Last updated: 6 May 2022
Prior versions
· 22 July 2021
PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF USE CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS SITE
1 Who we are and how to contact Us
1.1 The site is operated by Fidelior Netherlands BV trading as Fidelior™, (“We”).
1.2 To contact us, please email us at: [email protected] or reach us here: https://fidelior.com/contact-us/.
2 By using our site, you accept these terms
2.1 By using our site, you confirm that you accept these terms of use, (“Terms of Use“) and that you agree to comply with them.
2.2 If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our site.
2.3 We recommend that you print a copy of these terms for future reference.
3 Other terms may apply to you
3.1 These terms of use refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our site:
· Our Privacy Policy (https://fidelior.com/privacy-policy/). See further under How we may use your personal information.
· Our Acceptable Use Policy (https://fidelior.com/terms-of-use/), sets out the permitted uses and prohibited uses of our site. When using our site, you must comply with this Acceptable Use Policy.
· Our Cookie Policy (https://fidelior.com/cookie-policy/) sets out information about the cookies on our site.
· If you purchase any services from our site, our Terms and Conditions (https://fidelior.com/terms-and-conditions/) will apply to the sales.
4 We may make changes to these terms
4.1 We amend these terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use our site, please check these terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time. These terms were most recently updated on the date indicated above.
5 We may make changes to our site
5.1 We may update and change our site from time to time to reflect changes to our products, our user’s needs and our business priorities.
6 We may suspend or withdraw our site
6.1 Access to the site is free of charge.
6.2 We do not guarantee that our site, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our site for business and operational reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal.
6.3 You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our site through your internet connection are aware of these Terms of Use and other applicable terms and conditions and that they comply with them.
7 We may transfer this agreement to someone else
7.1 We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under the contract
8 You must keep your account details safe
8.1 If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party.
8.2 We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these Terms of Use.
8.3 If you know or suspect that anyone other than you knows your user identification code or password, you must promptly notify us as set out at the end of these Terms of Use.
9 How you may use material on our site
9.1 We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights on our site, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.
9.2 You may print off one copy and may download extracts, of any page(s) from our site for your personal use. You may draw the attention of others within your organisation or professional community to content posted on our site.
9.3 You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.
9.4 Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of content on our site must always be acknowledged.
9.5 You must not use any part of the content on our site for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors.
9.6 If you print off, copy or download any part of our site in breach of these Terms of Use, your right to use our site will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made
10 Do not rely on the information on this site
10.1 The content on our site is provided “as is” for general information only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action based on the content on our site.
10.2 Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on our site, we make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content on our site is accurate, complete or up to date.
11 We are not responsible for websites we link to
11.1 Where our site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them, except in those instances where we explicitly indicate that we establish a site or resource.
11.2 We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, except in those instances where we explicitly indicate that we have control.
12 User-generated content is not approved by us
12.1 This website may include information and materials uploaded by other users of the site, including bulletin boards and chat rooms. This information and these materials have not been verified or approved by us. The views expressed by other users on our site do not represent our views or values.
13 How to complain about content uploaded by other users
13.1 If you wish to lodge a complaint about content uploaded by other users, please contact us as set out at the start of these Terms of Use.
14 Our responsibility for loss or damage suffered by you
14.1 Whether you are a consumer or a business user:
· We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes but is not limited to our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
· Different limitations and exclusions of liability will apply to liability arising as a result of the supply of any chargeable services to you, which will be set out in our Terms and Conditions (https://fidelior.com/terms-and-conditions/) when you purchase such services.
14.2 If you are a business user:
· We exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our site or any content on it.
· We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:
- use of, or inability to use our site; or
- use of or reliance on any content displayed on our site.
· In particular, we will not be liable for:
- loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;
- business interruption;
- loss of anticipated savings;
- loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or
- any indirect or consequential loss or damage.
