Vadlo Terms of Use
Acceptance of Terms
This document lays out the
binding legal terms (“Terms”) that you are subject to while using Vadlo website
(“Vadlo”). The words “Vadlo” or “us” or “we” or “our” refer to Life in Research,
LLC., the sole owner of the website, based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. We may
update these Terms from time to time without specific notice to you. It is your
responsibility to check the most current version of the Terms, available at
http://www.vadlo.com/Terms_of_Use.html. Unless otherwise stated, use of all
newly added or updated features or services provided by Vadlo will remain
subject to these Terms. By using Vadlo services, you confirm that you are
legally allowed to enter into a binding contract with us, that you understand
these Terms, and that you accept each and all of these Terms. You are not
authorized to use Vadlo services if you are not legally allowed to enter into a
binding contract and/or do not understand these Terms and/or do not agree with
any Term set forth in this document.
Vadlo Access
Access to Vadlo is free of
charge and free of registration process for all people, regardless of their age,
gender, race, color, sexual orientation, nationality, location, occupation, and
academic or corporate affiliation or employment. This access is not a license.
The access may be revoked at the sole discretion of Vadlo, if we deem any
individual or entity to be engaging in unlawful or socially harmful activities,
using Vadlo services for non-research commercial purposes (see below), or in any
way found to be interfering with the Vadlo’s services.
Vadlo Services and Use
Vadlo provides a free search
service for the online material generated by the scientific community, to the
scientific community. Vadlo indexes and attempts to categorize the documents
available on the World Wide Web with content relevant to biology research.
Vadlo also provides free
website submission and indexing services to you. In order to avoid unwarranted
indexing, we do ask our users to submit only the websites for which they have a
decision-making authority, using an e-mail address from the same domain or a
verifiable, non-generic address.
You may use Vadlo search results
to aid in your academic or corporate biology research. You can not use it for
commercial purposes such as providing paid search services. You can not extract, copy,
mirror or publish Vadlo homepage, Vadlo search form, or Vadlo search results, or
any of the Vadlo Source code, or a modified, improvised, re-formatted, or
re-derived version thereof, on your website or sell or license it to a third
party. "Vadlo" and "Life in Research" are trade-marks owned by Life in Research, LLC. Vadlo logo may be used for non-commercial purposes; "Life in Research" cartoons can be copied for personal use and academic powerpoint presentations, but can not be published electronically or in print, on internet, intranet, or paper, without prior permission; nor can they be used for any commercial purposes other than as part of a biomedical research presentation.
Vadlo Index Inclusion and Exclusion
Vadlo indexes everything that it
deems relevant to research in all branches of biology, attempts to categorize
the documents, and allows users to search within specific categories. The number
of categories may expand as a critical number of links is reached within each of
them. Vadlo indexing or ranking algorithm does not favor any website for a financial
return, nor does it discriminate against a website by any particular individual,
group or entity. We may not include some websites in our index for reasons such
as size, connection speed and server time-out issues, password, registration or
fees requirements, presence of malicious scripts, intentional attempts at
subverting our ranking algorithm, content irrelevant to biology research, Vadlo
search category non-match, non-English language, and a concern regarding
copyright and plagiarism issues. That said, user submission of links, crawling,
and indexing operates in only a broadly supervised and largely automated manner.
While we try our best, it is practically impossible in terms of time, resources
and limits of our own knowledge, for us to check the copyright and plagiarism
issues for each website and every document in our large, constantly changing and
rapidly expanding index.
Vadlo is fully owned by
scientists like you who were frustrated by their inability to quickly locate
relevant information on the web. We do not claim to, but correcting this
situation will remain our focus. We do not use the indexed material –your
website’s property- for any purpose other than providing search results and
researching ways to improve the quality of search. Just like other search
engines, in general, we subscribe to the philosophy that a large majority of
websites that put material online, without robot exclusion code, prefer their
material to be indexed by search engines for the public convenience in locating
it. However, we do recognize privacy, copyright and plagiarism concerns, so if
you need any or all of your website material to be removed from our existing
index, let us know. With your e-mail from the same domain or even one with a
verifiable, non-generic address, specifying the precise links, we will remove
such content from our index generally within three business days. The same is true for your copyrighted material found on others' website. We will quickly investigate -taking your feedback, and remove such websites from our index.
Link Title and Source Name Customization
Being a search engine, Vadlo is
largely a conduit for the material generated by third parties, but we may
display custom titles in a place generally reserved for meta-titles in order to
(a) make the users’ search process easier and faster, (b) avoid presenting a
large number of partial and many a times meaningless link titles, (c) improve
user recognition by incorporating “key” words in the link titles [For example, a
meta-title that reads ‘Whole-mount In Situ Hybridization’ does not specify for
what ‘organism’, which is vitally important. So Vadlo looks into the document
and other documents in that same web-folder, attempts to identify the organism
and rather displays ‘Whole-mount In Situ Hybridization – Mouse Method’. Beyond
that, unintentionally obscure document titles such as ‘Insert Your Title Here’,
‘7’, ‘Slide 1’, ‘?’, ‘Word Document’, are only too common among scientific
material], and (d) stem keyword stuffing [For example, a meta-title ‘BadGene
RT-PCR Kit Manual-BadGene RT-PCR Kit Manual’, may be converted to ‘BadGene
RT-PCR Kit Manual’].
