Terms & Conditions

1. About The Research Papyrus Lab

The Research Papyrus Lab is an international research-training group and academic collaboration initiative. RPL provides educational, research-training, project-management, and academic collaboration opportunities.

RPL is currently operated as a research group/initiative and is not yet registered as a separate legal entity. These Terms may be updated if RPL's legal status changes.

Official website: https://www.theresearchpapyruslab.com/
Official contact email: [email protected]

2. Eligibility

The RPL website, member portal, courses, workshops, and projects are intended for users aged 18 years or older, including medical students, doctors, researchers, allied health professionals, and other academic or professional collaborators.

RPL may manually review membership applications and may approve or reject applications at its discretion.

3. User Accounts

Users are responsible for providing accurate and up-to-date information, maintaining the confidentiality of their login details, not sharing their account with others, not using another person's account, and informing RPL if they suspect unauthorized account access.

RPL may suspend or remove accounts that provide false information, misuse the platform, breach these Terms, or create privacy, security, academic, or ethical risks.

4. User Roles

RPL may assign users different roles, including member, moderator, founder, instructor, project manager, or administrator.

Access rights may differ according to role. Users must not attempt to access areas, files, data, or communications for which they are not authorized.

5. No Patient Data

Users must not upload, share, discuss, or transmit identifiable patient information through the website, portal, Google Forms, Google Drive, WhatsApp groups, or any RPL-related platform.

Prohibited patient data includes patient names, medical record numbers, identifiable clinical images, hospital documents, consent forms, laboratory reports, radiology images containing identifiers, or any confidential or identifiable health information.

RPL may remove such material immediately and may suspend or terminate the user's access.

6. Acceptable Use

Users agree not to: upload patient-identifiable data; share private WhatsApp links, Google Drive links, or project files externally; harass, insult, threaten, discriminate against, or abuse other members; use member contact details for spam, advertising, or unrelated purposes; upload malicious files, viruses, or harmful code; attempt to access restricted accounts, folders, or systems; misrepresent their identity, qualifications, publications, or institutional affiliation; claim RPL endorsement, authorship, certificates, or project roles falsely; share unpublished manuscripts or confidential project files without permission; use RPL materials for unauthorized commercial, academic, or training purposes; or engage in plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, gift authorship, ghost authorship, duplicate submission, or other research misconduct.

7. Courses and Workshops

RPL may offer free and paid courses, workshops, webinars, or training activities.

Registration does not guarantee acceptance unless confirmation is issued by RPL. RPL may set course-specific requirements, including attendance, assessments, feedback forms, deadlines, and participation rules.

RPL may record sessions where appropriate. Unless explicitly stated, users may not download, redistribute, sell, reproduce, or share course recordings, slides, materials, templates, forms, or other educational content.

8. Certificates

RPL may issue certificates for selected courses, workshops, or activities.

Certificate eligibility may depend on minimum attendance, completion of required assessments, achievement of a minimum passing score, submission of required forms or feedback, compliance with course rules, and verification of the participant's identity and registration details.

RPL may refuse, delay, correct, or revoke a certificate if the user provides false information, fails to meet requirements, breaches course rules, or engages in misconduct.

9. Research Projects and Opportunities

RPL may advertise or manage research projects and academic opportunities, including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, surveys, original studies, editorials, letters, educational projects, and other forms of scholarly work.

Joining a project does not guarantee authorship, acknowledgment, publication, certificate issuance, recommendation letters, future project allocation, paid work, academic promotion, or acceptance into RPL leadership or moderator roles.

Project allocation, continuation, contribution recognition, and authorship are determined according to project needs, contribution, quality of work, deadlines, accountability, and RPL's Publication Ethics and Authorship Policy.

10. Authorship and Contribution

Authorship decisions are determined by RPL leadership, project leaders, and supervising senior authors according to contribution records, project requirements, journal requirements, and accepted publication-ethics standards.

Administrative participation, course attendance, group membership, payment, attendance at meetings, or joining a project group does not automatically qualify a person for authorship.

