Terms and Conditions

These terms govern use of openrer.org and the research services provided by Institute for Emerging Research in Austria (the “Institute”, “we”, “us”). They apply when you create an account, upload material, request an estimate, buy a service, or approve publication. Questions about these terms, a payment, withdrawal, or your data can be sent to pablotorija@gmail.com.

Launch information still being completed: the Institute’s full legal notice and registered geographic address must be added here before unrestricted public launch. These terms do not remove any right that mandatory law gives you.

The evaluation service creates a paper-specific AI-assisted assessment, including recommendations and an eligibility result under the applicable quality policy. It is designed to help you improve and share research. It is not conventional peer review, legal advice, medical advice, a promise of publication, or a guarantee that another journal will accept your work.

You see the scope and price estimate before processing begins. The current launch prices are displayed on Pricing. A later change does not alter the price you accepted for an existing order.

You keep ownership and copyright in your manuscript, data, code, and other material, subject to the licence you choose if you later publish. By uploading, you confirm that you have the necessary rights and permissions; that the author information is accurate; that your material does not unlawfully disclose personal, confidential, copyrighted, or harmful content; and that you have disclosed any material use of AI where your discipline or co-authors require it.

Please remove confidential peer-review material, identifiable personal data, and secrets from files unless you have a lawful basis and an explicit need to provide them. We may pause, reject, or remove material that creates a credible safety, rights, integrity, or legal risk, and will explain the practical reason where we reasonably can.

An unpublished submission is not visible in the public catalogue. It is processed by the Institute and the service providers needed to deliver the options you request; authorised personnel may access it for support, safety, and operations. Optional external-provider processing is described separately below. We use submission information to deliver your requested assessment, support the service, maintain security, prevent abuse, and meet applicable legal and accounting duties. We do not sell unpublished manuscripts or use them to train an Institute-owned model. A result may be accepted, held for further review, or not publication-ready. You may submit a new revision at the displayed resubmission price; a revised paper is assessed as its own version.

If the evaluation outcome is not publication-ready, private manuscript files and private report payloads are scheduled for deletion 30 days after that outcome, so you have time to revise and resubmit. A paper held for further review or found eligible for publication may need to remain available while that decision or your publication choice is pending. Limited metadata and records may remain for version history, security, accounting, payment, audit, and legal obligations. Published files follow the public-record and retraction terms below.

Publication is never automatic. Even where a paper meets the quality route, you must separately approve publication. Until you do, the manuscript remains private. The publication route itself remains operationally gated while the Institute completes calibration and launch checks.

When you separately approve publication, you grant the Institute a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, preserve, display, index, distribute, and make the approved paper and the supporting files you selected publicly available in the Working Paper Series. You retain copyright. Published material is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), allowing others to read, share, and adapt it with appropriate attribution. The publication confirmation will restate this licence and list the files that will become public. Do not approve publication unless you have authority to grant these permissions for all included material.

Open publication means free access: no reader subscription, access fee, or paywall. Public files can be copied, indexed, and archived by others. Retraction adds a dated public notice and ends current endorsement, but cannot reliably erase prior downloads, citations, third-party copies, or a permanent scholarly record.

Private uploaded copies are scheduled for deletion 30 days after publication so you have time to request the optional 20-provider service. An open checkout or service already in progress can extend retention until it is resolved. Automated cleanup removes the private manuscript and attachment copies while the author-approved public files and publication record remain available. If you request a new revision, its uploaded files follow that revision’s own retention period.

This optional service is separate from evaluation and publication. With your explicit consent, we transmit your manuscript to 20 configured external AI provider/model endpoints to help diffuse its findings. Each provider processes information under its own terms and practices. A provider may decline, retain, delete, or use material differently; we cannot promise delivery, a response, retention, ingestion, training use, or future model behaviour.

After evaluation, you may request this add-on for the same revision for €10 while its private files remain available. Private files are scheduled for deletion 30 days after the result or publication, as applicable; an open checkout or active service request can extend that until it is resolved. A standalone 20-provider submission is priced separately.

Choose this only if you are comfortable with external processing. It does not improve the Working Paper score, create publication eligibility, or replace peer review. We record your consent and the service attempt/result so you can understand what occurred.

Prices are shown in euro before checkout. Payment is processed by Stripe; we do not store your full card number. We currently do not opt into standard VAT taxation and intend to apply Austria’s small-business VAT exemption while the Institute is eligible. Eligibility depends on the Institute’s circumstances and relevant turnover, not simply its non-profit status. The Austrian small-business threshold is €55,000 for both the current and preceding calendar year under the rules in force from 2025; tax treatment may change if eligibility, law, or the nature/location of a transaction changes. Checkout will show the amount payable before you order. This is a description of our current approach, not individual tax advice.

You may cancel before processing begins by contacting us. At submission, you can expressly request prompt start of the digital service. Where a statutory withdrawal right applies, beginning or fully completing a requested service during the withdrawal period can affect that right only as applicable law permits. If we cannot provide the purchased service because of our error, we will offer a practical remedy, re-performance, credit, or refund as appropriate. We assess other refund requests fairly on the facts and never limit mandatory consumer rights.

We process account details, author and submission metadata, uploaded files, consent records, service results, payment references, technical/security records, and support communications. The main purposes are account access, requested services, payment administration, publication when you approve it, security, legal obligations, and service operations. Our principal processors include Supabase (authentication, database, and storage), Render (API/worker hosting), Stripe (payments), SendGrid (transactional email), and OpenRouter/external AI providers when you request model processing. The specific provider depends on the service selected; external providers process material under their own terms and privacy practices.

You may ask for access, correction, deletion where applicable, restriction, objection, portability where applicable, or information about processing by writing to the contact above. You may also complain to the Austrian Data Protection Authority (Datenschutzbehörde) or your local supervisory authority. Publication, accounting, security, legal duties, and the nature of public scholarly records can limit deletion in specific cases; we will explain any applicable limit. Do not use the service for special-category or sensitive personal data unless you have a clear lawful basis and appropriate safeguards.

Before unrestricted launch: a separate, complete privacy notice must identify the controller and contact details and explain applicable legal bases, retention periods, international transfers and safeguards, recipients, and how to exercise your rights. The summary on this page is not a substitute for that notice.

We work to make the service useful and available, but research evaluation and external providers can fail, change, delay, or produce imperfect output. Please use the report as one input to scholarly judgment, verify important citations and calculations, and obtain independent expert advice for high-stakes decisions. To the extent permitted by law, the Institute is not responsible for indirect or consequential loss arising from reliance on an AI-generated output. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

We may update these terms to reflect a service, legal, security, or operational change. We will show the effective date and ask for acceptance of material changes before a new submission. The version accepted with a submission is retained in the consent record. Austrian law applies where permitted, without limiting mandatory protections that apply to you. Please contact us first so we can try to resolve a concern quickly and respectfully.

Effective date: 26 September 2026. By clicking the acceptance box during submission, you confirm that you have read these terms and request the service you selected.