Terms of Service

About these terms

These terms govern your use of Palimpsa, a web-based research and writing service at palimpsa.com (the “Service”). They form a contract between you and the Provider.

Provider. “We”, “us” and the “Provider” mean [LEGAL NAME OF CURRENT TRADING ENTITY], a company registered in [England and Wales] under number [NUMBER], with its registered office at [ADDRESS]. From the Transfer Date set out in section 13, the Provider will be Aleten [LEGAL FORM], company number [NUMBER], registered office [ADDRESS] (“Aleten”).

Contact. [SUPPORT EMAIL ADDRESS].

By creating an account, paying for a plan or using the Service, you accept these terms. If you use the Service for an organisation, you confirm that you may bind it, and “you” then includes that organisation.

Accounts and eligibility

You must be 13 or over to hold an account. If you are under 16, you must consult your parent or guardian before using the Service.

You agree to give accurate registration details, keep your sign-in credentials secure, and tell us promptly if you suspect unauthorised use. You are responsible for activity under your account. Solo and Pro accounts are for one named person. Team plans may be used by the seats you have paid for.

Plans, price and payment

The plans, features and prices shown at palimpsa.com/pricing when you buy form part of your contract. Solo is free. Pro and any founding or annual offer are paid plans. Prices are shown [excluding / including] VAT, and VAT is added at checkout where it applies.

• Billing. Paid plans are billed in advance, monthly or annually, through Stripe. We never see or store your full card details.
• Renewal. Annual plans renew automatically for another year unless you cancel before the renewal date. We will email you [14–30] days before an annual renewal, with the price.
• Price changes. We may change prices for future renewal periods. We will give you at least [30] days’ notice, and a change never applies to a period you have already paid for.
• Team plans. Team plans are invoiced annually in advance and payable within [30] days of the invoice date.
• Failed payments. If a payment fails we will retry and notify you. If it remains unpaid after [14] days, we may suspend paid features until it is paid. Your documents stay available to you for export.

Cancellation and refunds

The cancellation and refund terms for paid plans are still under legal review. The proposed terms are set out in our Refund Policy. Paid checkout is not active, and no paid subscription is currently being sold.

The final version will explain how to cancel, what consumer cancellation rights apply, whether any payment is due for service already supplied, what happens to unused subscription time, and when an approved refund will be returned. We will publish consistent details here and in the Refund Policy before checkout opens.

This section does not affect your legal rights, including your rights if digital content is faulty, not as described, or not fit for purpose.

Your documents. After cancellation or downgrade, your documents stay available to you read-only for [30] days so that you can export them. After that we delete them, unless the law requires us to keep them.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the Service unlawfully, or infringe anyone’s intellectual property, privacy or other rights;
• present a quotation, citation or source as verified when it was not, or use the Service to fabricate evidence;
• breach academic integrity, publishing or research-conduct rules that apply to you, your institution or your publisher. You remain responsible for submitted work and any tool disclosures those rules require;
• bypass or interfere with usage limits, metering, security measures or fair-use controls, including the research feature;
• scrape, copy or resell the Service or its output at scale, or place an unreasonable load on it;
• upload malware or attempt unauthorised access to the Service or other users’ content; or
• reverse engineer the Service, except to the extent the law allows despite this restriction.

We may investigate suspected breaches and take action under section 12.

Research features and verification

What the features do. Palimpsa’s research features, such as finding a supporting passage or checking citations, run only when you click them. They do not write, rewrite or complete your text.

What is sent, and to whom. When you run a research feature, the excerpt you select and your query are sent to Google through the Gemini API so relevant passages can be found and ranked. We use Google’s paid API service. Google states that for paid services it does not use prompts or responses to improve its products. Google may keep logs of requests for a limited period to detect misuse. The Privacy Notice explains this in full.

What “verified” means. A quotation marked as verified means the Service has checked that the quoted words appear exactly in the source text it retrieved or that you uploaded. Verification does not mean the source is accurate, current, peer reviewed or free of retraction, that the quotation is representative or used in context, or that the retrieved copy matches the version of record.

Limits. Verification is available only for sources the Service can retrieve, such as many open-access works, or that you upload. For other sources we make no verification claim.

Your responsibility. AI output can be wrong, incomplete or biased. Check every passage, citation and page reference against the original before relying on it, publishing it or submitting it. We do not guarantee output accuracy or take responsibility for decisions you make based on it.

Availability. Research features depend on third-party services. They may be metered, subject to fair-use limits, or change as models and providers change.

Your content

You own the documents, notes and other material you create or upload (“Your Content”). We do not claim ownership of it.