Members who do not complete assigned tasks, miss deadlines, submit poor-quality work, breach confidentiality, or fail to respond may be removed from a project or moved to acknowledgment only, where appropriate.

11. Google Drive and WhatsApp

RPL may use Google Drive and WhatsApp for communication and file-sharing.

Users agree not to share group links outside approved members, share Drive links externally, download and redistribute internal files without permission, add unauthorized persons to groups or folders, copy unpublished project materials into external platforms without permission, or use group discussions or files for purposes outside the approved project.

RPL may remove users from WhatsApp groups, Drive folders, or project spaces if necessary.

12. Payments and Refunds

Some RPL courses or workshops may be free, while others may be paid. Payment is not currently processed directly through the website. Course announcements and registration may be managed through Google Forms or other external tools.

Where payment applies, the Refund and Cancellation Policy applies in addition to these Terms.

Unless otherwise stated in a specific course announcement: a full refund may be requested before the course or workshop starts; no refund is guaranteed after access to live sessions, course materials, recordings, or restricted course resources has been provided; if RPL cancels a paid course or workshop, participants will be offered a refund or transfer to a future equivalent activity where possible; refund requests must be sent to the official contact email.

13. Intellectual Property

RPL materials, including course slides, recordings, templates, forms, checklists, educational documents, project-management systems, website content, logos, branding, and original training materials, are owned by RPL or licensed to RPL unless otherwise stated.

Users may not copy, reproduce, distribute, sell, publish, modify, or reuse RPL materials without prior written permission.

Users retain rights to their own uploaded CVs, publication lists, academic information, and original contributions, subject to any project-specific agreements, journal policies, authorship agreements, and collaboration requirements.

14. User-Submitted Content

By submitting content to RPL, users confirm that the content is accurate to the best of their knowledge, they have the right to submit it, it does not contain patient-identifiable data, it does not infringe copyright or confidentiality obligations, and it does not contain fabricated, falsified, defamatory, abusive, or unlawful material.

RPL may remove content that violates these Terms.

15. Educational Disclaimer

RPL provides educational, academic, research-training, project-management, and collaboration services. RPL does not provide medical advice, legal advice, financial advice, or guaranteed publication services.

Course participation, project participation, or membership does not guarantee journal acceptance, academic success, authorship, employment, scholarship acceptance, or professional advancement.

16. External Links and Third-Party Platforms

The website may contain links to external websites and platforms, including Google Forms, Google Drive, WhatsApp, ORCID, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, journals, social-media platforms, and payment or transfer services.

RPL is not responsible for the content, availability, privacy practices, security, or terms of third-party platforms.

17. Suspension or Termination

RPL may suspend or terminate a user's access if the user breaches these Terms, violates privacy or confidentiality rules, shares patient-identifiable data, engages in research misconduct, harasses or abuses other users, shares private links or materials externally, misuses the RPL name, logo, files, or opportunities, provides false information, or creates legal, academic, ethical, or security risk.

18. Limitation of Responsibility

To the extent permitted by applicable law, RPL is not responsible for third-party platform failures, loss of access to WhatsApp, Google Drive, email, or external tools, journal rejection or publication delays, missed opportunities caused by user inactivity or missed deadlines, unauthorized sharing by other users, technical errors outside RPL's reasonable control, or user misuse of files, links, course materials, or member data.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability where exclusion is not permitted by applicable law.

19. Governing Law and Disputes

RPL is currently based primarily in Egypt and operates internationally as an unregistered research group/initiative.

Where possible, users agree to attempt to resolve disputes amicably by contacting: [email protected]

Any mandatory consumer, privacy, or data-protection rights under applicable law remain unaffected. This section should be reviewed and updated once RPL becomes a registered legal entity.

20. Changes to These Terms

RPL may update these Terms from time to time. Updated Terms will be posted on the website with a revised "Last updated" date. Continued use of the website, portal, courses, projects, or RPL services after the update means that the user has reviewed and accepted the updated Terms.