SFARI | Terms and Conditions

Published September 2011

We encourage visitors to read and contribute to this website. Your use of this site and the submission of any materials described herein are subject to the following Terms and Conditions.

Acceptance of terms:

By accessing this website, you agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions and all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with these Terms and Conditions, all applicable laws and regulations. If you do not agree with any of the provisions of these Terms and Conditions, please do not use or access this site. The materials contained in this website are protected by applicable copyright and trademark law.

Modifications of terms of use:

Amendments to these Terms and Conditions may be made and effected by us at our discretion from time to time and will become effective immediately when posted to the site unless otherwise specified. The Terms and Conditions currently posted on the website reflect the latest version, and you should carefully review the same before you use our site.

Use of the site and description of service:

The goal of SFARI.org is to make scientists’ work easier by keeping them informed of the latest news, opinion and information about autism research, and by providing cutting-edge tools for research.

This site allows all visitors to post comments in response to news articles and blog postings regarding the field of autism research, but comments are expected to meet standards described in the “Accepted standards of behavior” section (below). This website is not intended for use by persons under 18 years of age.

Scientific researchers can become members of the site, join and participate in forums and create or edit content in the SFARI Wiki. Membership eligibility is described later in these Terms and Conditions.

You are solely responsible for all content that you post, communicate, edit or otherwise transmit via, or to, the website, including the submission of, or links to, text, photographs, graphics, video, audio, messages, ratings, forum postings, comments or other materials. You acknowledge that we shall have the right at any time to modify or remove from the site any user content, including yours, which in our sole opinion is inconsistent with the Accepted standards of behavior below or violates any applicable law.

You acknowledge that we shall not be liable for any damages of any sort caused by user content provided by you or any other users.

You understand that by using the site, you may be exposed to content that may include technical, typographical, scientific or photographic errors or that may be offensive, indecent or objectionable. You acknowledge if you find any inaccurate, out-of-date or incomplete information or content on this website, or if you suspect that any content posted on this site is an infringement of another’s intellectual property rights or is otherwise unlawful, please let us know immediately by contacting [email protected]. We will take reasonable measures to review and investigate all inquiries, and we reserve the right to take any action (or to refrain from action) as we deem appropriate under the circumstances.

Intellectual property rights:

All content on this site is the property of the Simons Foundation or its affiliates, licensors or third party content providers, including our visitors. The Simons Foundation reserves all right and title to all original and copyrightable materials on the site of which we are the author or for which we have otherwise obtained title, including but not limited to the text, design, manuals, information, content, graphics, images, pictures, sound and other files, and the selection, compilation and arrangement thereof in its collective sense. You will not copy, modify, redistribute, broadcast, publish, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, commercially exploit, sell, license, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from any of our services, software, content or documentation, or create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product through use of or access to this site or any related site or proprietary information related thereto, without our prior written consent. Reprinting or any other public display of our original content without express written permission is prohibited. Furthermore, you may not remove or obscure the copyright notice or any other notices contained in the site or in anything retrieved or downloaded from it.

The names, trademarks, service marks and design marks (including logos) used on this site are the property of the Simons Foundation or its affiliates, licensors or third party content providers, and you will not use any such name or mark in any advertising or publicity or otherwise to indicate the sponsorship of or affiliation with any product or service, without the prior written consent of the owner of any such name or mark.

Acknowledgment of user rights:

The Web allows people throughout the world to share valuable information, ideas and creative works. To ensure continued open access to such materials, we all need to protect the rights of those who share their creations with us.

You own the original content created or stored by you. However, by and through your use of the services and tools provided by this site, including making any posting to any part of this site, you hereby grant us permission to access, use, adapt, copy, distribute, store, transmit, reformat and publicly display your content as required for the purpose of providing our services and tools to you and other visitors to SFARI.org. Any such use of your content by us will be done in a limited manner, consistent with our privacy policy, described later in these Terms and Conditions.

Please do not upload, post or submit material to this website for which you do not own the rights or have the permission of the rights holder.

Eligibility for membership:

SFARI.org is open to the general public, but we grant access to certain site features only to members who are vetted, bona fide researchers.

