Policies and Terms of Use

OrganicERs (Organic Education Resources) is a community of organic chemists working to improve organic chemistry teaching. Our website (https://organicers.org) facilitates the dissemination of learning materials to the wider organic chemistry community. It contains educational materials developed by chemistry educators and serves both as a repository for materials and as a user-friendly platform for social networking tools that facilitate virtual collaboration and community building. Since the goal of OrganicERs is to build a community of organic chemistry educators, we expect that the materials on this website will be downloaded and used by other members of the OrganicERs community.


By using this web site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand these terms and conditions of use ("Terms of Use" and "Policies") and agree to be bound by them. We may change or modify these Terms of Use and Policies from time to time. Please review these terms to ensure your acceptance. When this document is modified, changes will be posted on the OrganicERs website. All modifications will be binding to all users and registered members of OrganicERs when published on the OrganicERs website.

 

TERMS OF USE

Use of OrganicERs

  • Your use of OrganicERs, its materials, services, forums, and polls is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and OrganicERs.
  • You agree to use OrganicERs, its materials, services, forums, and polls only for purposes that are permitted by these Terms of Use.
  • You may use the materials, services, forums, polls, and web sites for legal purposes only. In connection with the use of OrganicERs, you are required to abide by all applicable federal, state, or local laws, including those pertaining to such areas as libel, slander, defamation, trade libel, product disparagement, harassment, invasion of privacy, tort, obscenity, indecency, and copyright or trademark infringement.
  • You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts any aspect of this website including, but not limited to, the materials, services, forums, and polls.
  • This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose without the express permission of OrganicERs. This applies both to materials found on OrganicERs and works derived from them. The materials found on OrganicERs are for non-commercial use only.
  • OrganicERs is an educational resource. While commercial resources (e.g., software and textbooks) may be discussed, posts that are solely commercial solicitations for products are not appropriate.
  • OrganicERs logos may be used without written permission for the purpose of providing a link to http://www.organicers.org and its associated web pages to educational end users. It may also be used on materials obtained from OrganicERs as a means of giving credit to the source of the materials. Other uses of OrganicERs logos shall be only with prior written permission (e-mail or hard copy) from the OrganicERs Leadership Board (https://www.organicers.org/?q=content/leadership-board). The OrganicERs Leadership Board may withhold approval at its sole discretion and reserves the right to terminate or modify permission to display the OrganicERs logo at any time.
  • The OrganicERs Leadership Board reserves the right to refuse service and/or terminate accounts at its own discretion if they believe that your conduct violates applicable law or is harmful to the interests of the OrganicERs Community, its members, and/or any third-party provider of digital content to the site, although they are under no obligation to do so.



Violations of Acceptable Use

The following constitute violations of the Terms of Use agreement.

  • Using materials found on the OrganicERs site in a way that is inconsistent with the Creative Commons license specified by the material's creator.
  • Uploading materials to the OrganicERs site that are protected under copyright, trademark, or trade secret laws unless the express authorization of the owner is provided.
  • Selling materials found on the OrganicERs site that are protected under copyright, trademark, or trade secret laws unless the express authorization of the owner is provided.
  • Publishing materials found on the OrganicERs site that are protected under copyright, trademark, or trade secret laws unless the express authorization of the owner is obtained.
  • Posting materials that are likely to defame or invade the privacy of any individual.
  • Posting materials that are solely commercial solicitations for products and services.
  • Collecting personal data of registered members from the member profiles found on OrganicERs without proper authorization.
  • Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail or bulk-mail to registered members.




PARTICIPATION IN OrganicERs FORUMS AND COMMENTING ON OrganicERs

OrganicERs enables registered users of its site to post and/or submit comments to the site. Other registered users of the site may browse comments. If you post comments on the site, you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all the rights to the comments that you post on this site and that use of your comments by the site will not infringe upon or violate the rights of any third party. The OrganicERs Leadership Board has the right but not the obligation to edit or remove any user comments at any time. Neither the comments nor content on OrganicERs, nor the links to other Web sites, are screened, approved, reviewed, or endorsed by the OrganicERs Leadership Board or its sponsors. The OrganicERs Leadership Board takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party


Any comments that you submit to the site become public information. Therefore, you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information. Unsubscribing from OrganicERs will not remove any name, email address, or information that was part of any previous posting from any archive.


USE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY FOUND on OrganicERs AND THE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE

Members of the OrganicERs Community recognize the effort and commitment of the many kinds of community members who participate in building and sustaining the repository and services that comprise OrganicERs. To protect the membership and its contributions to the community, OrganicERs has adopted the intellectual property (IP) protection policies of the consortium Creative Commons (CC, http://creativecommons.org) to 1) encourage creators of online materials to share their work with others who might wish to reuse the materials in creative ways, and 2) ensure that contributions of materials to OrganicERs by members of the OrganicERs Community are protected from misuse and abuse.


Through the CC license, it is possible to specify copyright terms that range between full copyright - all rights reserved - and the public domain - no rights reserved. Descriptions of the types of CC licenses and the restrictions associated with each license can be found at http://creativecommons.org/about/license.  CC licenses are attached to all content on OrganicERs and authorize everyone who encounters the work to use it in a way that is consistent with the license.


