Disclaimer

SciBeacon is a research support platform—not a medical device, diagnostic system, legal adviser, or substitute for professional judgment. By creating an account you agree to this Disclaimer together with our Terms of service and Privacy policy (version 2026-06-06) as a single binding contract.

1. BINDING LEGAL AND DATA AGREEMENT

This Disclaimer is an integral part of the SciBeacon Legal & Data Agreement. When you register, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by this Disclaimer, the Terms of service, and the Privacy policy in full. If you do not agree, you must not use the platform. Your acceptance is recorded with a timestamp and document version (2026-06-06) for audit purposes.

2. NOT MEDICAL OR CLINICAL ADVICE

Content generated or suggested by SciBeacon does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, treatment recommendations, or clinical decision support for individual patients. Do not use outputs for direct patient care, prescribing, or emergency decisions. Always follow local clinical guidelines, institutional protocols, and qualified clinical supervision.

3. NOT LEGAL OR REGULATORY ADVICE

We do not provide legal, ethics-board, regulatory submission, or data-protection legal advice. You are solely responsible for ethics approval, trial registration, GDPR/HIPAA compliance, journal AI-disclosure rules, and funder requirements. Nothing on this platform replaces counsel from your institution or qualified advisers.

4. DATA AGREEMENT AND PATIENT PRIVACY

Under the data agreement incorporated into your registration, you contractually agree that:

• You will not upload, enter, or process patient-identifiable information or Protected Health Information (PHI) unless your organisation has explicitly approved such use and you hold all required approvals.
• You are the data controller for research content you submit; SciBeacon processes it only to deliver the service you request, as described in the Privacy policy.
• You will de-identify data before entry where patient-linked information could otherwise appear (HIPAA Safe Harbor, GDPR pseudonymisation, or equivalent).
• You accept that data is protected by encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and encryption at rest (AES-256), but that no system is perfectly secure and you must protect credentials and workspace access.
• You will report breaches involving patient or confidential data to your data protection officer and to us without undue delay.

Full technical and organisational measures are set out in the Privacy policy sections on patient privacy, encryption, and security.

5. AI LIMITATIONS AND HUMAN-IN-THE-LOOP SAFEGUARDS

AI-assisted features are subject to mandatory human oversight under this agreement:

• Models may hallucinate citations, statistics, methods, or facts—you must verify every claim against primary sources.
• Screening scores, Bloom classifications, and editorial assessments are estimates only, not definitive judgments for inclusion or publication.
• Statistical and protocol suggestions require review by a qualified statistician or methodologist before use.
• Manuscript drafts require human authorship, revision, and disclosure per journal and ICMJE/COPE policies; AI text is never submission-ready without review.
• Human-in-the-loop: no automated output from SciBeacon may be relied on without your explicit professional sign-off at each critical step.
• Your content sent to AI providers is processed only to fulfil your request and is not used for model training where we can configure that restriction.

6. USER RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

By agreeing to this Disclaimer you accept personal and institutional accountability for:

• Accuracy, integrity, and final form of all work you publish or submit
• Compliance with research ethics, plagiarism, and authorship standards
• Lawful basis for processing any personal data you introduce into workflows
• Configuration of access controls for users under your organisation
• Costs of third-party API usage (e.g. LLM providers) shown in Analytics

7. LITERATURE AND EVIDENCE LIMITATIONS

Search and screening depend on external databases, query design, and model behaviour. Absence of a retrieved record does not prove novelty; a retrieved record does not prove equivalence or quality. You must perform independent verification and follow PRISMA, STROBE, CONSORT, or other applicable reporting standards where required.

7a. THIRD-PARTY AND INFRASTRUCTURE DEPENDENCIES

SciBeacon relies on hosting providers, database services, authentication systems, and third-party APIs—including large language model providers (e.g. Google Gemini, OpenRouter), literature databases, citation services, and cloud infrastructure. We are not responsible for outages, rate limits, degraded performance, model errors, or unavailability caused by third-party services or factors outside our direct control. During external provider failures, features may be limited or unavailable without liability for resulting delays, incomplete outputs, or interrupted research workflows.

8. NO GUARANTEE OF PUBLICATION OR OUTCOMES

Journal matching, gap analysis, editorial scores, and protocol templates are indicative tools only. Editors, reviewers, ethics committees, and regulators make independent decisions. SciBeacon does not guarantee manuscript acceptance, funding, ethics approval, or citation impact.

9. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, SciBeacon and its operators disclaim liability for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising from use of the platform, reliance on AI outputs, data loss, or regulatory non-compliance attributable to your submissions. Your indemnity obligations in the Terms of service apply to claims arising from your breach of this Disclaimer or the Privacy policy.

10. CHANGES AND CONTACT

We may update this Disclaimer when the service or law changes. Material updates will be reflected by the "Last updated" date. Continued use after notice may constitute acceptance of the revised agreement where permitted by law. Questions: Contact us.