1. Acceptance

By accessing or using GIKSN Research (“the platform”) you agree to these Terms of Use (“these Terms”) and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the platform.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally competent to enter into a binding contract. §9 of India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 defines a “child” as an individual below 18. Access to the platform is intended for researchers, builders and readers who meet this threshold. If you access the platform on behalf of an organisation you warrant that you have authority to bind that organisation to these Terms.

3. What the service is

GIKSN Research is a community-first research lab and editorial archive. Readers may view published papers, updates and product pages without an account. Contributors may submit papers, updates and comments subject to editorial review. Admins may manage content through a sign-in-gated admin panel. The platform is provided free of charge for reading; contribution is gated.

4. Accounts and access

• Admin accounts are created by the lab and secured with an email address and a scrypt-hashed password. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential.
• Contributor submissions are made through the public submission form. You must provide a contact handle (email, X, GitHub or Telegram) so editors can reach you.
• Suspension. We may suspend or terminate access for violations of these Terms, for security reasons or where required by law.

5. Submissions and licence

You retain copyright in the papers, updates and comments you submit (“Submissions”). To let us operate the platform, you grant GIKSN Research a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, index and edit for clarity your Submissions on and in connection with the platform.

You warrant that:

• You own the copyright in your Submissions, or have all necessary rights to grant the licence above.
• Your Submissions do not infringe any third-party right, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or contractual rights.
• Your Submissions comply with applicable law.
• The credit and contact information you provide is accurate.

You may ask us to remove or anonymise a Submission at any time. We will honour the request unless retention is required by law or is necessary to preserve an existing discussion thread whose contributors have relied on the Submission.

6. Third-party research and citations

The lab publishes commentary, surveys and blog-style writing that discusses existing research, including preprints on arXiv.org and other public research repositories. We rely on the following legal grounds and self-impose the following limits.

• United States. Commentary, criticism, teaching and scholarship are expressly favoured purposes under 17 U.S.C. §107. Our quotation of third-party research is limited to what is reasonably necessary for the commentary and does not reproduce the underlying work in full.
• India. Reproduction for private and personal use including research, criticism, review and reporting current events is permitted under §52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act 1957. Bona fide instructional use is permitted under §52(1)(h). Our quotation stays within the “fair dealing” boundary set by these provisions.
• arXiv content. Authors submit to arXiv under one of a set of licences (arXiv's default non-exclusive licence, CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC-SA, or CC0). Copyright remains with the author. We quote and comment on arXiv preprints without reproducing the full paper unless the author's selected licence permits redistribution.
• Attribution. Every reference includes attribution to the author and a link back to the source where a stable URL exists.
• Removal on request. If you are an author or rightsholder and you believe our quotation exceeds fair use or fair dealing, contact us as described in section 7 and we will review the specific material promptly.

7. Copyright notices and takedown

7.1 India — IT Rules 2021 grievance mechanism

Under Rule 3(2) of the IT Rules 2021 we operate a grievance mechanism. Notices should be sent to research@giksn.com and include the specific URL of the material, a description of the right allegedly infringed, and your contact details.

• We acknowledge receipt within 24 hours of the notice as required by Rule 3(2)(a).
• We dispose of the complaint within 15 days as required by Rule 3(2)(a).
• Complaints concerning non-consensual intimate imagery, impersonation or morphed images are actioned within 24 hours.
• On actual knowledge of unlawful content through a court order or a lawful notification from a competent authority we remove or disable access within 36 hours as required by Rule 3(1)(d).

7.2 United States — DMCA §512 takedown

For copyrighted work under US law, notices should be sent to our copyright agent at research@giksn.com. A valid notice under 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3) must contain:

• A physical or electronic signature of the person authorised to act on behalf of the owner.
• Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed.
• Identification of the material claimed to be infringing and information reasonably sufficient to locate it on the platform.
• Your contact information (name, address, phone, email).
• A statement of good-faith belief that the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.
• A statement made under penalty of perjury that the information in the notification is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act on behalf of the owner.

7.3 Counter-notice

If your content is removed and you believe the removal was a mistake or a misidentification, you may send a counter- notice meeting the requirements of §512(g)(3). We will restore the material in 10 to 14 business days after receipt, unless the original complainant notifies us that a court action has been filed seeking to restrain the alleged infringement.

7.4 Repeat infringers

We terminate the accounts and remove the content of contributors who are found to be repeat infringers, in line with the safe-harbour condition in §512(i).

8. Prohibited use

You must not use the platform to:

• Publish content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, harassing, threatening or hateful.
• Infringe any copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, publicity or contractual right.
• Impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation.
• Publish personal information about other people without their consent.
• Distribute malware, exploit code intended for unauthorised access, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the platform, other users' accounts or the underlying infrastructure.
• Scrape at a scale that degrades service for other readers, or bypass rate limits.
• Interfere with the moderation or grievance mechanism.
• Use the platform to spam or advertise commercial products unrelated to the research being discussed.
• Violate any applicable law in India, in the country from which you access the service, or in the United States for so far as the DMCA obligations described above apply.

9. Content moderation

Editors read Submissions for clarity and structural fit, not for opinion. We may edit for typography, formatting, punctuation and clarity, and we may reject or remove content that violates these Terms. Discussion under a paper is preserved verbatim, except where moderation removes a specific comment, in which case a short placeholder is left in the thread with a one-line reason.

10. No warranty

The platform is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement and quiet enjoyment. We do not warrant that the platform will be uninterrupted or error-free. Papers reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the lab.

11. Availability

We do not guarantee any specific uptime. We may pause the platform for maintenance, security or infrastructure migration without prior notice.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, GIKSN Research and its personnel are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or anticipated savings, arising out of or in connection with your use of the platform, whether based on contract, tort, statute or otherwise. Our aggregate liability under or in connection with these Terms is capped at the greater of (a) any amount you have paid to us in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, and (b) INR 1,000. Nothing in these Terms limits liability which cannot lawfully be limited, including for fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct or personal injury caused by negligence.

13. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless GIKSN Research against any claim, demand, loss or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your Submissions, your use of the platform, or your breach of these Terms or of any third-party right.

14. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of India, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute, controversy or claim arising out of or in connection with these Terms will be referred to and finally resolved by arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996. The seat and venue of arbitration will be in India. The arbitral tribunal will consist of a single arbitrator. The language of arbitration will be English. Subject to arbitration, the courts of the city in which the lab is registered will have exclusive jurisdiction.

Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking interim or injunctive relief before any competent court to protect its intellectual property or confidential information.

15. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the platform at any time if you breach these Terms or if suspension is required for legal or security reasons. The following sections survive termination: 5 (in respect of the licence you granted for content already published), 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 17.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may modify these Terms from time to time. The effective date at the top of the page will change when we do. If a change materially reduces your rights we will announce the change on the site before it takes effect. Your continued use of the platform after the effective date of a change constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

17. Miscellaneous

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, form the entire agreement between you and GIKSN Research relating to the platform.
• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of that provision.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our written consent. We may assign these Terms on notice to you.
• Notices. Legal notices to us should be sent to research@giksn.com.

18. Contact

Questions about these Terms, copyright notices, counter- notices and grievances all reach us at research@giksn.com.