Terms and Conditions

1. General information

  1. The online peer review platform "Peers International" was developed and maintained with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union within the OPTIMA project (618940-EPP-1-2020-1-UA-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), coordinated by Lviv Polytechnic National University.
  2. The Platform is provided “as-is” without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. Lviv Polytechnic National University does not warrant that the platform and its content, or any part of it, will meet your requirements, provide uninterrupted use, or operate as required without delay or error.

2. Definitions

  1. Online open peer review platform "Peers International" (hereinafter referred to as a Platform) - a dynamic website available online via the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) https://peers.international, providing its users with functionality to view and manage various types of content, such as research papers and supplementary materials, reviews and comments on them, user guides, blog posts, interuser messages, etc. to implement workflows of scholarly materials submission and evaluation as well as communication and support services. The Platform was developed and maintained with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union within the OPTIMA project (618940-EPP-1-2020-1-UA-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), coordinated by Lviv Polytechnic National University.
  2. Platform owner - organization or individual having the ultimate control over the Platform, and that is the legal owner of all the intellectual property available on the Platform, such as software, configuration, the content of any type, etc., except the intellectual property used on the Platform for any purpose, which third parties licensed. Platform owner is Lviv Polytechnic National University, organisation type: higher education institution (tertiary level), non for profit, legal form: public body, address: 12 Bandera Street, 79013 Lviv, Ukraine, e-mail address: it@lpnu.ua, phone number: +38 032 258-20-50.
  3. User - an individual over 18 years of age (or the age of majority in the jurisdiction in which this person is located), who accesses and uses any part of the Platform content and functionality for any purpose, either being registered and/or authorized on the Platform or not. Individuals affiliated with any entity in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus will be not accepted as registered users. By accessing and using the Platform, users agree to Platfrom’s terms and conditions.
  4. ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) - a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely and persistently identify individual authors and contributors of scholarly communication, registered at https://orcid.org website.
  5. Scopus Author ID is a unique numeric identifier that is used in the Scopus database - https://www.scopus.com. It is assigned automatically to every author after they publish at least one article indexed in the Scopus database.
  6. Web of Science ResearcherID is a unique alphanumeric identifier that associates researchers with their works in the Web of Science database - https://clarivate.com/webofsciencegroup/solutions/web-of-science.
  7. Non-exclusive license - a license that gives the licensee the right to use the intellectual property but does not restrict the rights of the licensor or other parties in any way (the licensor retains the right to license the work to third parties and to use the rights licensed itself simultaneously).

3. Platform functionalities

  1. Platform is a dynamic website providing users functionality to view and manage various types of content, such as research papers and supplementary materials, reviews and comments on them, user guides, blog posts, interuser messages, etc. to implement workflows of scholarly materials submission and evaluation as well as communication and support services.
  2. The Platform is built as several subsites (sections) dedicated to specific academic conferences, journals, or other entities. Their representatives operate these subsites in terms of content and user management, particularly regarding editorial and peer-reviewing workflows.

4. Creating an account on the platform

  1. To create an account allowing to submit research outputs for peer review, a user should complete a registration process on a dedicated webpage of the Platform followed by an email address verification. 
  2. Prospective users will be encouraged to register with their institutional or other official email addresses. 
  3. Registrations and user accounts providing deliberately false or suspicious information might be rejected or blocked.

