Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are an agreement between you and Nishan (“we,” “us,” or “the Organization”). They set out the rules for using our website, our student research journal, our AI research assistant, our mentorship program, and our outreach activities (together, the “Services”). By using the Services you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Services. If you are under eighteen, a parent or guardian must read and agree to these Terms with you.

1. Who May Use the Services

You must be at least thirteen years old to use the Services. If you are between thirteen and eighteen, you may use the Services only with the involvement and agreement of a parent or guardian, who accepts these Terms on your behalf and with you. If you take part in the mentorship program, submit to the journal, or join another program that involves ongoing participation while under eighteen, we require verifiable parental or guardian consent first, as described in our Privacy Policy. By using the Services, you confirm that you meet these requirements and that the information you give us is accurate.

If you are using the Services on behalf of a school, club, or other organization, you confirm that you are authorized to accept these Terms for that organization.

2. Accounts

Some parts of the Services require an account. You agree to give accurate information when you register, to keep it up to date, and to keep your login credentials confidential. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account. Tell us promptly at support@nishaninstitute.com if you believe your account has been used without your permission. You may close your account at any time, and we may suspend or close an account as described in Section 15.

3. The Services We Provide

We are a student-led nonprofit that supports research and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Through the Services we offer:

• The journal. a peer-reviewed venue where students can submit and publish research, governed by our author guidelines.
• The AI research assistant. a tool that helps students explore topics, find sources, and develop their work.
• The mentorship program. a program that connects student participants with mentors for guidance and support.
• Outreach. workshops, presentations, and educational materials shared with schools and the public.

We offer the Services free of charge to students. We may add, change, or discontinue parts of the Services, and we will give reasonable notice of a significant change where we can.

4. Journal Submissions and Publishing

When you submit work to the journal, our author guidelines and publication ethics policies apply, and they form part of these Terms. By submitting, you confirm that:

• The work is your own, or properly credits and has permission to use the work of others, and does not infringe anyone's rights.
• Every listed author qualifies as an author and has approved the submission, and no qualifying author has been left out.
• The work has not been published elsewhere and is not being considered elsewhere at the same time, except as disclosed to the editors.
• The work is honest, and the data and methods are reported accurately.

You keep the copyright in your work. If we accept it for publication, you grant us the license described in Section 5 and in our author guidelines to publish and distribute it, and it is published open access under the Creative Commons license stated there. We review submissions as described in the guidelines, and we may decline, request changes to, correct, or withdraw work in line with our publication ethics policies.

5. Your Content and the Rights You Grant

“Your Content” means anything you submit through the Services, including manuscripts, comments, messages, and the Inputs you give the AI assistant. You keep ownership of Your Content. You are responsible for it, and you confirm you have the rights needed to submit it.

To operate the Services, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, display, and use Your Content for the purpose of providing and improving the Services. For work accepted into the journal, you grant the additional license needed to publish and distribute it, as set out in Section 4 and the author guidelines. This license ends when you or we delete Your Content, except for content that has been published as part of the scholarly record, content we must keep by law, and copies kept in routine backups for a limited time.

You must not submit content that is illegal, infringing, harmful, harassing, hateful, or otherwise in breach of Section 7. We may remove content that breaks these Terms.

6. Our Intellectual Property

The Services, including our name, logo, website, design, text, and software, belong to the Organization or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, personal, non-transferable permission to use the Services for their intended purpose. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or create derivative works from the Services or our materials without our permission, except where the law allows it or where we have released material under an open license. Published articles are available under the license stated in the author guidelines, and you must follow that license when you reuse them.

7. Acceptable Use

You agree to use the Services lawfully, honestly, and with respect for others. You must not:

• Break the law, or use the Services to help anyone else break the law.
• Submit work that is plagiarized, fabricated, or falsified, or that misrepresents authorship or data.
• Post or share content that is harassing, hateful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, or harmful to others, in particular to minors.
• Infringe the intellectual property, privacy, or other rights of any person.
• Upload malware, attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Services or other accounts, or interfere with the security or operation of the Services.
• Scrape, harvest, or collect information about other users, or use the Services to send spam.
• Use the AI assistant to generate content that is unlawful, harmful, deceptive, or that violates these Terms, as described further in Section 8.
• Misrepresent your identity, your age, or your affiliation, or impersonate another person.

Breaking these rules may lead to removal of content and suspension or closure of your account, as described in Section 15.

