Terms of Service

Account required for participation. Portions of the service may be viewable without an account. To participate — to post, contribute, or use most features — you must register for an account.

Real-name policy. You must register and operate your account under your real name. We may decline or suspend accounts that appear to use false or assumed identities.

Optional verification. You may, but are not required to, verify your status as an educator to unlock certain features or designations, including (a) professional credentials such as employment, education, or licensure, and (b) your identity through a supported third-party identity provider.

Community access. Some communities, areas, or features are available only by invitation from an existing member or administrator. Individual communities, groups, or spaces within the service may be governed by local rules set by their administrators or moderators, in addition to these Terms and our general policies. By participating in a community, you agree to its local rules. Communities may control their own membership.

This is a professional, curated environment. You are expected to engage with politeness, respect, and constructive intent. Conduct that is harassing, abusive, deceptive, or otherwise inconsistent with a professional community is not permitted.

Tiered enforcement. Enforcement operates at two levels. You may be removed from a specific community, space, or feature for a local violation without losing access to the rest of your account. Repeated or serious violations may result in account-level action under Section 11.

How violations are identified. We rely on reports from users to identify content or conduct that may violate these Terms or a community’s local rules. Community administrators and moderators also enforce rules within their spaces.

Decisions are not explained. When we or a community take a moderation action, we do not commit to providing a reason, an explanation, supporting evidence, or notice of the specific basis for the action. Some moderation decisions may be made by automated systems.

Decisions are final. Moderation decisions are final. We do not provide a process to contest, appeal, or seek review of a moderation decision.

You retain ownership. You retain copyright and ownership of the content you create or upload (“Your Content”).

License you grant. By submitting Your Content, you choose the license it will be made available to others under the Creative Commons license choices. You grant the Physics Lab Exchange a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to the content you uploaded for the following purposes:

• Display — to host, display, reproduce, and perform Your Content in operating and promoting the service;
• Adaptation — to modify, adapt, translate, and create derivative works from Your Content;
• AI model training — to use Your Content to train, fine-tune, or improve the Physics Lab Exchange’s internal artificial-intelligence systems.
• And any additional rights granted under the Creative Commons License you choose.

This license continues with respect to copies of Your Content retained or sublicensed before removal or account closure.

Copyrighted material. You agree not to contribute or post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or you have permission from the copyright holder, except as permitted by the “fair use” provisions of the U.S. copyright laws (in general this means brief excerpts only).

Free service. The service is provided free of charge. There is no monetary component, subscription, or paid feature governed by these Terms.

Marketing preferences. You can manage the promotional communications you receive — by channel, category, and delivery method — through your account’s marketing preference settings.

Behavioral data. Beyond the data required to operate the service (such as login and account information), we collect and associate with you data about your identifiable activity across the service, in order to personalize your experience and to analyze use of the service. We do not infer or predict your future behavior, preferences, or attributes from that activity.

Consent. We present a consent banner and obtain your affirmative opt-in before collecting data that is not essential to providing the service.

Sensitive data. Among sensitive categories of information, we may collect data that reveals your sexual orientation or gender identity, such as pronouns. We collect such data only with your affirmative opt-in.

Network sharing. We share data with a defined set of partners and affiliates as part of providing the service and its integrations.

Crawlers. We permit third-party crawlers, including AI crawlers and bots, to access content that is publicly available on the service.

We do not sell your data. We do not sell, license, or otherwise share your personal data for profit. We do not sell or license user data to third parties for the training of artificial-intelligence systems.

• We may use AI to help catalog Your Content. This feature may be turned off in the cataloging interface.
• We do not derive biometric data. We do not use AI to derive your identity or sensitive characteristics from your physical, physiological, or behavioral traits.
• We do not build individual predictive profiles. We do not use AI to infer or predict your future behavior, preferences, or attributes, or to generate an individualized profile of you. Aggregate or cohort-level analysis that does not single you out is not restricted by this commitment.
• We may use AI models to help improve our search features.
• We do not train AI models on your non-public content such as private messages or files.
• We do not use real-time inference to generate responses from your data.

Access and export. You may request access to, or a copy of, your personal data. Such requests are processed manually and may involve a waiting period. We require you to verify your identity before we fulfill an access or portability request.

Research use. We may use and share data for systematic research and study, including by (a) publishing anonymized open datasets for public use, (b) providing anonymized data through controlled-access arrangements, and (c) providing data to vetted research partners under restricted privacy agreements.

Termination by us. We may suspend or terminate your account at any time, with or without notice and with or without explanation.

Your assets. Your ownership of Your Content exists independently of your account, and termination of your account does not extinguish that ownership.

Deletion. You may request deletion of your personal data by contacting us. After deletion, we make a reasonable effort to remove your personal identifiers; however, anonymized content, records, or logs may be retained.

Neutral host; user-assumed responsibility. The Physics Lab Exchange acts as a neutral host of user uploaded content. The Physics Lab Exchange does not ensure the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of user uploaded content, and is not responsible for the contents of any contribution or post. Contributions and posts express the views of the author(s), not necessarily the views of the Physics Lab Exchange. Users should use their own discernment regarding professional advice posted in community discussions.

You are solely responsible for the content you submit and for your use of the service.

Security. We encrypt your data while it is in transit across the network.

The service is provided “as is” to the fullest extent permitted by law. The Physics Lab Exchange is not responsible for any losses or damages caused by use of this site, or by the materials it links to.

We require a valid legal process — a warrant or court order signed by a judge — before we disclose your data to government agencies or law enforcement. The sole exception is a situation involving an imminent threat to life or safety, where we may act without a court order.

We may change these Terms. We will provide a notice period before material changes take effect. Notice is provided passively — by updating the “Effective” date and the revision history on this page. We do not commit to notifying you individually (for example, by email or in-product message) of changes. We will put up a banner on the homepage announcing any pending changes to the terms, for at least 30 days.

If you have questions about these Terms, please contact us.