modification of an original image provided by the Illustrator and Life Science Editors.

Confidentiality

Your Document may contain information and materials of a confidential and/or proprietary nature (“Confidential Information”). We shall use the Confidential Information only for the purposes for which it was disclosed. Only Life Science Editors and its third party subcontractors will have access to author information. We value your trust and will ensure that all reasonable measures are taken to treat your Document in a secure and confidential manner. All our editors sign confidentiality agreements that prevent them from making use of or disclosing any material that is handled by them during editing.

Payment

Payment for the Service is by credit card (3% processing fee), purchase order, or bank transfer. We shall invoice you on the effective date for the charges payable, and you shall pay each invoice within 30 days after the date of such invoice.

Acknowledgement and Authorship

We consider the ICMJE recommendation for authorship and generally do not accept authorship. We do request that authors acknowledge our services when possible in the interest of transparency and to adhere to copyright laws in the case of illustrations (see above).

Disclaimer

Your use of this Site and the Services is at your sole risk. The Site and the Services are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We expressly disclaim all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied.

You acknowledge that the eventual evaluation of Documents before publication will depend on third party publishers and other considerations beyond our control. We cannot be held legally responsible for papers not accepted for peer review or publication, for grants not funded, or unsatisfactory outcomes of any nature.

We cannot be held legally responsible for any expense incurred either in direct response to or as an indirect result of the editing, comments or report resulting from our Service, or any other communication with us. We do not recommend making significant decisions, such as the initiation of further experimental work, dramatic re-writing of a manuscript or the submission of Documents to a journal, solely on the basis of any communication from us. All communications arising from our Service should be viewed as opinion for consideration, not instructions that allude to specific actions. Significant decisions should be made following your careful consideration, with any necessary technical advice provided by technical specialists.

By using our Service you warrant that no part of your Documents contains content that is plagiarised. We cannot be held legally liable should any passage of text in your edited document later be identified as resulting from plagiarism.