Terms and conditions

Last updated 20 October 2026

1. Agreement

These terms are between you and [LEGAL ENTITY NAME AND REGISTERED ADDRESS] (“CIT.ED”, “we”, “us”). They cover the CIT.ED apps and the website at cit.education. By creating an account or using the service, you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use CIT.ED. Our privacy policy and refund policy form part of this agreement.

2. Your account

• You must be at least 13. If the law where you live sets a higher age for agreeing to online services, you must meet that age or have a parent or guardian’s permission.
• Give accurate information when you sign up, and keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account.
• One person, one account, unless we agree otherwise in writing. Do not sell, rent or transfer your account or handle.
• Verification establishes who you are: a person at CIT.ED reviews your application, for example by matching an ORCID iD to published work or checking an institutional email. A verified badge does not mean we have checked, endorsed or agree with anything you go on to say. We may revoke a badge that was obtained with false information.
• You can delete your account at any time in the app (Settings → Delete account). The privacy policy explains what that removes.

3. Your content and who owns it

You keep ownership of everything you post. We claim no ownership of your videos, audio, text, images, listings or research summaries.

So that we can run the service, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt for technical purposes (such as resizing, transcoding or translating into another language), publish and display your content on CIT.ED, and to show it to the people you have published it to. This licence exists only to operate and promote the service, and it ends when you delete the content or your account, except that:

• copies may remain in backups for a short period;
• where someone else has cited, quoted or built on your post within their own post, their post remains theirs; and
• we may keep moderation records as described in section 12.

You confirm you have the rights to everything you post, including any video, audio, image, figure or document you upload, and that posting it does not break anyone else’s rights or any law.

4. Rules of the platform

Do not use CIT.ED to:

• misrepresent what research says, including presenting an association as proof of cause, or attributing a finding to a paper that does not support it;
• present personal experience, opinion or marketing as scientific evidence, or mislabel a post to make it look better evidenced than it is;
• impersonate a person or institution, or claim authorship of research, a paper, a podcast or a university membership that is not yours;
• publish someone else’s private information, or content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, defamatory, sexually explicit or violent;
• give medical, legal, financial or other professional advice presented as instruction to act, rather than as research explained;
• post spam, run undisclosed paid promotion, or manipulate citations, taps, follows, leaderboards or any other count, including through extra accounts or coordinated activity;
• post fake, misleading or unlawful listings, or use listings or responses to collect people’s details for anything other than the listing;
• scrape, copy or harvest the platform or its data at scale, interfere with its operation, or try to get around its security or access controls;
• upload malware, or use the service to break the law.

If a post or listing is sponsored, say so.

5. Research, claims and evidence

This is what makes CIT.ED different, so the rules here matter most.

• Every post carries a content-type label: Research, Idea, Practice, Experience, Discussion or Resource. Choose the honest one.
• Evidence strength is human and source-based. The label on an Evidence Card reflects the sources attached and the judgement of the person who read them. It is never generated by AI and must never be presented as a machine’s verdict on whether a claim is true.
• Sources must be real. Attach references that exist and that you have actually consulted. Fabricated, invented or irrelevant citations are a serious breach of these terms, and we will remove the content.
• Citing another post means you have genuinely referenced, built on, discussed, contrasted with, or been inspired by it. Citing is not a way to get attention: inflating citation counts is manipulation under section 4.
• Nothing on CIT.ED is professional advice. Research explained is not a diagnosis, a treatment plan, a legal opinion or a financial recommendation. Always consult a qualified professional about your own situation.

6. Podcasts

• Only connect a podcast you make or are authorised to represent. Connecting someone else’s show is impersonation under section 4.
• Episodes stream from your own podcast host. We do not copy or re-host your audio, and your download statistics stay with your host.
• A show is marked verified when the owner email published in its feed matches your account email, or when a moderator has confirmed it is yours. Anything else is labelled unverified.
• You can disconnect a show at any time; its imported episode posts on CIT.ED are then removed.

7. Digital Market Access: the Knowledge Market and Opportunity Hub

• Any member in good standing can list events, webinars, courses, books and resources in the Knowledge Market. Only verified profiles can post in the Opportunity Hub (PhD places, fellowships, research projects, grants and jobs).
• We are not a party to what you arrange. CIT.ED does not sell, take payment for, deliver or guarantee anything listed. A price on a listing is for information only. Any purchase, registration, booking or application happens directly between you and the person who listed it, often on their own website, and on their terms.
• If you post a listing, it must be accurate and lawful, and you must be entitled to offer it. Close or remove it when it is no longer available. An opportunity must be real and open, and must not charge applicants a fee to apply.
• When someone responds to your listing (attending, interested or applying), you receive their response and any message. Use it only for that listing, and handle it as the law requires.
• When you respond to a listing, your response and message go to the person who posted it. Take the usual care before sharing personal details or paying anyone.
• Calendar links and feeds are a convenience. Check the times and details with the organiser.
• We may remove a listing, or limit who can post, to keep the Market and Hub trustworthy.

