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Terms of Service

The agreement that governs your use of CiteDash.

Last updated: July 17, 2026

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are an agreement between you and CiteDash (“CiteDash”, “we”, “us”) governing your access to and use of the CiteDash platform, websites, and applications (together, the “Service”). Please read them carefully. They cover your account, how plans and credits work, who owns what, and the responsibilities that come with using AI in academic work.

Contents

1. Acceptance of these terms

By creating an account, opening a demo workspace, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you use CiteDash on behalf of an institution or organization, you represent that you have authority to bind it, and “you” includes that organization.

2. The service

CiteDash is an AI research platform for graduate students and academics. It spans the research lifecycle (planning, question building, literature discovery, a reading library, synthesis, data analysis and collection, drafting, revision, reference management, submission readiness, thesis assembly, and fact checking), built around two commitments:

  • Grounded citations. Citations produced in CiteDash resolve to real, indexed papers; free-text references are not generated.
  • Verification before display. Generated claims pass through our verification layer (the Fact Checker) and are labeled supported, partial, unsupported, or unverified against the full text of your sources.

The Service is currently offered in beta. Features may change, be added, or be withdrawn, and availability may occasionally be interrupted while we improve the platform. We will use reasonable efforts to give notice of material changes that affect your stored work.

3. Eligibility and accounts

  • You must be at least 16 years old. The Service is designed for adult researchers and students in higher education.
  • Accounts are personal to you. Keep your credentials secure and do not share your account or let others access the Service through it. You are responsible for all activity under your account.
  • You must provide accurate account information and keep it current. Notify us promptly at [email protected] if you suspect unauthorized use of your account.

4. Demo workspaces

The “Explore Demo” lets you try CiteDash without creating an account, in an anonymous workspace pre-loaded with example research. Demo workspaces are for evaluation:

  • They include a limited credit allowance that refreshes on each demo entry.
  • They are temporary: anonymous demo workspaces and their contents are automatically and permanently deleted after approximately 7 days.
  • You can keep your demo work at any time by converting it to a free account (“Keep my work”), which preserves the same workspace under your email.
  • Demo accounts cannot purchase plans, delete shared resources, or upload documents; these limits exist to keep the demo safe and are not representative caps of paid plans.

5. Plans, credits, and billing

  • Free accountsmay include a one-time credit grant for trying the platform’s AI features before subscribing; whether an introductory offer is currently available, and its amount, is shown on the pricing page at sign-up.
  • Paid plans (currently Starter, Pro, and Ultra) are billed monthly or yearly through our PCI-compliant payment processor (named at checkout). Yearly plans are charged upfront and include a discount relative to monthly billing. We never store your card details; the payment processor does.
  • Taxes. Prices exclude applicable taxes. Where the law requires it, sales tax, VAT, or GST is calculated and added at checkout based on your billing location.
  • Credits meter AI usage. AI-powered actions (drafting, synthesis, verification, recommendations, analysis, and similar) consume credits; storage, reading, and organizing your library generally do not. Plan allowances refresh with your billing cycle. Credits have no cash value, are not transferable, and unused promotional or trial credits may expire.
  • Cancellation. You may cancel at any time from your Billing page; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you keep access until then. Except where required by law (including any statutory cancellation or cooling-off rights you hold as a consumer in the UK, EU, Canada, or Australia), payments are non-refundable.
  • Price changes. We may change prices or plan allowances with reasonable advance notice; changes apply from your next billing cycle.

6. Your content

You retain all rights to the content you bring to CiteDash and the work you create in it: uploaded documents and PDFs, reference imports, notes, extractions, analyses, drafts, and assembled manuscripts (“Your Content”). You grant us a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive license to host, store, process, transmit, and display Your Content solely as needed to provide and secure the Service and as otherwise permitted by our Privacy Policy. This license ends when you delete the relevant content or your account, subject to the retention terms described in the Privacy Policy.

You are responsible for Your Content. Only upload material you have the legal right to use: for example, papers you may lawfully hold under open-access licenses, your institution’s subscriptions, or publishers’ terms.

7. Collecting research data from participants

CiteDash’s Data Collection tool lets you publish consented research forms and gather responses from participants. When you use it, you are the researcher of record:

  • You are responsible for obtaining any approvals your research requires (for example, IRB/ethics approval) and for the lawfulness of the questions you ask.
  • Your form must accurately describe the study, and you must honor the consent statement participants agree to.
  • Do not use forms to collect data from children, or to collect sensitive personal information (such as government identifiers, financial account details, or health data) unless your approved research protocol covers it and applicable law permits it.
  • CiteDash processes responses on your behalf and stores them in your project. Response collection is designed to be structurally anonymous: participants do not create accounts and we do not store their network addresses with their responses.

