Terms of use

Welcome to The Stacks (the "Service"), operated by Astera Institute ("we," "us," or "our"). By accessing or using the Service, you agree to these Terms of use ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, you may not use the Service. ## Overview of the service The Stacks is an open-source, nonprofit publishing platform for sharing and improving scientific and scholarly work. The Service provides tools to publish, discuss, and version research outputs across multiple formats, including manuscripts, code, computational notebooks, datasets, and multimodal content. All published content receives a persistent identifier (e.g., DOI). The Stacks is committed to openness and reproducibility and endorses the [FAIR principles](https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/) (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) to maximize the utility and reuse of shared materials. Users should deposit raw data, code, and large research artifacts in a public repository (with a persistent identifier) prior to or at the time of submission, and include a stable link in their submission. Content published on the Service is not peer reviewed prior to posting and may involve experimental or theoretical claims. The Service does not endorse or validate any scientific assertions made by users. ## Eligibility You must be at least 18 years old or the age of majority in your jurisdiction to use the Service. You are solely responsible for ensuring that your use of the Service complies with all laws applicable to you. ## User accounts Some features require an account. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your credentials and all activity under your account. We may suspend or terminate your account immediately if we determine that your use of the Service poses legal, ethical, or safety risks. ## User content ### Ownership You retain ownership of your content ("User Content"). All User Content must be licensed under CC BY 4.0 (default) or CC0 1.0, selected by the submitting author. ### Rights and permissions All submitted content must be released under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, as selected by the author. By submitting content, you affirm that you hold the rights necessary to apply the chosen license and that you understand these licenses are irrevocable. Under the terms of the CC BY or CC0 license you select, you grant the platform the non-exclusive right to host, display, distribute, index, preserve, and make your content publicly accessible for the purpose of operating, maintaining, and improving the Service. Because CC BY and CC0 are irrevocable public licenses, and all published works receive persistent identifiers, published content cannot be withdrawn except in rare cases where removal is required by law, privacy or safety considerations, or other substantiated ethical or legal obligations. When removal is necessary, the platform may replace the withdrawn material with a standard tombstone notice. ### Responsibility You represent that your User Content - complies with all applicable laws - does not include personal data about any identifiable individual without their express informed consent; - does not include human-subjects research data unless authorized under applicable laws, approvals, and anonymization standards; - does not include genetic, biometric, health, or other sensitive data unless legally permitted and/or properly de-identified; - does not include protocols, code, or data that could facilitate misuse of biological, chemical, cybersecurity, or other hazardous agents; and - does not infringe, misappropriate, or otherwise violate third-party rights. ## Moderation and enforcement Moderation is centralized. We may restrict, redact, unlist, or remove content at our discretion to comply with legal, ethical, safety, or regulatory requirements, or to protect the integrity of the Service. Moderation decisions may be applied globally and may vary across jurisdictions where required by regional laws. You may not upload: - Personally identifiable information about individuals without consent; - Human-subject data lacking proper authorization or anonymization; - Images of people without consent; - Protocols that enable the generation or release of harmful biological, chemical, or cyber agents; - Content violating export control laws; - Unlicensed copyrighted material. We maintain a DMCA process for copyright claims. We may remove or redact personal data contained in published content or comments to comply with law or to mitigate safety risks. Public contributions to scholarly discussion — including comments, annotations, and metadata — may be publicly available indefinitely. Where deletion of a public contribution is requested, we may de-identify or pseudonymize the contribution instead of fully removing it, to preserve research integrity and persistent references. ## Content formats and external repositories The Service supports multimodal submissions and computational notebook rendering. Large raw datasets or specialized research artifacts must be deposited in appropriate external repositories (e.g., government or domain repositories), and linked within published work. ## Third-party services We may integrate third-party tools, including analytics tools such as Google Analytics. We are not responsible for the acts or omissions of third-party providers and your use of those services is subject to their respective terms. ## International users The Service is operated from the United States but is accessible globally. By using the Service from outside the U.S., you consent to the transfer and processing of your information in the U.S. or other jurisdictions. You are responsible for ensuring compliance with local laws applicable to you, including copyright, privacy, export controls, and research ethics. We may restrict access to certain features based on regional legal requirements. ## Disclaimers The Service is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind. We disclaim all implied warranties to the fullest extent permitted by law. We do not verify the accuracy, safety, or scientific validity of User Content, and we do not warrant that research outputs are free from harmful or dangerous methodologies. ## Limitation of liability To the fullest extent allowed by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, punitive, or consequential damages arising from your use of the Service and our aggregate liability to you for any claim relating to your use of the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) amounts paid by you for the Service in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred dollars ($100). ## Governing law & venue These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them will be governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of laws principles. The exclusive venue for any dispute will be the state and federal courts located in Alameda County, California, and you consent to the jurisdiction of those courts. ## Changes to these Terms We may update these Terms periodically. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance. ## Contact us If you have questions about these Terms, contact us at .