Terms of Service

This document matters. We expressly encourage you to download and keep it. It is permanently available at https://scienda.io/terms and is emailed to you when your contract is formed.

---

1. Who you are contracting with

Referred to as "we" or "us". See also the Legal Notice.

We apply consumer-law protections to every customer, whether the subscription is taken out personally or professionally.

---

2. What the service is

Scienda is a literature alerting service by subscription, at https://scienda.io.

What it does. It queries PubMed daily, applies our filters and automatic selection models, and emails you a list of references to recently published articles in the specialty and on the topics you chose. Each reference carries the article title, journal, date, publication type, a journal quality indicator, and a link to the PubMed record.

What it does not do.

• It contains no abstract, no full text and no editorial content. It selects and routes — it does not host papers.
• It makes no recommendation, no suggestion and no medical advice. It flags publications and stops there. It substitutes for neither primary sources nor your professional judgement.
• It performs no ranking by clinical value. The quality indicator describes the journal, never the article, and never its relevance to a particular patient.
• Scienda is not a medical device within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2017/745 and bears no CE marking on that basis.

The quality indicator is derived from OpenAlex (CC0) citation data, computed by us, expressed as the journal's rank within its disciplinary category. It has six levels, most to least selective: Elite, Top 5%, Top 10%, Top 25%, Top 50%, Unranked. Unranked means the journal either does not reach the higher bands or could not be measured; it is never a value judgement.

Delivery. The digest is sent once a day, or on Monday morning if you choose weekly delivery. No specific delivery time is guaranteed.

Compatibility and interoperability. The service needs nothing installed — no app, no extension, no particular operating system.

• Compatibility. The web pages work with any current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on desktop and on mobile. The digest is sent as HTML with a plain-text alternative, so it reads in any mail client, including those that do not render HTML or that block images. An internet connection and a working email address are the only requirements.
• Interoperability. The service locks nothing in. Digest links point to public PubMed records — stable, and independent of us: they keep working if you stop being a customer. On request, your account data and preferences are returned to you in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format (JSON), under your right to data portability (see the Privacy Policy).
• No technical protection measures. The service applies no DRM and no copy restriction to the emails you receive.

Pricing is the same for everyone. We do not set personalised prices based on automated decision-making.

---

3. Contract documents and how you accept them

Your contract consists of these documents, all made available to you before you place your order:

1. these Terms of Service, in the version in force on the day of your order;
2. the Refund and Cancellation Policy;
3. the Pricing page;
4. the Privacy Policy.

Acceptance. Before a paid order is placed you tick separate, unticked boxes, each covering a different matter (Sections 5, 8 and 12). We record the time of each tick and the version of each document then in force, and we keep that record.

A paid order is placed by clicking a button that reads "order with obligation to pay".

The 30-day trial without a payment method (Section 6.2) creates no obligation to pay. You take it by ticking a single unticked box — requesting the trial and accepting the documents above — and clicking "Start my free trial". The time and the document versions are recorded the same way.

---

4. Account, eligibility and security

The service is for adults. An account is personal: credentials must not be shared or transferred.

You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and your email address accurate. An invalid address, or one that persistently rejects our mail, makes the service impossible to perform; we will try to reach you before acting on Section 10.

In the event of a security incident affecting the service or the data it holds, we may suspend access temporarily, invalidate active sessions, force password resets, inform the people concerned, and notify the CNIL where the GDPR requires it.

You must not submit patient health data to the service, by any channel. The service is neither designed nor configured to receive it, and never asks for it.

---

5. Plans, price and currency

5.1 Plans

European customers are charged €4.50 per month or €45.00 per year. In other currencies the amount is converted by our payment processor at the rate applying when you pay, and is shown to you before you confirm.

There is one service; the two plans differ only in billing frequency and price.

5.2 The price you see is the price you pay

Prices are inclusive of all taxes and are what you actually pay. There are no set-up, handling or early-termination fees, and support is free.

We currently benefit from the French small-business VAT exemption. If that changes, the tax-inclusive price stays the same and the tax comes out of our margin, not your pocket.

5.3 Price changes

The price is fixed for the whole of your current subscription period and cannot change mid-term.

Any change is announced by a dedicated email at least two months before your renewal date and applies only from the following period. If you do not accept the new price, your contract ends at the end of the current period at no cost — you simply do not renew.

For monthly plans, whose cycle is shorter than that notice period, a price change is announced at least 30 days ahead and applies only from the second cycle after the announcement. You may cancel at any time in the meantime.

---

6. Free trials

Two trials are offered. They cannot be combined, and each is available once per person.

6.1 60-day trial, payment method required

You get the full service for 60 days. Nothing is charged during that period. At the end of the 60 days your subscription continues automatically on the plan you chose and the first payment is taken, unless you cancel before then.

The trial terms — length, first billing date, amount, and how to cancel — are shown to you before you place your order and repeated by email on the day you sign up. We email you again between 14 and 4 days before the first charge, with its date, its amount and how to cancel.