You give us a limited licence to host, store, process and display Your Content only as needed to provide the Service. That includes sending an excerpt to our AI provider when you run a research feature, as described in section 6. We do not use Your Content to train AI models, and we do not allow our providers to do so for the Service.

You promise that you have the right to use Your Content with the Service, and that it does not infringe anyone’s rights or break the law. We may remove content that is unlawful or breaches these terms.

Palimpsa keeps a local working copy of your documents for editing and offline access. To provide real-time collaboration, shared documents are also processed and synchronized on our servers. You are responsible for keeping your own backups and exporting your work before you cancel. See the Privacy Notice for the service providers and retention details.

Our intellectual property

The Service, including its software, design, text, logos and the names Palimpsa and Aleten, belongs to us or our licensors. These terms give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service for its intended purpose while your account is active. They give you no other rights in it.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without restriction or payment.

Third-party services and sources

The Service retrieves material from outside sources, including scholarly databases such as arXiv, OpenAlex and Crossref, and uses providers such as Google (research features) and Stripe (payments). We do not control these services. Their availability, content and terms are theirs, and they may change or stop at any time.

Copyright in source material belongs to its owners. You are responsible for using quotations, citations and retrieved text lawfully, including any licence, quotation or fair-dealing limits that apply to your use.

We do not guarantee that any source can be retrieved, that its content is accurate, or that a source remains available.

Availability, changes and support

We provide the Service with reasonable skill and care. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error free. We may carry out maintenance, and we may add, change or remove features. If we remove a feature from a paid plan in a way that materially reduces what you paid for, we will tell you and you may cancel for a refund of the unused part of your paid period.

Some features may be offered as beta or early access. They may be less reliable and may change or end without notice.

Support is by email at [SUPPORT EMAIL ADDRESS]. We aim to reply within [2] working days. Pro and Team plans receive priority handling.

Liability

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

Consumers. If you are a consumer, we are responsible for foreseeable loss and damage caused by our breach of these terms or our negligence. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable. Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected.

Business customers. If you use the Service for business or professional purposes, then to the extent the law allows: (a) we are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill or data, or for indirect or consequential loss; and (b) our total liability to you arising from or in connection with the Service in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period.

Academic and publishing outcomes. The Service is a tool to help you find and check sources. We are not responsible for the outcome of a submission, peer review, assessment, publication decision or misconduct finding, which depends on your work and your own checking.

Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service and cancel your plan at any time, as set out in section 4.

We may suspend or end your account if you materially breach these terms, do not pay, we reasonably believe your use is unlawful or harmful to others or the Service, or the law requires it. Where reasonable, we will warn you first and give you a chance to fix the problem. If we end your paid plan for a reason that is not your breach, we will refund the unused part of your paid period.

When your account ends, your right to use the Service stops and section 4 applies to your documents. Sections that by their nature should continue, including those on liability, intellectual property and governing law, continue after termination.

Transfer of the Service to Aleten

The Service is currently provided by the Provider named in section 1. We intend to transfer the Service, and our rights and obligations under these terms, to Aleten, a company in the same group. We will give you at least [30] days’ written notice by email and on our website, stating the date of transfer (the “Transfer Date”).

On the Transfer Date:

• Aleten becomes the Provider and takes over obligations to you, including obligations for periods you have already paid for. Your plan, price, term and rights stay the same;
• these terms continue to apply, and the Provider that transfers the Service is released from obligations arising after the Transfer Date; and
• Aleten becomes responsible for your personal data under the Privacy Notice, with the same protections.

If you do not want to continue with Aleten, you may cancel before the Transfer Date and we will refund the unused part of your paid period.

Until the Transfer Date, Aleten is not a party to these terms. We may not otherwise transfer these terms without telling you, and a transfer will not reduce your rights. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our written consent.

Changes, governing law and contact

Changes. We may update these terms, for example for legal reasons or to reflect changes to the Service. We will give you at least [30] days’ notice of material changes by email. If you do not accept a change, you may cancel before it takes effect and we will refund the unused part of your paid period. Continuing to use the Service after the change takes effect means you accept it.

Governing law. These terms and any dispute about them are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts, and the law of your part of the UK applies to your mandatory consumer rights. The courts of England and Wales have non-exclusive jurisdiction.

General. These terms are the whole agreement between you and the Provider about the Service. If part is unenforceable, the rest continues. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it. A person who is not a party has no right to enforce these terms.

Contact. [SUPPORT EMAIL ADDRESS]. Our registered details are in section 1.