Members have exclusive access to an online community where they can engage with their peers in lively, secure discussion forums. Members also have editing privileges for SFARI Wiki, an evolving wiki of autism terms that is continually and collaboratively updated by scientists.

Our goal is to create an online community of researchers to help expand and accelerate scientific discovery in autism. Creating an environment in which scientists will feel sufficiently secure to discuss their work candidly is a major goal of the website. Therefore, applications for membership will not generally be accepted from non-professionals or people not actively pursuing a career in related sciences.

Application for membership does not guarantee acceptance. Our staff carefully vets membership applications.

When you sign up for a new membership, you might have to wait a short while for your email address and other information to be manually vetted, and for your account to be activated with full posting privileges. Until a new user account has been approved, the account holder has no member privileges, cannot access or modify the user profile and cannot make or edit entries in the wiki or access the forum. Commenting on news articles or blog posts is available to all visitors regardless of membership status. To the extent you disclose confidential information in the forum, you are encouraged to identify it as confidential, to limit its further disclosure by other members.

To complete the registration process, you must provide your full name, institutional affiliation, a valid email address and any other information, as listed on the Member Registration Signup Page.

As an applicant for membership, you must confirm that you are 18 years or older, must keep your password secure and be responsible for all activities and content uploaded under your account. Any information provided by you during any visit to the site shall be subject to these terms.

You may terminate your membership at any time for any reason by contacting [email protected]. We may terminate your membership for any reason at any time. If your membership is terminated, the Intellectual property rights provisions of these Terms and Conditions will remain in effect, as well as all other provisions detailed herein that are otherwise in effect for site visitors who are not members.

Accepted standards of behavior:

We encourage visitors to contribute to this website, but to do so responsibly. You agree to abide by the following rules:

i. not to submit any profanity or obscenity, even if disguised with asterisks or other typography;

ii. not to make any personal attack on any person, firm or company;

iii. not to submit, or create any link to, any defamatory, obscene, indecent, lewd, pornographic, violent, abusive, offensive, insulting, threatening, menacing, unlawful or blasphemous material;

iv. not to submit, or create any link to, any material that is an invasion of privacy, a breach of any data protection principle or legislation, a malicious falsehood or seditious libel, a contempt of court, or that is likely to incite or is capable of inciting violence, racial hatred, sadism or cruelty or that encourages any unlawful or illegal act or omission;

v. not to submit, or create any link to, any material that is intentionally false or that is misleading, or that causes annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety, or that is potentially damaging or harmful;

vi. not to impersonate anyone else, whether a public figure, a member of our staff, a forum moderator, administrator or host, or other visitor of this site;

vii. not to state or represent falsely that you are connected to, or affiliated with, any individual or entity;

viii. not to promote or advertise, or engage in any other form of marketing, including (without limitation) chain letters or pyramid selling, even if you are acting on behalf of a non-profit organization or a charity;

ix. not to upload or post any form of spam, multiple submissions to forums or comments which are identical or other forms of promotion for other sites;

x. not knowingly to violate any law or regulation while using our website;

xi. not to use our website to collect personal data about other individuals;

xii. not to submit, or create a link to, any file that contains any virus, corrupted data, Trojan horse or anything else that might damage, destroy or render inaccessible any data or files on any computer;

xiii. not to use the website as a forwarding service to another website;

xiv. not to ’stalk‘ or otherwise harass another person; and

xv. not try to circumvent the security features of this website, or tamper with, hack into, or in any other way disrupt or disable any computer system, server, website, router or other device used to host this website or make it available.

Revisions and errata; non-reliance; and waiver of liability:

THE MATERIALS APPEARING ON SFARI.ORG MAY INCLUDE TECHNICAL, TYPOGRAPHICAL, SCIENTIFIC OR PHOTOGRAPHIC ERRORS. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT ANY OF THE MATERIALS ON OUR WEBSITE ARE ACCURATE, COMPLETE OR CURRENT, OR THAT THE SITE WILL OPERATE ERROR-FREE OR WITHOUT INTERRUPTION. WE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THIS SITE, OR YOUR DISSEMINATION OF OR RELIANCE ON ANY CONTENT CONTAINED ON THIS SITE, AND YOU HEREBY WAIVE ANY CLAIM AGAINST US AND OUR EMPLOYEES, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS AND AGENTS REGARDING YOUR USE OF, DISSEMINATION OF OR RELIANCE ON THIS SITE.