14.3 If you are a consumer user:
· Please note that we only provide our site for domestic and private use. You agree not to use our site for any commercial or business purposes, and we have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
· If defective digital content that we have supplied, damages a device or digital content belonging to you and this is caused by our failure to use reasonable care and skill, we will either repair the damage or pay you compensation. However, we will not be liable for damage that you could have avoided by following our advice to apply an update offered to you free of charge or for damage that was caused by you failing to correctly follow installation instructions or to have in place the minimum system requirements advised by us.
15 Disclaimer
15.1 (For a detailed description of Fidelior™’s services, please read Our Terms and Conditions. See https://fidelior.com/terms-and-conditions/).
15.2 You acknowledge and agree that your use of the Fidelior™ database and Fidelior™ reporting tool (the propriety services) made available to you via our site is subject to the following disclaimers:
· Through its propriety Metadatabase, the Fidelior™ reporting services facilitate access to selected journal sources (e.g., accredited journal lists, vetted journal lists, citation indices, or journal black lists). Journal source owners, not Us maintain these sources and are responsible for adding or removing titles.
· We do not use the concepts ‘white list’ and ‘black list’ in our services, but we acknowledge that these concepts are being used in literature. The term ‘black list’ is generally used to refer to a list of journals, publishers, companies or entities that are regarded as unacceptable or untrustworthy and to be avoided or distrusted. The purpose of a low-quality journal or predatory blacklist is to identify journal scam operations, in order to alert potential authors about deceptive and fraudulent practices and unscrupulous and unethical publishing operations. Instead, we use the concept of ‘orange list’ to refer to any source of journal titles that are identified as possibly questionable, dubious or pseudo-scientific. Orange lists also include uncategorised or re-categorised titles, and discontinued or removed titles, as indicated by the compilers of the various journal sources. A title that appears on an orange list is, therefore, not necessarily ‘predatory’ or ‘blacklisted’ and is duly flagged for further consideration. We use the concept of ‘green list’ to refer to any list of journal titles that are regarded as reputable, as compiled by the organisations, countries or discipline-specific bodies who compiled or maintain the source. Some journal titles may appear on multiple orange and/or green lists. Green lists and orange lists complement each other contributing to a broader understanding of journal quality.
· We are not responsible for vetting and inclusion criteria of journal titles listed in the various journal sources. Some lists provide limited information about inclusion criteria. Reports we create will only include what is available from journal sources and lists.
· It is your responsibility to check and assess the quality, journal metrics and journal ratings of any journal flagged (including titles on both green and orange lists), and to carefully clarify the reasons for the inclusion of a citation in a particular manuscript. In some instances, a Fidelior™ report may reveal false positive hits. This may be due to a variety of reasons out of Our control, such as reference formatting issues, document formatting issues, spelling mistakes in journal titles, journal source data inaccuracies, etc. A Fidelior™ report is merely a tool to assist the user. No software tool or journal list can replace peer review, due diligence and individual assessment of a journal or paper.
· Fidelior™ acknowledges the principle of academic freedom. Researchers have the right to select any article, irrespective of quality, for inclusion in research and research dissemination. Fidelior™ remains neutral with regard to journal quality as represented by journal sources.
· It is your responsibility to check the details about inclusion criteria which can be found on the websites of each journal source or list. Each journal list, matched to our Metadatabase, is compiled for different reasons. A journal delisted from a particular list or source is not necessarily of questionable quality, e.g., it may no longer be open access and consequently removed from DOAJ (i.e., the Directory of Open Access Journals). Therefore, some lists categorised as orange in the Fidelior™ tool are not necessarily predatory blacklists.
· You acknowledge that Orange lists are potentially biased, out of date or incomplete. Journal titles and information about contact details, places of origin, and editorial processes may change. Some journal websites may change or be outdated. It may be that questionable journals share the same title or name as reputable journals. Fidelior™ believes that there is value in including so-called ‘outdated’ journal sources (e.g., Beall’s blacklisted titles) for citation checking purposes.
· The journal landscape is not static but fluctuating. A journal’s quality may deteriorate or improve and it can move from a green list to an orange list or from an orange list to a green list.
