Terms of Service | CiteOrbit - Citations that stay consistent

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of CiteOrbit ("we", "us", the "Service"). By creating an account or otherwise using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. The Service

CiteOrbit is a citation verification platform that processes academic manuscripts to verify, enrich, and validate bibliographic references against open scholarly databases (including Crossref, OpenAlex, Google Scholar, and Semantic Scholar). The Service produces reports identifying potential issues such as hallucinated references, mismatched citations, missing identifiers, or style errors.

2. Eligibility & account

You must provide accurate information when creating an account and keep your credentials secure. You are responsible for activity that occurs under your account. You may not let anyone else use your account.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

Upload content you do not have the right to process, including content that infringes copyright or violates a third party's rights;
Use the Service to attempt to deceive, defraud, or mislead reviewers, editors, or institutions;
Reverse-engineer, scrape, or attempt to extract source code, models, or proprietary algorithms;
Interfere with the integrity, security, or availability of the Service.

4. Your content

You retain all rights in the manuscripts and reference data you upload. You grant CiteOrbit a limited, non-exclusive license to process that content solely to provide the Service to you. We do not sell your content, train commercial models on it, or share it with advertisers.

4.1 No LLM processing

Manuscripts and reference content are processed exclusively by deterministic and traditional ML pipelines maintained by CiteOrbit. Your content is never sent to large-language-model APIs (such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, or similar). This is a binding commitment; any change would constitute a material change to these Terms requiring fresh notice and (where applicable) renewed consent.

5. Subscriptions, credits, and billing

The Service operates on a credit-based model. Plan terms, pricing, and credit allotments are described on our pricing page. Charges are non-refundable except where required by law. We may change pricing prospectively with reasonable notice.

6. Intellectual property

CiteOrbit and all related logos, content, software, and materials are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual-property laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of our intellectual property to you.

7. Privacy

Our handling of personal data is described in the Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference.

8. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not guarantee that every reference issue will be detected or that every detection is correct. The Service is a tool to assist authors, editors, and researchers — it does not replace human review. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties not expressly stated.

9. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the fees you paid us in the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred euros (€100). We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including lost profits or lost data. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited under applicable law.

10. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate access if you breach these Terms or if required by law. Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive.

11. Governing law

[Placeholder — to be set by counsel based on the company's legal seat.] These Terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Disputes will be resolved in the competent courts of [JURISDICTION], unless mandatory consumer-protection rules of your country of residence provide otherwise.

12. Changes

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email and/or in-product notice. Continued use of the Service after the effective date of an updated version constitutes acceptance.

13. Contact

Questions about these Terms can be sent to support@citeorbit.com.