Legal Conditions of Use

Iris is intended to be a place of safe, respectful, productive and professional interactions among individuals engaged in the life sciences. By joining Iris as a member, you agree to help us create and maintain such an environment for yourself and for others. In particular, you agree to the following rules:

• Do not use fake or misleading names or photographs for your Iris account(s)
• Do not use language, images or ideas that are obscene or fundamentally political or religious in nature, without strong relevance to the life sciences
• Do not harrass, threaten, bully, libel or slander members of the Iris community or the broader community
• Do not incite hatred or violence toward anyone
• Do not plagiarize content or infringe on others' copyright
• Do not knowingly transmit false information
• Do not use scrapers, algorithms or other technical means to extract data from Iris about its members or the platform itself
• Do not use automated means to interact with Iris members, such as through messaging, posting or up- or downloading resources

Violators of these rules will be subject to punitive action as determined by Iris management, ranging from deletion of individual posts to account closure. Iris reserves the right to delete any content that appears to violate relevant local, national or international laws, including but not limited to copyright infringement, plagiarism or fraud.

If you wish to bring our attention to potential violations of these rules, simply click on the "Report post" button at the upper right of the relevant content. Alternatively, contact us at feedback@irisbio.org and provide sufficient explanation and a link to the relevant content.

By sending or uploading personal or professional data to Iris, you agree for Iris to maintain those data on its servers. Iris promises that your data will be handled only by partners with whom Iris has entered into a legally binding contract that includes protections guaranteed by relevant legislation based on the location of data storage.

Iris promises to make every effort to store indefinitely the content that you upload, but Iris will not be held liable for data loss due to factors outside its control, including but not limited to legal requirements, economic considerations and force majeure. Iris cannot guarantee the veracity of content that its members upload or share and therefore cannot be held liable for any consequences arising from false information. Iris will not exercise any ownership or intellectual property rights over any content that you upload to Iris. Iris promises never to sell, share or transfer to third parties the content that you upload or post on Iris, except for the purposes of routine data handling and storage by Iris' contractual partners. The sole exception is if a court of law or government agency issues a legally binding order to Iris to share information.

Iris may develop aggregate statistics about its members and share them with third parties for analytical, research or marketing purposes, but never at the level of single individuals in a way that would allow third parties to find out a given member's identity. Iris may use your data to train and improve artificial intelligence algorithms with the aim of helping members find and interact with one another within the Iris platform, but such models will never be made available to third parties for their benefit.

Iris may use cookies to collect data about you in order to facilitate your user experience, such as for logging into the Iris environment or filling out forms or menus within Iris. You are free to block these "essential" cookies, although it may affect your user experience. Advertisers on Iris may use cookies to capture aspects of your browsing behavior and certain information about your IP address (such as location), but you are free to block these "non-essential" cookies.

If you pay Iris for membership or other paid services, you agree to the terms and conditions applied by our payment service providers, who will store your payment information as needed for their operations and for legal compliance. You agree to the levying of any applicable taxes in addition to the net amount of the membership or services being purchased. You accept that any applicable taxes will be calculated based on the billing address that you provide. If you authorize recurring payments, such as a membership subscription, you consent to recurring billing even after the expiry date of your chosen payment method (e.g. credit card) in order to avoid suspension of the membership or other paid service.

Should you decide to close your Iris account, Iris promises to delete from its servers all data related to all Pages associated with your account (e.g. People, Lab, Marketplace, Nonprofit) within 15 days, except data that it considers necessary to retain for financial or legal compliance. Please note that any content from you that can be accessed outside your Pages, such as posts, reposts, comments and Communities, will not be deleted. If you delete your account and are the sole moderator of a Community, then the Community will continue existing but members will not be able to carry out any functions requiring moderator approval.

Iris reserves the right to modify these legal conditions of use and will endeavor to notify all users before the modifications enter into effect. Paying members will have the right to terminate their memberships without financial penalty in the event that they no longer agree with the conditions of use. Those who continue using Iris after a modification has taken effect will be considered to have consented to the new conditions of use.

If you have questions or concerns about what data Iris collects about you and how it is stored and protected, contact us at dataprotection@irisbio.org