Terms of Service

1. Who may use ChemRepro

ChemRepro is intended for practising chemists, chemistry students, and researchers who have direct, first-hand laboratory experience with the reactions they review. You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. If you are under 18, you confirm that your parent or guardian has agreed to these terms on your behalf.

By using the platform you confirm that your identity as presented (ORCID iD or chosen display name) is genuine and not intended to impersonate another person.

2. Accuracy and honesty

You may only submit reviews for reactions you have personally performed. You must not submit fabricated, exaggerated, or secondhand results as your own. Accuracy in reproducibility reporting is the foundation this platform is built on; dishonest contributions undermine the entire community.

You confirm that you have no undisclosed conflict of interest with the paper you are reviewing (for example: you are not an author, co-author, or member of the same research group as the authors). The conflict-of-interest declaration on the rating form is mandatory and legally binding by accepting these terms.

3. Content you submit

You retain ownership of the reviews, comments, and other content you submit. By submitting content, you grant ChemRepro a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store, display, and distribute that content to other users of the platform, and to include it in research datasets or API outputs as described in our Privacy Policy.

3a. Permitted content

Reproducibility failure statements are expressly permitted: you may describe, in factual terms, what you observed when attempting to reproduce a published procedure under your stated laboratory conditions, including any failure to obtain the reported yield, purity, selectivity, or other outcome. Such statements, grounded in your own first-hand experience and clearly stated as such, are a core and protected use of this platform.

3b. Prohibited content

You must not submit content that:

• ✕ is false, fabricated, or deliberately misleading;
• ✕ infringes the intellectual property rights of any third party;
• ✕ contains personal data of third parties without their consent;
• ✕ is defamatory, abusive, harassing, or otherwise unlawful;
• ✕ is spam, advertising, or unrelated to synthetic chemistry reproducibility.

3c. Misconduct and fraud allegations

Statements that go beyond describing your experimental observations and instead directly allege research misconduct, fraud, data fabrication, or intentional deception by named individuals are subject to a different standard. Such statements:

• ! must be substantiated by supporting documentation (see section 4c);
• ! are routed to manual pre-publication review before appearing publicly;
• ! may be declined if, in ChemRepro's reasonable judgement, they are unsubstantiated or exceed the scope of a reproducibility platform.

You can delete your own reviews and comments at any time directly on the site. Deleted content is removed from public display immediately; residual copies in backups are overwritten on the next backup cycle.

4. Moderation and enforcement

ChemRepro reserves the right to remove any content that violates these terms, or that we believe, in good faith, is harmful to the integrity of the reproducibility record or to other users. In serious cases we may suspend or terminate accounts without prior notice.

4a. General reports

If you believe a review or comment violates these terms, use the report function on the relevant item or contact us at [email protected]. We aim to investigate general reports and communicate an outcome within 14 days.

4b. Escalated reports (defamatory or false content about a named individual)

If a review or comment makes statements you believe are false and directly harmful to your reputation as a named individual, you may submit an escalated report via [email protected] with the subject line "Escalated report". Please include: the URL of the content, your identity, and a brief statement of why the content is false. We will assess the report and, where prima facie grounds exist, hide the content from public view within 48 to 72 hours pending investigation. The content submitter will be notified and invited to provide a substantiation response. A final decision will follow within 14 days.

4c. Substantiation of disputed content

Where a review is subject to a formal dispute, ChemRepro may request that the reviewer produce supporting documentation (such as raw data, spectra, laboratory notebooks, or instrument records) demonstrating that the reported experimental work was performed. Requests will be made in writing with a response window of no less than 21 days. If no substantiation is provided within the window, ChemRepro may remove the disputed content. Substantiation materials shared with ChemRepro are treated as confidential and are used solely for the purpose of dispute resolution.

4d. Right of reply

Authors of a reviewed paper may post a factual, non-defamatory response visible alongside any review of their work, subject to identity verification (ORCID iD matched against the paper's author list where available). The right-of-reply mechanism is provided in the platform; instructions are available in your account settings. Reply content is subject to all other content rules in these terms.

5. Disclaimers

ChemRepro is a community platform that hosts content submitted by third parties. ChemRepro has not reviewed and cannot review all content submitted to the platform, does not endorse any review, rating, or comment, and is not responsible for content that it has not been notified about. Nothing on ChemRepro constitutes an endorsement or certification by ChemRepro of any experimental result or scientific claim.

All ratings and reviews reflect the individual experience of the submitting user under their specific laboratory conditions and are not peer-reviewed or independently verified. They should not be relied upon as the sole basis for safety decisions, regulatory submissions, or other high-stakes applications.

The platform is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose or uninterrupted availability. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or currency of any content on the platform.

Paper metadata (title, authors, abstract) is fetched from CrossRef and Europe PMC and is displayed as publicly available bibliographic information. We are not responsible for errors in that third-party data.

6. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, ChemRepro and its operator shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of or in connection with your use of the platform or any content on it. Our total liability for direct damages shall not exceed CHF 100 (one hundred Swiss francs).

7. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless ChemRepro, its operator, and their respective agents from and against any and all claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) your use of the platform; (b) any content you submit, post, or transmit through the platform; (c) your violation of these terms; or (d) your violation of any rights of another person or entity. ChemRepro reserves the right to assume exclusive control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, in which case you agree to cooperate with ChemRepro in asserting any available defences.

8. Commercial use, data access, and prohibited automation

You may not use automated means (including scripts, bots, crawlers, scrapers, or other programmatic methods) to access, index, copy, or reproduce ChemRepro content for the purpose of building, populating, or maintaining any database, platform, or product that competes with or derives from ChemRepro's review dataset — regardless of whether such use is commercial or non-commercial.

Researchers and developers seeking structured access to the data should apply for API access via [email protected]. API access is granted on terms that preclude use for derivative databases.

Personal, non-automated academic use (reading, citing, or incorporating individual reviews into your own research) is permitted with attribution and does not require an API agreement.

9. Copyright – notice and takedown

ChemRepro respects intellectual property rights and expects users to do the same. If you believe that content on the platform infringes your copyright, please send a written notice to [email protected] containing all of the following:

• – Your physical or electronic signature (or that of the person authorised to act on behalf of the copyright owner);
• – Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
• – Identification of the material on ChemRepro that you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it (URL preferred);
• – Your contact information (address, telephone number, and email address);
• – A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use of the material is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
• – A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorised to act on their behalf.

Note: this procedure is provided in good faith. Formal DMCA safe-harbour protection is contingent on registering a designated agent with the US Copyright Office; that registration is pending. This section will be updated once registration is confirmed.

10. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the platform develops. The "last updated" date at the top reflects the most recent revision. Continued use of ChemRepro after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated terms. For material changes that affect your rights, we will provide notice to registered users before the changes take effect.

11. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by Swiss law. Any disputes shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Basel-Stadt, Switzerland, unless mandatory consumer-protection rules in your country of residence require otherwise.