Terms of service

Who provides ResearchBuddy

These terms are between you and Sansa Group AB, trading as SansaVision, at Soldathemsgatan 20, SE-415 28 Göteborg, Sweden (“ResearchBuddy,” “we,” or “us”). By creating or using an account, you agree to these terms and acknowledge the Privacy Policy. If you use the service for an organization, you confirm that you may bind it.

Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 16 or use ResearchBuddy through a school, institution, or guardian arrangement authorized by applicable law. Keep access links and sessions secure, provide accurate information, and notify support of suspected misuse. You are responsible for activity performed through your account unless caused by our failure to use reasonable safeguards.

Research integrity

You remain responsible for authorship, factual accuracy, citations, permissions, disclosures, ethics approvals, export controls and submission requirements. ResearchBuddy does not replace professional, clinical, statistical, ethical, safety or legal review. Do not use it as a paper mill, fabricate evidence, conceal AI use where disclosure is required, or misrepresent an artifact as independently verified.

Research and browser assistance

Assisted and web-search output can be incomplete or wrong. Verify important claims against source passages and qualified human review. Suggested work remains distinct until accepted. Research Buddy may use deeper review when requested, and records the evidence IDs used. Enabling public-source search sends your question to public discovery sources and may open candidate pages.

Your content and permissions

You retain your rights in uploaded and created content. You grant us a limited, worldwide right to host, copy, transform, index, transmit and display it only as needed to provide, secure and improve the service under your instructions. You confirm that you have authority to upload and share the content and that collaborator permissions are appropriate. Deliberate publication creates a reviewed public snapshot; private project material is not published automatically.

Profiles, community posts, and public sharing

Your basic researcher profile may be publicly discoverable after onboarding, subject to the visibility controls in Settings. You choose whether posts are public, follower-visible, project-only or private. Public profiles and posts have stable links and may be indexed, cited, shared or previewed outside ResearchBuddy. You are responsible for having the rights and permissions needed for names, images, source links, drafts and other material you publish. A private CV is not a public attachment unless you expressly enable public access. Profile addresses are assigned uniquely from a name and remain stable to reduce impersonation and broken citations. Address changes require a request and may be denied when an address is reserved, assigned, or misleading.

Following, Collaborators, and Research Rooms

Following is a one-way subscription to public work. A Collaborator relationship requires acceptance and permits closer communication, subject to each person’s settings. Research Rooms and project channels preserve their originating post or project context. Do not add people, forward private material or invite external researchers without appropriate authority and consent. Invitation links expire and may be revoked.

Community conduct and moderation

Contribute in good faith: cite sources where appropriate, distinguish evidence from inference, disclose material conflicts, and challenge ideas without harassing people. We may remove content, limit reach, restrict contact, preserve evidence, suspend accounts or refer serious conduct when reasonably needed for safety, integrity or law. Reports do not guarantee removal. Where appropriate, we will provide notice and an appeal route. Blocks and mutes are private safety controls and must not be circumvented.

Assistant actions

The assistant can read permitted context, navigate, highlight and prepare actions through a controlled action registry. Changes are previewed according to your settings. Publishing, external communication, invitations, deletion, billing, authorship, permission changes and sensitive exports always require confirmation. You remain responsible for reviewing and authorizing actions. Audit and undo records do not guarantee every external effect can be reversed.

Publication pathways and opportunities

Pathways, readiness gates, venue suggestions, opportunity scans, and submission packages are organizational tools, not certification, editorial acceptance, ethics approval, or a guarantee of novelty, employment, publication, citation, or career outcome. You must verify source links, feasibility, venue requirements, authorship, contributor roles, data rights, ethics status, conflicts, and AI-use disclosures. A gate marked ready records a user assessment unless it is explicitly identified as independently verified.

Expert services and independent review

Researchers may offer methods, statistics, domain, reproducibility, integrity, language, or venue-fit services. A paid engagement compensates defined time and expertise and never a positive verdict, authorship position, citation, endorsement, acceptance, or fabricated result. Experts must accurately describe credentials, screen and disclose conflicts, protect confidential material, stay within scope, and provide an honest structured report. Clients may not pressure an expert to change a verdict or represent a platform profile or report as journal peer review, institutional approval, or ResearchBuddy certification. Open review calls disclose only the listing scope and the disclosure level chosen by the client. Applying does not grant access to a manuscript. Selection starts formal conflict screening before private material or funding is available. A human-led review may use assisted checking tools only when the expert retains responsibility and the review record identifies that mode; an automated self-check is not an independent expert or journal peer review.