Neither the OrganicERs Community nor Leadership Board owns rights to the content contained in OrganicERs; content is owned by the member who created and contributed it to OrganicERs. The OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents review content submitted to OrganicERs only for topical suitability (relevance to organic chemistry). Content is subject to copyright and other proprietary rights protection as specified in the CC license. By viewing, downloading, and using the content accessible through the Services on this site, you agree that you will not violate any of those copyright or other proprietary rights and that you will comply with the CC licensing terms that the author has specified. It is your obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing, using, or distributing content found on OrganicERs. Appropriate citations are expected. You must make your own assessments of rights considering the intended use of the content.


UPLOADING CONTENT TO OrganicERs

When you upload materials to OrganicERs, you certify that you are the owner of the rights to everything in the materials that you are making available. You certify that you have verified that you have not uploaded materials that are owned by others. Specific examples of materials that you do not own include, but are not limited to:

  • published manuscripts;
  • supplemental materials associated with published manuscripts;
  • materials such as figures, problems, or examples copied from textbooks.
 

As part of the submission process, you will be required to select a CC license (http://creativecommons.org/about/license/).  As part of this process, you will choose a set of conditions that you wish to apply to your work and a license that indicates how others may use your creative work. You authorize the display and reproduction of all materials that you submit to OrganicERs under the terms of the CC license that you have specified. You (or your institution, as applicable) retain your respective individual intellectual property rights regarding individual resources contributed to OrganicERs.


The page on OrganicERs that contains your contributed material will include your name and affiliation, the materials that you have submitted, and the CC license. Because it is likely that other members of the OrganicERs Community will download your work, you may wish to mark all documents with a statement such as

Created by [author, author affiliation, author email] and posted on OrganicERs on [date/year], Copyright [name, year]. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons [name of license you choose] License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/about/license 


A member of the OrganicERs Leadership Council or a community reviewer will check your materials for relevance to the field of organic chemistry. After this process, your learning object will be posted to OrganicERs.  Learning objects will be available only to registered members of the OrganicERs Community with faculty status.


COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

You are responsible for any information or materials you place on OrganicERs. The OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents have no obligation to monitor or control any material that is or becomes available in OrganicERs. The OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents reserve the right to review any material that is or becomes available on the site. The OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents reserve the right to refuse to post or to remove any materials that are, in our judgment, unacceptable, undesirable or in violation of this policy. However, the OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents have no obligation to exercise such reservation of rights. The OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents will, in appropriate circumstances, terminate the accounts of users who infringe the intellectual property rights of others. The OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents will terminate access for content providers or service participants who are found to repeatedly provide material without necessary rights or permissions.


If you believe that your work has been used or copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please notify the OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents in writing as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. For the OrganicERs Leadership Board and its agents to act on your notice, you must be authorized to enforce the copyrights that you allege have been infringed. When informing OrganicERs of an alleged infringement:

  • Identify the copyrighted work that allegedly has been infringed. If multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are involved, please provide a representative list of such works on the site.
  • Describe the material that is claimed to be infringing and provide sufficient information to permit the OrganicERs Leadership Board or their agents to locate that material.
  • Provide your contact information including an e-mail address, telephone number, and mailing address.
  • Certify or include a statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the copyright-protected material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, the owner's agent, or law.
  • Certify that the information that you have provided to the OrganicERs Leadership Board is accurate. Attest under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to enforce the copyrights that you allege have been infringed.
  • Include your physical or electronic signature.

Without the information listed above, the OrganicERs Leadership Board may not be able to act on your complaint promptly or at all.


If you know, or have reason to believe, that there has been a violation of these Policies or Agreement, please contact a member of the OrganicERs Leadership Board (listed at https://www.organicers.org/?q=content/leadership-board).  Please provide as much information as possible such as: the date and time of the alleged violation; evidence of the alleged violation; name, IP address, or URL of alleged violator. The absence of such information may render the OrganicERs Leadership Board unable to act upon your report of violation.


The OrganicERs Leadership Board wants to hear from any copyright owners who are not properly identified on this web site so that we may make the necessary corrections.


DISCLAIMERS

This site (OrganicERs) and the Services provided on it is provided by the OrganicERs Community on an "as is" basis. OrganicERs makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, as to the operation of the site or the information, content, materials, or products included on this site. To the full extent permissible by applicable law, OrganicERs disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. OrganicERs will not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from the use of this site, including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, incidental, punitive, and consequential damages.


All activities described on the OrganicERs website involving the use of chemicals, instrumentation, or other apparatuses are intended to be carried out by chemistry practitioners with sufficient training in the chemical sciences for safe performance of these activities. Anyone unsure of their ability to carry out an activity should refrain from carrying out the activity. The use of chemicals, especially those with demonstrative effects, is often potentially hazardous, and requires the use of appropriate equipment, clothing, precaution, care, education, training, and, above all, common sense. The OrganicERs Leadership Board bears no responsibility for your safety or the safety of any students or third parties who may be harmed because of these activities. The OrganicERs Leadership Board has the right but not the obligation to remove any experiment or demo they feel to be unsafe.


OrganicERs reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse, or remove content from any Service. You understand that by using the Services you may be exposed to content that you may find offensive or objectionable and that, in this respect, you use the Services at your own risk. If you feel you might be offended by the content of a Service, you should not continue.


Questions or comments regarding this Agreement should be sent to OrganicERs leadership board members at webadmins@organicers.org.