5. Processing of personal data

  1. The controller of your personal data, i.e. entities that jointly determine the purposes and means of the processing of personal data, is the platform owner: Lviv Polytechnic National University, 12 Bandera Street, 79013 Lviv, Ukraine (hereinafter referred to as the Controller as well).
  2. The Controller voluntarily accepts the application of Regulation (EC) 2016/697 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC, hereinafter referred to as the GDPR to the processing of personal data on the platform developed and maintained with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union within the OPTIMA project (618940-EPP-1-2020-1-UA-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP).
  3. The Controller will process data of a user in order to conclude and perform the agreement for the delivery of a peer review on a scientific paper, perform obligations arising under the provisions of law (e.g. administrative obligations), and exercise legal claims, if any.
  4. The controller collects the following personal data from individuals when they register as a user on the Platform (obligatory information is marked with an asterisk):
    • first and last name*;
    • email address*;
    • organisational affiliation*;
    • country of residence*;
    • fields of research or expertise*;
    • personal photo;
    • professional information such as availability for acting as a peer reviewer and collaboration with other researchers and entities, openness to job offers, etc.;
    • free-text information (personal statement or other additional information a user would like to provide);
    • links to personal profiles and identifiers on third-party websites (ORCiD, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, institutional website, etc.).
  5. Data collected automatically:
    • The Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) of the site you visited before coming to our Website, the URL of the site you visit after leaving our Website, the type of device, browser, and operating system you are using and your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address;
    • Information about the articles, content, or services that you have searched and/or viewed on the Website;
    • Usage history relating to the Website;
    • Browsing history; and
    • Information we collect on the use of the Website via cookies. For more information, please see the sections below regarding cookies and web beacons.
  6. The user consent is not required for the above purposes because the processing is necessary for the performance of the agreement (legal basis: Article 6.1(b) of the GDPR) or for the compliance with a legal obligation (legal basis: Article 6.1(c) of the GDPR) and for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, if any, which represents the legitimate interests of the Controller (legal basis: Article 6.1(f) of the GDPR).
  7. User gives his/her personal data freely, however the data are necessary for the agreement conclusion and performance and for the performance of obligations imposed on the Controller in relation to the agreement performance.
  8. User’s data may be disclosed to the following categories of recipients for the attaining of the above purposes:
  9. User’s data may also be made available to entities acting at the Controller’s request such as entities performing actions related to the Controller operations (IT services, document management).
  10. Due to the processing of user’s personal data, user has the right to:
    • access his/her personal data processed by the Controller, obtain information about the origin of these data, purposes of the data processing and the data recipients, including data processors,
    • have your data rectified,
    • have your data erased from the Controller’s records if they are not necessary for the above purposes and if the period for which the Controller is entitled to store them expired,
    • request restriction of processing of your data,
    • obtain a copy of your data in a commonly used format,
    • have the data transmitted to another controller (right to data portability),
    • withdraw consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing before its withdrawal if the processing is based on consent.
  11. In order to exercise the above rights, please do not hesitate to contact the Controller by writing at: it@lpnu.ua.
  12. If you find that the actions taken by the Controller or entities acting on its behalf breach the personal data protection provisions, you have the right to lodge a complaint to the data protection authority in your country - https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en.
  13. We acknowledge the importance of protecting personal information. Any personal information provided by Platform users will be treated with the utmost care and security.
  14. The Platform is designed with an open access and open science mindset aiming at fostering communication and collaboration between users, meaning that some required personal information will be published on their profiles and other Platform webpages and therefore disclosed to other users of the Platform and the general public. We will not publicly disclose users’ email addresses. However, users will be offered the option of sending messages to other users' emails via a personal contact form (users will also be able to block receiving such emails).
  15. Regarding the users’ personal information not to be disclosed, we use various physical and technical measures to keep it safe and prevent unauthorized access or usage. Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems with control over access to information using both physical and electronic means. Our colleagues receive data protection training, and there is a set of security and data protection policies that colleagues must follow when handling personal information.
  16. While we take all reasonable steps to ensure that personal information will be kept secure from unauthorised access, we cannot guarantee it will be secure during transmission by you to a website or other services, as we do not control that transmission. We use HTTPS (HTTP Secure), whereby the communication protocol is encrypted via Transport Layer Security (TLS) for secure communication over a computer network. The website is loaded via HTTPS, represented by the lock icon in your web browser, ensuring the transmission is secured with a certificate issued by an official security certificate authority to Lviv Polytechnic National University operating it.
  17. We will retain users' personal information only for as long as is necessary and as applicable laws permit. The personal information will be retained while respective users' accounts on the Platform are active. We may also continue to retain users' personal information to comply with our obligations, meet our legal requirements or to defend or exercise our legal rights. For example, when a person has deleted their user profile on the Platform, we will retain limited details about this person to ensure the possible content authorship remains attributed to them. After we no longer need to retain your personal information, it will be deleted or securely destroyed.