8. AI output and academic integrity

CiteDash assists your research; it does not replace your judgment. Our grounding and verification systems substantially reduce (but cannot eliminate) the risk of incorrect statements, and a “supported” label means a claim matched a passage in a source, not that the source itself is correct or that the claim is true.

  • You are the author. You are responsible for reviewing, editing, and verifying everything you rely on or submit, including citations, quotes, statistics, and analysis results.
  • Follow your institution’s rules. Universities, journals, and funders have differing policies on the use of AI assistance and on disclosure. It is your responsibility to know and comply with the policies that apply to you. CiteDash can generate an AI-use disclosure describing how the platform was used to help you do so.
  • No professional advice. Output is provided for research assistance and is not medical, legal, or financial advice.
  • Retraction signals shown in CiteDash come from public data sources and may lag or be incomplete; always confirm the status of critical sources.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • use the Service in violation of any law or regulation;
  • upload or distribute content that infringes intellectual-property rights, violates confidentiality, or that you otherwise lack the right to use;
  • use the Service to fabricate research, manipulate data with intent to deceive, or otherwise commit academic misconduct;
  • probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service, bypass authentication or usage metering (including credit limits and rate limits), or access another user’s workspace;
  • scrape, bulk-export, or resell the scholarly index or other Service data, or use automated agents to place abusive load on the Service;
  • reverse engineer or copy the Service or use it to build a directly competing product;
  • use collection forms to send spam, run phishing, or gather data for purposes other than the described research.

We may throttle, suspend, or terminate access that we reasonably believe violates this section (see Section 14).

10. Third-party content and scholarly sources

CiteDash indexes scholarly metadata and abstracts from public sources (including OpenAlex, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, and Crossref) and retrieves open-access full text where it is lawfully available. That material belongs to its respective authors and publishers and may be subject to their licenses. We display license information where available, but you are responsible for how you use third-party works (including quoting, redistribution, and text-mining) beyond what CiteDash itself does to provide the Service. Links to external sites are provided for convenience; we are not responsible for their content.

11. Intellectual property and feedback

The Service (including its software, design, models’ orchestration, verification systems, and branding) is owned by CiteDash and its licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. These Terms grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service for your research; they do not transfer any ownership in the Service to you. If you send us feedback or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use them without obligation to you.

We respect intellectual-property rights and respond to notices of alleged infringement. If you believe material available through the Service infringes your copyright, email [email protected] with: (a) identification of the work claimed to be infringed; (b) the location of the allegedly infringing material; (c) your contact information; (d) a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized; and (e) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the rights holder or authorized to act for them. We may remove material and, for repeat infringers, terminate accounts.

13. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, how content is processed (including by AI model providers), where data is stored, and the export and deletion controls you have. It is part of these Terms.

14. Suspension and termination

  • By you. You may stop using the Service at any time and may permanently delete your account and its data from your Settings page.
  • By us. We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, if your use creates risk or legal exposure for us or other users, or if we discontinue the Service (in which case we will give reasonable notice and an opportunity to export your work).
  • Upon termination your license to use the Service ends. Sections that by their nature should survive (including 6, 8, 11, and 15–18) survive termination.

15. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT AI OUTPUT WILL BE ACCURATE OR COMPLETE. You use output at your own discretion and risk.

Consumer guarantees. Some jurisdictions do not allow these disclaimers in full. If you are a consumer in the United Kingdom, the EU, Canada, or Australia, nothing in this section excludes guarantees, conditions, or warranties that the law of your jurisdiction implies and does not permit to be excluded (including the consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law and your statutory rights under the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015). Where such laws allow liability for their breach to be limited, our liability is limited, at our option, to re-supplying the service or paying the cost of having it re-supplied.

16. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW: (a) NEITHER CITEDASH NOR ITS SUPPLIERS WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, GOODWILL, OR ACADEMIC OR PROFESSIONAL CONSEQUENCES (INCLUDING REJECTION, REVISION, OR MISCONDUCT FINDINGS) ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE; AND (b) OUR AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM OR US $50. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or under non-excludable consumer protections in your jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

17. Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify CiteDash against claims, damages, and reasonable costs (including attorneys’ fees) arising from Your Content, your research-participant data collection, or your breach of these Terms or of applicable law.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules, and courts located in Delaware will have jurisdiction over disputes arising out of these Terms or the Service, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any competent court. If you are a consumer in the United Kingdom, the EU, Canada, or Australia, this choice of law and forum does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer-protection rules of your home jurisdiction, and where those rules give you the right, you may bring proceedings in your local courts. Before filing a claim, please contact us. Most concerns can be resolved quickly and informally.

19. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. If a change is material, we will notify you (for example, by email or an in-product notice) at least 14 days before it takes effect, except where a change is required by law or is needed urgently to address abuse or security. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance. The “Last updated” date above reflects the current version.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email [email protected] or write to CiteDash, 1111B S Governors Ave, STE 54769, Dover, DE 19904, United States.