We may also display an easily
identifiable source name (content provider name) in a place generally reserved
for URLs (hyperlinks). This helps users quickly determine the identity and
nature of the source, while providing a free branding opportunity to the content
provider.
Link title and source name
customization may be a source of discontent in some cases. Write to us and we
will personally correct errors generally within three business days. We will
also largely accommodate your suggestions towards semantic improvement, but
allow us some more leeway in doing that. In this beta offering, we have taken a
precaution not to customize title and source names for all indexed websites.
However, we have done so with some websites to provide an example of how such
customization improves the quality of search experience and how it may be
beneficial both to the content providers and the search users.
You understand that the
customization process trails well behind our indexing process, and it may occur
much later or never or may not be necessary. You understand that when you newly
submit links for indexing, you, and if applicable, the entity you are
representing, agree to be subject to such potential customization. If
unbeknownst to us, a third-party or an unauthorized person submits your links,
and you do not approve of our customization, please let us know. Please keep in
mind that the customization may impact search-ranking, mostly in a positive way,
depending upon the user’s search keywords. In most cases, customization does not
change the original meta-title, and at present, for practical reasons, we do not
offer partial customization (only some links from your domain, or only source
names, etc). If you are not satisfied with our customization, you can suggest
ways to improve it, or ask us to remove the customization, or your links from
the Vadlo index.
In essence, Vadlo is committed
enough and small enough to monitor its content in a broadly supervised manner,
and provide timely error-correction and link-exclusion services, but it is large
enough not to be able to do so in a proactive fashion in a timely manner in all
cases. You bring it to our attention and we will try our best to fix it
immediately. Vadlo link-inclusion service is free, has some checks in place to
avoid unwarranted inclusion, and requires the submitting party to agree to a
potential customization.
Vadlo Privacy Statement
Vadlo does not have a
registration process, so Vadlo does not collect personal or contact information
for the search service users. Links submission to Vadlo requires at a minimum a
link, an e-mail address and a person’s name. The link, obviously, we may share
with the world! Vadlo will not share your e-mail address and personal
information with a third party, except in the following circumstances: (a) to
comply with any law or legally enforceable request by the local, state or
federal administration (b) to investigate potential violation of the Vadlo’s
Terms of use, fraud, or malicious attack on Vadlo’s services, and (c) merger or
acquisition.
Vadlo does, and third parties
that may provide us the software, internet hosting, visitor tracking, technical
consultation services may collect cookies and log information, as is the
standard industry practice.
Vadlo Disclaimer
Vadlo does not guarantee that
our search results are complete, adequate and accurate, that when you click on a
search result, the link is active, that the information presented on a website
on our index is not inaccurate, irrelevant or plain wrong, and that the content
of an indexed website is not offensive, objectionable, harmful to you, your
research program, your computer system or to a third party through your actions.
Vadlo will not be legally held responsible for any gains or losses, monetary or
otherwise, directly or indirectly incurred from it.
Vadlo does not guarantee that
our services will always be available, uninterrupted, error-free and not be
vulnerable to takeovers by malicious software. As the indexed website contents
and ownerships change over time, and as we are just as prone to unintentional
human error, software malfunction, or third-party devious practices as anybody
else, Vadlo does not guarantee that the content of an indexed website matches
the link title, snippet or the source in our search results. Vadlo will not be
legally held responsible for any gains or losses, monetary or otherwise,
directly or indirectly incurred from it.
Vadlo’s indexing and ranking are
only broadly supervised, largely automated, rules based, fast processes; Vadlo’s
oversight of user submission, decision to include a website in the index or not,
and the display customization are prone to unintentional software and human
error, and are slow processes; human effort can not possibly attend to
everything on our large and rapidly changing, expanding index. So, a website’s
being or not being on the Vadlo index, being at a higher or a lower rank on the
Vadlo search results, or displaying correct or incorrect customization does not
constitute our express or tacit selection, endorsement, favor, disfavor, neglect
or disregard for it, and we will not be legally held responsible for any gains
or losses, monetary or otherwise, directly or indirectly incurred from it.
General
These Terms shall be governed by
the laws of the State of Illinois. If any provision of these Terms is held to be
invalid or unenforceable by any court of law with jurisdiction to decide in that
matter, that provision will be struck without affecting the validity and
enforceability of the rest of the Terms.
END OF DOCUMENT
Despite covering the legal
aspects, we are scientists, pragmatists, and believe in progress through
cooperation. If you have any issues with our services, we are happy to work with
you in resolving them, giving as much consideration to your point of view and
your interests as ours.
Write to us! 
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