6. Rights and obligations of the users

  1. By registering on the Platform or viewing any part of it, users unconditionally agree to the current terms and conditions. Any action on the Platform requires explicit consent from users. If the terms are changed, we will collect new consent from the user.
  2. Registered users have the right to submit their manuscripts for peer review, comment on other users' content, and send messages to other users via the contact form. They also have the right to peer review other users' manuscripts if invited.
  3. Registered users have the right to cancel their accounts at any time. In this case, their user profile pages will no longer be available, and related data will be deleted from the Platform database. However, their content, such as manuscripts, reviews, and comments, will still be available on the Platform.
  4. Active users can delete manuscripts and comments from the Platform anytime, and former users can request their deletion via the contact form. However, reviews of other users manuscripts done by the former user can not be deleted as they are documents enabling further decisions on the acceptance or rejection of the said manuscripts.
  5. By submitting any content, the user guarantees that they own the copyright in the submitted content and that they have the necessary rights to grant Lviv Polytechnic National University a non-exclusive license to publish the content on an Open Access basis under the Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0 - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 
  6. For content authored by individuals other than the user and multi-authored content, the submitting user confirms that they are authorized to enter into these Terms and Conditions as their agent on every author's behalf; if the content includes materials of others, the submitting user has gained the permission of the copyright owners of all such materials to enable the submitting user to grant the license.
  7. Suppose the user submits a manuscript or any other research output for peer review. In that case, they must acknowledge all funding sources, disclose any conflict of interest, and name all persons claiming authorship as co-authors. The submitting user has to guarantee that the research has been conducted ethically and responsibly. If people in the submitting author's research are identifiable, the submitting user got written informed consent to include the material, text, or image concerned.
  8. Users can not submit content any part of which is obscene, defamatory, discriminatory, fraudulent, or in violation of any right of privacy, and plagiarize any other published work or infringe any intellectual property rights or any other human, personal, or other rights of any person or entity or are otherwise unlawful.

7. Rights and obligations of the owner of the platform

  1. Lviv Polytechnic National University does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, and quality of the Platform content, nor that the Platform and its content are always available. 
  2. Lviv Polytechnic National University is not responsible for any content submitted to the Platform by its users.

8. Blocking a user or deleting his/her account

  1. The owner of the Platform can, at any time, block or delete the account of any user, as well as change any user's permissions or delete any user's content within the Platform. 
  2. The owner shall explain or justify such actions to the users. 
  3. The typical reasons to do that are various types of unethical behavior, such as:
    • creating fake or spam accounts,
    • creating obsessive or spam content,
    • plagiarism;
    • sending obsessive or spam messages,
    • any other violation of current terms and conditions.

9. Helpdesk

In case of technical problems connected with the Platform please send us a message via the contact form.

10. Terms and Conditions changes

  1. The Terms and Conditions in the current version are valid from July 04, 2023.
  2. The platform owner reserves the right to change the Terms and Conditions.
  3. The owner of the platform will inform the users about the change of the Terms and Conditions at least 30 days in advance by making the consolidated text of the Terms and Conditions available on the website.
  4. The amended Terms and Conditions are binding on the user if he/she has been properly notified (in accordance with the content of the applicable Terms and Conditions) about the changes and has not terminated the concluded contract within 30 calendar days from the date of notification.
  5. The amendment to the Terms and Conditions does not affect the content and conditions of the agreements for the provision of services concluded by the user and the owner of the platform before the amendment to the Terms and Conditions.
  6. The Terms and Conditions are available to users at any time free of charge on the website and at the seat of the platform owner. Users may at any time view the Terms and Conditions on the website, download them, and also prepare a printout of them.