SFARI.org may make changes to the materials contained on its website at any time without notice. However, SFARI.org does not make any commitment to update the materials.

You acknowledge and agree that we have no responsibility for the information, content, products, services, advertising, code or other materials which may or may not be provided by or through other websites that are linked to this site, even if they are owned or run by affiliates or partners of ours. We have no control over their content or availability.

Our staff has not reviewed all of the sites linked to this website. The inclusion of any link on our site does not imply endorsement by the Simons Foundation of the linked site. Use of any such linked website is at the user’s own risk, and we recommend that you review the terms of use and privacy policies of those sites, as they may differ from those of this site.

Any opinion, advice, statement, service, offer, or information or content provided or made by any third party on this website, or on any website to which this website is linked, is that of the author or provider, and not of the Simons Foundation.

You should direct any concern about any other website to that site’s website administrator or webmaster.

Confidentiality:

You agree not to disclose confidential information you obtain from us and/or from our visitors, including, but not limited to, our members. You agree not to reproduce, disseminate, sell, trade, distribute or commercially exploit any such proprietary or confidential information in any manner without the owner’s prior written consent.

Privacy policy:

Your privacy is very important to us. Accordingly, we have developed this policy in order for you to understand how we collect, use, communicate, disclose and make use of personal information. The following outlines our privacy policy.

Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected. Personal information will be collected from visitors who apply for membership in order to complete the member registration process.
We will collect and use personal information solely with the objective of fulfilling those purposes specified by us and for other compatible purposes, unless we obtain additional consent for other uses of the information from of the individual concerned or as required by law.
We will only retain personal information as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.
Personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and up to date.
We will protect personal information by reasonable security safeguards against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.
We will make information about our policies and practices relating to the management of personal information readily available to site visitors.
We may use ’cookies‘ that automatically collect anonymous, non-personal information when visitors access the site. We may use anonymous, non-personal information to track the success of the site with its visitors, including but not limited to members, and to better tailor the site to visitors’ needs.
We do not share personal information about our visitors with third parties except with your permission or as otherwise required by law or legal process or as otherwise specified herein.

Please be aware that our information-sharing forums are accessible by members (and in certain cases by the public) and are not covered by this privacy policy.

We are committed to conducting our site in accordance with these principles in order to ensure that the confidentiality of personal information is protected and maintained. You will immediately notify us at [email protected] if you learn that your membership account information has been lost or stolen, or you learn of any unauthorized use of your membership account. We are not liable for any loss or damage from your failure to comply with our privacy policy.

Waiver:

Failure of SFARI.org to insist upon strict performance of any of the terms, conditions and covenants herein shall not be deemed a relinquishment or waiver of any rights or remedies that we may have, nor shall it be construed as a waiver of any subsequent breach of the terms, conditions or covenants hereof, which terms, conditions and covenants shall remain in full force and effect.

Entire agreement:

These Terms and Conditions describe and encompass the entire agreement between you and us and supersede all prior or contemporaneous agreements, representations, warranties and understandings with respect to the site, the contents and materials provided by or through the site, and the subject matter of these Terms and Conditions.

Governing law and jurisdiction:

This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the substantive laws of New York, without any reference to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute, controversy or difference which may arise between the parties out of, in relation to or in connection with these Terms and Conditions is hereby irrevocably submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New York, to the exclusion of any other courts without giving effect to its conflict of laws provisions or your actual state or country of residence.

If any of these Terms and Conditions is (for any reason) held to be unenforceable, illegal or in some other way invalid, the unenforceable, illegal or invalid provision will not affect the remainder of these Terms and Conditions; and they will continue in full force and effect.

No addition to or modification of any provision of these Terms and Conditions that you propose will be binding on us unless made in writing and signed by our duly authorized representative. “Writing” includes email.