Terms of Service.

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of PeerPanel at peerpanel.io (the “Service”), operated by NexAlpha LLC (“PeerPanel,” “we,” “our,” or “us”).

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using PeerPanel, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you are using the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization to these Terms.

Description of the Service

PeerPanel provides AI-powered pre-submission peer review for academic manuscripts. Five specialized AI agents independently review your manuscript, deliberate, and produce a structured review report with findings, citations, and a readiness score.

The Service is currently in research preview (free tier). A paid tier is scheduled to launch on July 8, 2026. Features, pricing, and availability may change as the Service evolves.

The Service is intended for use by researchers, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and other academic professionals preparing manuscripts for journal submission.

User Accounts

Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to use the Service. If you are under the age of majority in your jurisdiction, you must have your parent or legal guardian's permission.

Registration

To use the Service, you create an account using a valid email address. You agree to provide accurate information and to keep your account information current.

Account security

You are responsible for safeguarding your password and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately at security@peerpanel.io if you suspect unauthorized access to your account.

One account per person

You may not maintain multiple accounts to circumvent rate limits or free tier restrictions.

Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• Upload content you do not have rights to share. You must own the manuscripts you upload or have the explicit permission of all rights holders.
• Upload fake, fraudulent, or AI-generated junk content designed to test or manipulate the Service.
• Make automated or bulk uploads beyond published rate limits without prior written permission.
• Attempt to extract, copy, or reverse-engineer our prompts, agent instructions, or proprietary review logic.
• Attempt to manipulate agent behavior via prompt injection, hidden Unicode characters, role markers, or any technique designed to alter the review output. We actively detect and sanitize such attempts.
• Harass, threaten, or harm others through the Service.
• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose, including uploading content that infringes intellectual property, defames others, or violates applicable export controls.
• Interfere with the Service's operation, including denial-of-service attempts, security probing without authorization, or attempts to gain unauthorized access to other users' data.
• Resell, sublicense, or commercially redistribute the Service or its outputs without our written permission.

Violations may result in immediate account suspension or termination at our discretion.

Intellectual Property

5.1 Your content

You retain all rights to the manuscripts you upload and to the review reports generated for your manuscripts. PeerPanel does not claim ownership of your academic work.

5.2 License to PeerPanel

By uploading a manuscript, you grant PeerPanel a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to process the manuscript solely for the purpose of providing the review service to you. This license is automatically terminated when the manuscript is deleted from our systems.

We do not use uploaded manuscripts to train, fine-tune, or evaluate AI models, ours or anyone else's. This commitment is explicit and binding.

Author metadata (names, affiliations, institutions, acknowledgements) is not passed to AI agents during review. Reviews are structurally blind by design.

5.3 PeerPanel's intellectual property

The Service, including the website, brand, agent prompts, review pipeline, scoring formula, deliberation protocol, codebase, and visual design, remains the exclusive property of PeerPanel. Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership or license to you beyond your right to use the Service as described.

5.4 Feedback

If you send us suggestions, ideas, bug reports, or feedback, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use that feedback to improve the Service, without any obligation to compensate or credit you.

AI-Generated Reviews: Important Disclaimers

Reviews are AI-generated. The review reports produced by PeerPanel are created by automated AI agents and are provided “as is” without warranty of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.

Not a substitute for human peer review. PeerPanel is a pre-submission tool intended to surface issues a human reviewer might raise. It is not a replacement for journal peer review, editorial decision-making, or expert scientific judgment.

No guarantee of journal acceptance. Using PeerPanel does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted by any journal, will avoid desk rejection, or will receive favorable reviews from human reviewers.

Reviews may contain errors. AI-generated findings may include false positives (flagging issues that are not problems), false negatives (missing real issues), or factual errors. You are responsible for verifying all findings before acting on them.

Not professional advice. PeerPanel does not constitute scientific, statistical, medical, or legal advice. Do not rely solely on PeerPanel for decisions about your research, methodology, or publication strategy.

You assume final responsibility for the content, accuracy, and integrity of your manuscript.

Research Preview Status and Paid Tier

Research preview (free tier). During the research preview, the Service is offered free of charge. Free tier usage is subject to rate limits and fair-use restrictions described on our pricing page.

Grandfathered pricing. Users who actively use the Service during the research preview will be eligible for grandfathered pricing when the paid tier launches, subject to fair use. We will communicate grandfathered terms by email before the paid launch.

Paid tier (launching July 8, 2026). Pricing, features, and tier structure for the paid tier will be announced before launch. We reserve the right to change pricing, features, or tier structure at any time with reasonable notice (typically 30 days for material changes).

Service modifications. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature of the Service, including the free tier, at any time. We will provide reasonable notice for changes that materially affect existing users.

Payment Terms

This section will be updated when the paid tier launches.

Payments will be processed by Stripe. By providing payment information, you authorize us to charge the applicable fees through Stripe.

Subscriptions (if offered) will renew automatically until you cancel. You may cancel at any time through your account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

Refunds. Refund policies will be published before paid launch. Generally, we offer refunds within 14 days of purchase if the Service has not been used substantially, at our discretion.

Taxes. You are responsible for any applicable taxes on your purchases.

Privacy

Your use of the Service is governed by our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference.

Key commitments from the Privacy Policy that bear repeating:

• Zero data retention. Uploaded PDFs are deleted within 24 hours of review completion.
• Self-service deletion. You can permanently delete any manuscript and its associated review from the report page at any time. Deletion removes the uploaded PDF, extracted text, agent reviews, deliberation transcript, and final report. An anonymized billing record is retained. Deletion is immediate and irreversible.
• No training on your manuscripts. Your work is never used to train AI models.
• No selling of your data. Ever.
• Named subprocessor list. Every third-party service that touches your data is disclosed in the Privacy Policy.

Termination

By you. You may delete your account at any time through your account settings or by emailing privacy@peerpanel.io. Account deletion removes your review reports and account data per the retention windows in our Privacy Policy. You may also delete individual manuscripts and reviews at any time from the report page; see section 09 above.

By us. We may suspend or terminate your account if you violate these Terms, if your usage poses a security or operational risk, or if we are required to do so by law. Where reasonable, we will give notice before termination.

Survival. Sections covering Intellectual Property, AI Review Disclaimers, Limitation of Liability, Indemnification, Governing Law, and Miscellaneous survive termination of your account.

Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement.

We do not warrant that:

• The Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure
• Reviews will be accurate, complete, or free from omissions
• Defects in the Service will be corrected
• The Service will meet your specific requirements

Limitation of Liability. To the maximum extent permitted by law, in no event will PeerPanel, its officers, employees, or affiliates be liable for:

• Any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages
• Loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or business opportunities

Our total aggregate liability to you for all claims arising from your use of the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim, or (b) $50 USD.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of liability. In such cases, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless PeerPanel (NexAlpha LLC), its officers, employees, and affiliates from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to:

• Your use of the Service
• Your violation of these Terms
• Your violation of any third-party rights, including intellectual property rights
• Content you upload to the Service

Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, without regard to conflict of law principles.

Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Virginia. You consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

Informal resolution first. Before filing any claim, you agree to contact us at legal@peerpanel.io and attempt to resolve the dispute informally for at least 30 days.

Miscellaneous

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and PeerPanel regarding the Service and supersede all prior agreements.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.

Waiver. Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms does not constitute a waiver of that right or provision.

Assignment. You may not assign your rights under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign our rights without restriction.

Contact. Questions about these Terms should be directed to legal@peerpanel.io or by mail to: NexAlpha LLC, 111 N Main Street Ste C, Blackstone, VA.