The agreement between you and GoatPeer, LLC for the use of G.O.A.T Peer.
These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and GoatPeer, LLC (“GoatPeer”, “we”, “us”), covering your use of the G.O.A.T Peer website at goatpeer.com and the analysis service it provides (together, the “Service”). By creating an account, ticking the acceptance box, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
Please read clauses 3, 9, 10, 11 and 14 carefully.
They describe what the Service is and is not, disclaim warranties, limit our liability to you, require you to indemnify us, and require most disputes to be resolved by individual arbitration rather than in court or by class action. They affect your legal rights.
You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract. If you use the Service on behalf of an institution, publisher, journal or company, you represent that you are authorised to bind that organisation to these Terms, and “you” means both you and that organisation. You may not use the Service if you are barred from doing so under the laws of the United States or any other applicable jurisdiction.
You are responsible for your account credentials and for everything done through your account. Keep your password confidential, and tell us promptly at [email protected] if you believe it has been compromised. Do not share an account between people; do not sell, lease or transfer it. We may refuse, reclaim or rename an account at our discretion.
The Service applies automated image-forensics techniques, statistical tests and, on some plans, machine-learning and language-model checks to material you upload. It reports regions and features that share measurable characteristics with known manipulation patterns, and shows the evidence it relied on.
A result is a screening signal, not a finding of misconduct.
The Service does not determine, and cannot determine, whether research misconduct, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or fraud has occurred. Only a competent human investigation — by a journal, an institution, a research-integrity office or a court — can reach that conclusion.
False positives and false negatives are expected and unavoidable. The Service will sometimes flag legitimate images (for example, genuinely similar controls, repeated loading-control panels, standard reagents, or compression and printing artefacts), and it will sometimes fail to flag material that was in fact manipulated. A clean report is not a certification that a paper is sound, and a flag is not evidence that anyone did anything wrong.
Nothing in the Service is legal, scientific, editorial, employment or professional advice, and no attorney-client, expert-witness or consulting relationship is created by using it.
“Your Content” means the manuscripts, figures, images, PDFs, code and other material you upload, and the notes you write in the Service. As between you and us, Your Content is yours. We claim no ownership of it.
You grant us a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, display and process Your Content solely to operate the Service for you: to run the analysis you requested, to show and store your results, to provide support, and to keep the Service secure. This licence exists only so that the software can function, ends when you delete the material or your account (subject to clause 4.1), and grants us no right to publish Your Content or to use it to market the Service.
Deleted material may persist for a short period in encrypted backups and operational logs before being overwritten in the ordinary course. We do not restore it to the Service after deletion.
We do not use Your Content to train our detection models, and we do not sell it or share it with other users. Where a plan you choose sends material to a third-party AI provider to perform a check you requested, that provider processes it under its own terms; the Privacy Policy sets out what is shared and with whom.
You represent and warrant, each time you upload, that:
Do not upload personal or sensitive data. The Service is built for scientific figures and manuscripts. Do not upload identifiable patient data, protected health information, human subject identifiers, biometric data, government identifiers, payment card data, or the special categories of personal data defined by the GDPR. We are not a HIPAA business associate, we will not sign a business associate agreement in respect of the standard Service, and we have no liability arising from such material if you upload it in breach of this clause.
If you are handling a manuscript as an editor or reviewer, it is your responsibility to confirm that your journal's or institution's policy permits uploading it to a third-party service before you do so.
You may use the results for your own evaluation, editorial screening and internal decision-making. Before you rely on a result for any consequential purpose, you must independently verify it by human inspection of the underlying material.
You agree that you will not:
Any allegation, complaint, report or publication you make is yours alone. You are solely responsible for the consequences of acting on a result, including any claim brought by a person who is the subject of it. See clause 11.
You may not, and may not permit anyone else to:
We run the Service on finite infrastructure. We may apply rate limits, file-size limits and fair-use limits, and may change them without notice.
The Alpine plan is free. Paid plans are billed in advance through our third-party payment processor, on a recurring basis until cancelled. Prices are stated on the pricing page and are exclusive of taxes, which we add where required.
Card details are handled directly by our payment processor; we never receive or store your full card number. The Privacy Policy describes what payment information reaches us.
The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, GoatPeer disclaims all warranties, express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.
Without limiting the foregoing, we do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free; that results will be accurate, complete, reliable, current or free of false positives or false negatives; that defects will be corrected; or that the Service will detect any particular manipulation, duplication or integrity problem.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this clause may not apply to you. Nothing here limits any warranty that cannot be limited by law.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, GoatPeer, its members, officers, employees and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, publication opportunity, funding, employment or reputation, arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability or otherwise, and whether or not we were advised of the possibility of such damages.
This expressly includes any loss or damage arising from a result the Service produced or failed to produce — including a false positive, a missed manipulation, a decision you made in reliance on a result, or any allegation, complaint or publication you made on the basis of one.
Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service in any 12-month period will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you actually paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars (US$100).
These limits apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this clause may not apply to you; nothing here excludes liability for fraud, for gross negligence, or for anything else that cannot be excluded by law. You acknowledge that the pricing of the Service reflects this allocation of risk, and that we would not provide the Service without it.
You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless GoatPeer, LLC and its members, officers, employees and agents from and against any claim, demand, proceeding, loss, liability, damage, penalty, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to:
We will notify you of any such claim and may, at our own expense, participate in its defence. You may not settle any claim in a way that imposes an obligation or admission on us without our written consent.
The Service, its software, models, detection methods, interface, text, graphics and the G.O.A.T Peer name and marks are owned by GoatPeer, LLC and protected by intellectual-property law. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service in accordance with these Terms; nothing else is granted, by implication or otherwise.
If you send us feedback, suggestions or bug reports, you grant us an unrestricted, perpetual, royalty-free right to use them without obligation or attribution.
You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, if your use threatens the security, integrity or availability of the Service, if required by law, or if we discontinue the Service. On termination the licence in clause 4 ends and we delete or de-identify Your Content in the ordinary course; clauses 4.1, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 and 16 survive.
If we discontinue the Service entirely, we will give reasonable notice and refund the unused portion of any prepaid fee.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
Before starting any formal proceeding, you agree to contact [email protected] with a description of the dispute and to negotiate in good faith for 30 days.
Except as stated below, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration administered by JAMS under its applicable rules, seated in California, and not in court before a judge or jury.
You and GoatPeer each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class, collective, consolidated or representative action. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding.
Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorised access. Nothing here waives any right that cannot be waived by law.
Your right to opt out. You may reject this arbitration clause by emailing [email protected] with the subject line “Arbitration Opt-Out” and your account username within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out affects nothing else in these Terms, and we will not treat it as a reason to close your account.
Any claim relating to the Service must be brought within one year after it arises, to the extent permitted by law; otherwise it is permanently barred.
We may update these Terms. The version identifier and effective date at the top of this page change with each revision. For material changes we will give notice by email or in the Service before they take effect, and where required we will ask you to accept the new version. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept it; if you do not, stop using the Service and cancel your plan.
These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between us and supersede any prior understanding. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest remains in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent; we may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. Nothing creates a partnership, agency, or employment relationship. We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control. Notices to you may be sent to the email address on your account; notices to us go to the address in clause 17. There are no third-party beneficiaries.
GoatPeer, LLC — [email protected]
For privacy requests, see the Privacy Policy.