8. AI features and translation

• AI output can be wrong. It is a reading aid, and you remain responsible for anything you publish after using it.
• Claim Check suggests; you decide. We never silently edit your claim.
• AI never sets an evidence-strength label, and we do not present an AI score as scientific truth.
• Automatic translations are labelled and may not be exact. The original is always one tap away, and the original is what the author wrote and is responsible for.
• AI features are for normal personal use. We may apply rate limits, and may suspend access if use is automated or abusive.

9. Awards, leaderboards and universities

• Leaderboards and monthly awards (such as Most cited, Most discussed and Rising researcher) are worked out from what other people do with your work. Your own activity never counts, and neither does anything AI-written or the evidence-strength label.
• The running month’s leaderboard is provisional. Awards are settled when the month closes. We may correct an error, and we will withdraw an award gained through manipulation under section 4.
• Awards are recognition, not prizes. They carry no money unless we announce otherwise in writing.
• You can ask to join a verified university’s account. The university decides whether to approve you, and either of you can end the membership at any time. Only ask to join a university you genuinely belong to.

10. CIT.ED Plus

• The core experience is free: the feed, content-type and evidence-strength labels, profiles, discover and search.
• CIT.ED Plus costs US$14.99 a month and adds Evidence Cards, full source pages, the AI reading tools and commenting. Prices in your local currency are set by the app store and may differ.
• It renews automatically each month until you cancel. Cancel any time in your Apple or Google subscription settings, at least 24 hours before the renewal date to avoid the next charge. You keep access until the end of the period you have already paid for.
• Payment is taken by Apple or Google under their terms, not by us. Refunds are covered by our refund policy. Deleting your CIT.ED account does not cancel the subscription.
• We may change the price or what is included. We will give you notice before a change affects a renewal, and you can cancel before it takes effect.

11. Creator earnings

Subscription revenue is shared with the creators whose evidence people actually open.

• Each month we work out net revenue (what reaches us after the app stores take their cut) and set aside a defined share of it as the creator pool.
• A payable tap is a CIT.ED Plus subscriber opening the Evidence Card on someone else’s post, counted once per person, per post, per day. Test purchases never count.
• The pool is divided between creators in proportion to their share of all payable taps that month. The pool can never exceed the revenue that funded it.
• Opening your own Evidence Cards never earns you anything, and neither does any attempt to inflate taps. We will withhold earnings obtained through manipulation and may suspend the account.
• To be paid, you must give us valid payout details and any tax information we are required to collect. You are responsible for your own taxes.
• We may set a minimum payout threshold and carry a balance forward until it is reached. If you have unpaid earnings, contact us before deleting your account so we can pay you.

12. Moderation, suspension and appeals

• Anyone can report a post, comment, listing or profile from the … menu. A person reviews every report. AI may help spot patterns, but people make the decisions.
• We may remove content, mark a podcast unverified, revoke a verified badge, or suspend or delete an account that breaks these terms. A suspended account’s posts, comments and listings stop being visible to others.
• Where we can, we will tell you what happened and why. If you think we have made a mistake, write to support@cit.education and a person will look again.
• We keep a record of moderation decisions, including after an account is deleted, so the same abuse can be recognised again.

13. Copyright and intellectual property

The CIT.ED name, logo, software and design are ours and may not be copied or used without permission. Research papers referenced on CIT.ED belong to their authors and publishers; we link to the original source and show only what is fair to show.

If you believe something on CIT.ED infringes your copyright, email support@cit.education with enough detail to identify the work and the post, your contact details, and a statement that you are the rights holder or are authorised to act for them. We remove infringing material and will end the accounts of repeat infringers.

14. Disclaimers and liability

CIT.ED is provided “as is”. We do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we do not guarantee the accuracy of user content, listings, AI output, translations, or third-party research indexes.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, or loss of data, or for anything arranged between members through a listing; and our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or US$100.

Nothing in these terms limits rights that cannot be limited by law. In particular, if you are a consumer, your statutory rights, including under the Australian Consumer Law, UK and EU consumer law, or the South African Consumer Protection Act, are unaffected.

15. Ending this agreement

• You can stop using CIT.ED at any time and delete your account in the app.
• We may suspend or end your access if you seriously break these terms, or if the law requires it. Where it is reasonable, we will warn you first.
• If we discontinue the service, we will give reasonable notice and a way to get a copy of your content.
• Sections 3 (the licence, to the limited extent stated), 11, 13, 14 and 17 survive the end of this agreement.

16. Apple and Google

If you use CIT.ED on an iPhone or iPad, you also agree to Apple’s Standard End User Licence Agreement, and Apple is a third-party beneficiary of these terms. On Android, Google Play’s terms also apply. Where those terms conflict with ours about the app itself, theirs win. Apple and Google are not responsible for CIT.ED or its content, and have no obligation to provide support for it: that is our job.

17. Changes, law and contact

We may update these terms. If a change is significant, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect; if you keep using CIT.ED after that, you accept the new version.

These terms are governed by the laws of [COUNTRY / STATE], and the courts of [JURISDICTION] have non-exclusive jurisdiction. This does not take away any protection you have under the law of the country where you live.

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.

Contact: hello@cit.education.