8. The AI Research Assistant

The AI research assistant is provided to help you learn and work. It is powered by one or more third-party AI providers, and your use is also subject to their terms. When you use the assistant, keep the following in mind:

• It can be wrong. the assistant generates text that may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date. Check anything important against a reliable source before you rely on it.
• It is not professional advice. the assistant does not give legal, medical, financial, or other professional advice, and it is not a substitute for a qualified professional or for your own academic work.
• Use it honestly. follow your school's and the journal's rules on the use of AI. If you use the assistant in work you submit, disclose it as our author guidelines require. Do not present the assistant's output as your own original scholarship where that would be dishonest.
• Do not misuse it. do not use the assistant to produce unlawful, harmful, or deceptive content, to cheat, or to do anything that breaks Section 7.
• Be careful what you enter. do not enter sensitive personal information, or information about other people that you are not permitted to share. Our Privacy Policy explains how Inputs and Outputs are handled.

You are responsible for how you use the assistant and for anything you create with it.

9. The Mentorship Program

The mentorship program connects student participants with mentors. Participation is voluntary, and either side may end it. The program is subject to our safeguarding policy and code of conduct, which form part of these Terms for anyone who takes part. Participants and mentors agree to communicate through the channels the Organization provides and oversees, to treat one another with respect, and to report any concern to us at safeguarding@nishaninstitute.com. Mentors offer guidance and support; they do not guarantee any academic, admissions, or other outcome, and nothing a mentor says is a promise by the Organization. Where a participant is under eighteen, the program runs only with the parental or guardian consent described in our Privacy Policy.

10. Third-Party Services

The Services may link to or work with services we do not control, such as our AI provider, ORCID, data repositories, a payment provider, and social media. Your use of a third-party service is governed by that service's own terms and privacy policy, not ours. We are not responsible for third-party services, and including a link or an integration is not an endorsement. Review a third party's terms before you use it.

11. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect personal information, including the information of minors. By using the Services, you acknowledge that we handle information as described in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

12. Disclaimers

We provide the Services with care, but we offer them “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, to the fullest extent the law allows. We do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, that any content or Output is accurate or reliable, or that the Services will meet your needs. Any material you access through the Services is used at your own discretion and risk. This section does not exclude any warranty or right that cannot be excluded under the law that applies to you, and nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that the law does not allow us to limit.

13. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, the Organization and its volunteers, officers, and mentors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, opportunity, or reputation, arising from your use of the Services. Because we provide the Services free of charge, our total liability to you for any claim relating to the Services will not exceed one hundred United States dollars (US $100). Some places do not allow certain limits of liability, so some of these limits may not apply to you, and this section does not limit liability that cannot be limited under the law that applies to you.

14. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Organization and its volunteers and officers from claims, damages, and reasonable costs that arise from your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Services, or your infringement of the rights of another person. If you are a minor, this obligation applies to the parent or guardian who agreed to these Terms with you, to the extent the law allows. We may take over the defense of any claim subject to indemnification, and you agree to cooperate with us if we do.

15. Suspension and Termination

You may stop using the Services and close your account at any time. We may suspend or close your access if you break these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect the Services or other people, in particular to protect minors. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will give you notice and a chance to fix the problem. If your access ends, the sections of these Terms that by their nature should continue, including those on your content, intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law, will continue to apply. Work already published in the journal remains published as part of the scholarly record, subject to our corrections and retractions policies.

16. Copyright and Takedown Requests

We respect intellectual property rights and expect our users to do the same. If you believe that content on the Services infringes your copyright, send a written notice to copyright@nishaninstitute.com that includes: your contact information; a description of the work you say is infringed; the location of the content on the Services; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized; and a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the rights holder or are authorized to act for them. We will review valid notices, remove or disable infringing content where appropriate, and, where our policies provide for it, give the person who posted the content a chance to respond. We may remove content and close the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe.

17. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Before starting any formal dispute, please contact us so we can try to resolve the matter informally; most concerns can be settled that way. If a dispute cannot be resolved informally, it will be handled by the state and federal courts located in New Jersey, and you and the Organization agree to the jurisdiction of those courts, unless the law that applies to you gives you the right to bring a claim elsewhere. Nothing here affects the rights that consumer-protection law in your place of residence gives you, if those rights cannot be waived.

18. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make a material change, we will update the effective date and, where appropriate, tell you by email or through the Services. If a change materially affects a minor's participation, we will seek renewed parental or guardian consent where the law requires it. Your continued use of the Services after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept a change, please stop using the Services and close your account.

19. General Terms

• Entire agreement. these Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, author guidelines, and any policies referenced in them, are the whole agreement between you and the Organization about the Services.
• Severability. if any part of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.
• No waiver. if we do not enforce a provision on one occasion, we do not give up the right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. you may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our consent. We may transfer ours to a successor nonprofit or entity that takes on the Services.
• No agency. these Terms do not create any partnership, employment, or agency relationship between you and the Organization.

20. How to Contact Us

If you have a question about these Terms, contact us. We are glad to help.

These Terms of Service should be read together with our Privacy Policy and our journal author guidelines.