Expert payment, fees, refunds, and tax

The price, currency, platform fee, scope, deliverables, confidentiality, and expected timing are displayed before funding. Expert payouts require identity, eligibility, tax, and bank checks by the connected payment provider. The client funds the engagement after conflict screening and expert acceptance. Payment remains independent of the verdict. Refunds, partial performance, cancellation, disputes, chargebacks, payout restrictions, and reversals are handled according to the engagement state, applicable law, payment-provider rules, and the facts of the service delivered. Experts are responsible for their own professional permissions and taxes unless law requires otherwise.

Institutional programs and supervision

Organizations may create cohorts, set integrity policies, assign supervisors, and sponsor review budgets. Program access does not give an administrator or supervisor access to private project content beyond their existing role. Institutions remain responsible for student notices, lawful enrollment, supervision, ethics governance, assessment rules, procurement, and any employment or education decision. Progress signals are advisory and require human review.

Free and paid plans

The Free plan includes the allowance shown on the pricing page and does not require payment. Pro and Lab renew monthly until canceled. Prices, currency, included credits, applicable tax treatment and renewal terms are shown before purchase. We may change future pricing with advance notice; a change does not alter an already-paid period.

Managed checkout and marketplace payments

Paid purchases originate in a hosted checkout. For plans and research credits, the provider identified during checkout may act as merchant of record where the checkout says so. Expert engagements use a connected marketplace payment: the platform processes the client payment, transfers the expert share to the expert’s connected account, and retains the disclosed platform fee. Payment providers control the payment page and process card, identity, bank, tax, payout, refund, dispute, and transaction-support data under their own terms. ResearchBuddy receives the identifiers and status needed to reconcile access and engagements.

Cancellation, refunds, and failed payment

You can cancel through the billing portal; access normally continues to the end of the paid period. Refund eligibility appears at checkout and is governed by the checkout terms, applicable consumer law and the nature of digital supply already performed. A failed, reversed, refunded or disputed payment may suspend paid access or reverse unused credits. Contact the payment provider for transaction issues and ResearchBuddy support for product-access issues.

Research credits

Credits are a limited, non-transferable license to use metered ResearchBuddy features. They are not money, stored value, cryptocurrency, property, or redeemable for cash. Included plan credits replenish according to the displayed plan. One-time packs do not renew and remain available while the account is open, subject to refunds, chargebacks, abuse controls and legally required treatment. Closing the account ends unused credits except where mandatory law requires otherwise.

Acceptable use

• Do not upload unlawfully obtained, malicious or unauthorized personal, confidential or paywalled content.
• Do not compromise blind review, embargoes, research participants, security controls or intellectual-property rights.
• Do not harass people, manipulate reputation, spam communities, evade rate limits or probe the service without written authorization.
• Do not use the service for illegal, high-risk autonomous decisions or activity prohibited by our necessary service providers.

Third-party services

Necessary hosting, payment, research-assistance, discovery and publishing providers operate under their own terms. We select and integrate providers with reasonable care, but do not control third-party content or uninterrupted provider availability. External links are supplied for research convenience, not endorsement. You may request our current subprocessor list through support.

Availability, suspension, and termination

We may modify or discontinue features, schedule maintenance, or suspend access reasonably necessary to protect users, comply with law, address payment failure or investigate material misuse. Where practical, we provide notice and an opportunity to export content. You may stop using the service and request account deletion at any time, subject to shared-record integrity and legal retention requirements.

Disclaimers and liability

To the extent permitted by law, the service is provided without a promise that every result, source, conversion or integration is error-free. We do not exclude liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including mandatory consumer rights. Otherwise, neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss that was not reasonably foreseeable. Any monetary cap must be interpreted consistently with mandatory law and does not apply to fraud, willful misconduct, confidentiality breaches, or infringement where exclusion is prohibited.

Governing rules and contact

Swedish law governs these terms, without depriving a consumer of mandatory protections available in their country of residence. Courts with jurisdiction under applicable law may hear disputes. Before filing a claim, contact support@researchbuddy.com so we can try to resolve it. We may update these terms prospectively and will request a new acknowledgement for material changes.