· We have no responsibility for correcting mistakes in journal sources as journal sources matched to our Metadatabase are not compiled by Us, and might contain inconsistencies or inaccuracies which are not catered for in the Fidelior™ reporting tool. Fidelior™’s Metadatabase is being continually developed and enhanced to provide quality journal metadata.
· We endeavour to match the Fidelior™ database to the latest updates of journal lists and sources as they become available. We provide a release date for included lists and an inclusion date of when a title was added to a list, should the information be available.
· In a few cases, there may be more than one journal with the same title but with different ISSNs. This may mean that either they are different reputable journals with the name titles but different valid ISSNs or it may be that a journal is ‘high-jacked’ (i.e., copied and the title used for fraudulent purposes).
· Some journal sources record journal status changes over time. In such cases, titles are not removed but rather updated/changed. Other sources may remove titles as the status changes. Reasons for inclusion, exclusion or status change should be carefully studied.
· Due to the obscure nature of the pseudo-science and low-quality journal landscape, journal lists are in a constant process of being updated and reassessed. At present, there is no universal agreement, criteria, or a common standard on what constitutes a predatory or questionable journal. We acknowledge that there is a critique against the idea of journal blacklists.
· We currently do not include conference papers, book chapters or other types of publications in our searches.
· As far as possible manuscript scanning will cater for phoneme possibilities (e.g., Organisation vs. Organization) and journal abbreviations.
· When submitting documents that were digitised (e.g., printed theses that were subsequently scanned and digitised), the accuracy of the report may be influenced by the post-digitisation quality of the optical character recognition (OCR) processes.
· We strive to eliminate possibly fraudulent manipulation and editing of its reports (e.g., using watermarks, timestamps, and summaries). However, fraudulent manipulation cannot entirely be eradicated.
· Our Metadatabase was developed and matched to a limited number of journal sources, on the dates as indicated on Fidelior’s tools.
· We do not retain or store uploaded documents or Fidelior™ reports created for you. We do not retain or store the link between the content of a Fidelior™ report and the identity of a person, submitter or associated institution
16 How we may use your personal information
16.1 We will only use your personal information as set out in our Privacy Policy (https://fidelior.com/privacy-policy/).
17 Uploading content to our site
17.1 Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload content to our site, or to make contact with other users of our site, you must comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy (https://fidelior.com/terms-of-use/).
17.2 You warrant that any such contribution does comply with those standards, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.
17.3 Any content you upload to our site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your content, but you are required to grant us and other users of our site a limited licence to use, store and copy that content and to distribute and make it available to third parties.
17.4 We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any content posted or uploaded by you to our site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights or their right to privacy.
17.5 We have the right to remove any posting you make on our site if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy (https://fidelior.com/terms-of-use/).
17.6 You are solely responsible for securing and backing up your content.
17.7 We do not store terrorist content.
18 Rights you are giving us to use material you upload
18.1 When you upload or post content to our site, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, perpetual, revocable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform that user-generated content in connection with the service provided by the website and across different media including to promote the site or the service.
19 We are not responsible for viruses and you must not introduce them
19.1 We do not guarantee that our site will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.
19.2 You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our site. You should use your virus protection software.
19.3 You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/contents). We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately
20 Rules about linking to our site
20.1 You may link to our home page, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.
20.2 You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.
20.3 You must not establish a link to our site on any website that is not owned by you.
20.4 Our site must not be framed on any other site, nor may you create a link to any part of our site other than the home page.
20.5 We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.
20.6 The website to which you are linking must comply in all respects with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.
20.7 If you wish to link to or make any use of the content on our site other than that set out above, please contact Us as set out at the start of these Terms of Use.
21 Which country’s laws apply to any disputes?
21.1 Terms of Use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by Irish law. You and We both agree that the courts of Ireland will have exclusive jurisdiction.
22 Our trademarks are registered
22.1 “Fidelior™” is a worldwide registered trademark of Fidelior Netherlands BV. You are not permitted to use our Trademark without our approval unless it is part of material you are permitted to use under these Terms of Use or our Authorised Use Policy (https://fidelior.com/terms-of-use/).