Submission Agreement

By submitting a manuscript to XSci, I agree to the following terms:

1. Rights and Authorization

I certify one of the following, according to which is true of me:

(a) I certify that I am the author of this work, or I have been authorized by all co-authors to submit this work on their behalf; or (b) I am neither. I am uploading this work in order to obtain a private assessment of it. I certify that the work is already publicly available, that I obtained my copy from that public source, that I am not authorised to act for its authors, and that I make no grant of rights in the work itself. I understand that XSci will not publish this work, will not issue a DOI for it, and will not licence it to anyone.

If I submit this work on behalf of one or more authors, I confirm that I have obtained all necessary permissions and authorizations from the relevant co-authors or rights holders to make the submission and to grant the rights described in this agreement.

I certify that I have the right to grant the licenses described in this agreement.

If I certified (a), I confirm that every author listed on this work is a person. No AI system, model, tool or service is listed as an author. I understand that the authors are responsible for the entire manuscript, including any part produced with AI assistance.

I certify that this work is original and does not infringe upon the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party.

2. License Grant to XSci

I grant XSci LTD a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to:

Store and process the manuscript for the purpose of providing XSci’s review, analysis, reporting, and related publication services, including AI-assisted human review where applicable
Display and distribute the published version of the manuscript through the XSci platform
Where available and applicable, assign a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) to the published work
Maintain, display, distribute, and where appropriate share relevant publication metadata or related records for discovery, citation, indexing, archival, or operational purposes
Where my paper is public — deposited publicly on XSci, or linked at deposit to a public DOI or arXiv version — licence published content and reviewer reports on it to third parties, including organisations that develop AI systems, as described in the AI and Data Usage Disclosure. My uploaded manuscript file is never licensed, and where my paper is not public nothing about it is licensed.

Where you certified under §1(b), §2 grants nothing, because you hold nothing to grant. XSci's rights in the assessment it commissions arise from its own contract with the reviewer, not from this section.

3. Author Retains Copyright

I retain full copyright to my work. This agreement does not transfer ownership of my intellectual property to XSci.

4. Public Access and Reuse

I understand and agree that, once published on the XSci platform, my work may be made publicly accessible for reading, citation, and link sharing. Unless otherwise expressly stated by XSci, no person or entity may reproduce the full text, create derivative works, use the work for commercial purposes, or redistribute the work on another platform, repository, or database without appropriate authorization from the copyright holder or other applicable rights basis. XSci may, however, display, distribute, and provide metadata relating to the published work for discovery, indexing, citation, and archiving purposes. Where my paper is public, XSci may also licence the published version and reviewer reports on it to third parties as described in the AI and Data Usage Disclosure. That is a licence granted by XSci under the rights I grant in section 2, and does not affect my copyright.

5. AI Processing Consent

I understand and consent that:

My manuscript may be processed by AI models to support analysis, assessment, report generation, and other review-related services provided by XSci
AI-generated outputs may be provided on their own or alongside human review, depending on the applicable service model and workflow
My manuscript will NOT be used to train AI models — not by XSci, and not by anyone else. Where my paper is public, the published version and reviewer reports on it may be licensed to third parties including AI developers, as described in the AI and Data Usage Disclosure. The file I upload is never licensed, and where my paper is not public, nothing about it goes to anyone.

Where you certified under §1(b), this work is not your manuscript, and nothing in this section is a consent you are able to give on the authors' behalf. XSci does not treat it as one. The work is not licensed and is not used to train any model. What may be licensed is the assessment, with the paper's public identifier and nothing that names its authors, as part of a corpus for research and technological development; the authors are not written to individually and may object at any time: see AI and Data Usage Disclosure 4.7 and 5.5.7. You may ask XSci to tell the authors that the assessment exists and to offer them the report (4.7(d)).

AI processing is a core part of certain XSci services

6. Permanence of Publication

I understand that:

Once published, my work may become part of the permanent scholarly record
XSci may retain the scholarly record of published submissions and may not be able to completely remove all versions, records, or metadata associated with a published submission
If I request withdrawal after publication, XSci may indicate the withdrawal status of the work and may retain associated metadata (such as title, authors, and DOI), publication records, and links or references relating to the withdrawal
Pre-publication submissions may be withdrawn, suspended, or removed in accordance with the applicable submission and review workflow

7. Originality and Ethics

I confirm that:

The work has not been previously published in a form that would prevent publication on XSci (unless disclosed)
The work is not simultaneously under review at another venue with an exclusivity policy (unless disclosed)
All sources are properly cited
All co-authors have approved submission
The work complies with applicable research ethics, legal, and regulatory requirements, including, where applicable, requirements relating to human subjects, animal research, privacy, confidentiality, and necessary approvals or consents
Any required disclosures, permissions, approvals, or consents have been obtained and will be accurately disclosed where applicable
Any use of AI in producing the work has been declared, naming what was used and which aspects of the work it was used for — or, where no AI was used, I have said so. All use is declared, down to spelling, grammar, formatting, translation and literature searching. Declaring AI use is not held against my manuscript

8. XSci's Rights

XSci reserves the right to:

Reject, decline, or discontinue consideration of any submission at its discretion
Reclassify, recategorize, or otherwise organize submissions in a manner appropriate to the XSci platform and its services
Remove, suspend, restrict access to, or otherwise take appropriate action with respect to any submission or published work that may violate these Terms, the Code of Conduct, applicable law, ethical standards, third-party rights, or platform safety and integrity requirements
Add, edit, or standardize metadata, DOI information, citations, labels, and formatting associated with submitted or published works for operational, discovery, indexing, citation, archival, and publication purposes

By clicking "Submit," I confirm that I have read, understood, and agree to this Submission Agreement.