6.2 30-day trial, no payment method

You get the service for 30 days, without giving any payment details. At the end of the 30 days the subscription ends automatically. Nothing is charged, and you do not have to do anything to prevent a charge. You can take a paid subscription from your account at any time, through a paid order (Sections 3, 7.1 and 8). If you subscribe during the trial, your remaining free days are kept: the first payment is only taken when the trial would have ended (unless that is less than 48 hours away, in which case it is taken on the day you subscribe). After the trial, the paid subscription starts with no new trial period.

6.3 What a trial shows you, we owe you

The qualities and features presented to you during a trial form part of what the service is contractually required to deliver.

No minimum commitment is required to take either trial.

---

7. Orders, billing and renewal

7.1 Formation

Your contract is formed when you place your order using the "order with obligation to pay" button — or, for the trial without a payment method, the "Start my free trial" button — after being able to review your order and correct any mistake. We then email you a confirmation on a durable medium, restating the pre-contractual information, these Terms, and the model withdrawal form.

7.2 Payment

Payments are handled by Stripe. Accepted payment methods are shown at the start of the order process. We never see your card details. An invoice is issued at each billing date and remains available in your account.

7.3 Term and automatic renewal

Your subscription runs for a fixed term — one month or twelve months — and renews automatically for the same term unless cancelled under Section 10.

For annual plans, we email you a dedicated reminder 45 days before renewal, showing the renewal date, the amount that will be charged, and how to cancel, with the cancellation deadline in a clearly marked box.

For monthly plans, you can cancel at any time, with no notice, effective at the end of the current month.

7.4 Failed payments

If a payment fails, our payment processor retries and notifies you. Your access continues during that period. If payment still fails, digest delivery stops and your account stays readable. We never delete your data automatically. You can resume at any time, or ask us to erase your data.

---

8. Cancelling, and your right to withdraw

8.1 Cancel online, in one step

You can cancel at any time, online, in a single step, using the "cancel your contract" button in your account. No phone call, no letter, no reason required, and no retention flow standing between you and the cancellation.

We then confirm by email when your contract ends and what cancellation means for your access. Access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for; nothing further is charged. Cancelling does not delete your account — you can ask for erasure separately.

8.2 Right of withdrawal (EU and UK consumers)

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, you have 14 days from the day your contract is formed to withdraw without giving a reason and without cost.

⚠️ That period runs from sign-up, not from the first charge. Where sign-up includes a free trial, the trial does not extend the withdrawal period — it overlaps it.

You can withdraw:

• online, using the "withdraw from your contract here" button, available throughout the withdrawal period; after you confirm with the "confirm withdrawal" button we send you, on a durable medium, an acknowledgement stating the content of your declaration and the date and time it was sent;
• by email to [email protected], using the model withdrawal form or any other unambiguous statement;
• by post, to the address in Section 1.

We refund everything you have paid, within 14 days of being told, using your original payment method.

Immediate performance. Because the service starts as soon as you sign up, we ask you — using two separate, unticked boxes — to expressly request that performance begin before the withdrawal period expires, and to acknowledge that you will lose your right of withdrawal once the service has been fully performed. We confirm both to you by email. If any of these steps is missing, you keep your right of withdrawal and owe nothing.

The 30-day trial without a payment method is an exception. Those two boxes are not shown there, and you waive nothing: the right of withdrawal is only lost under a contract that puts you under an obligation to pay, and this trial creates none — nothing can be charged to you, and the subscription ends by itself. You therefore keep your full right of withdrawal throughout. The two boxes appear the day you take a paid subscription.

8.3 Refunds beyond the legal minimum

Separately, and in addition to anything above: we refund any charge in full, on request, within 14 days of that charge, with no questions asked. See the Refund and Cancellation Policy.

---

9. Ending the contract on our side

We may end your contract only for one of the following objective reasons: persistent non-payment after failed retries and a formal notice; sharing your account or credentials; bulk automated use, or any use that harms the service or its security; fraud or impersonation; an email address that is permanently invalid; or permanent discontinuation of the service.

Except for serious misconduct, we give you formal notice that goes unheeded and 30 days' notice. We refund, pro rata, whatever you have paid for and not received.

If we ever discontinue the service, we will give subscribers at least 60 days' notice and refund unused paid periods pro rata.

---

10. Availability

We provide the service using reasonable care and skill.

No minimum service level is offered. There is no uptime commitment, no email delivery-time commitment, and no guarantee that a digest arrives every single day.

The service may be interrupted for maintenance, or by a third party it depends on — PubMed being unavailable, or an email provider failing. We work to keep such interruptions short and to tell you about prolonged ones.

---

11. What you may do with the digest

The digest contains no third-party editorial content — no abstracts, no full text. It consists of bibliographic references from public sources and links to PubMed records.

The Scienda name, visual identity, service structure, classification models and computed quality indicators are ours.

---

12. Non-exhaustiveness, and the absence of any recommendation

You are asked to accept this section by ticking a separate, unticked box when you place a paid order (for the trial without a payment method: the day you take a paid subscription). It describes ways in which the service falls short of what you might otherwise reasonably expect, and your agreement to those specific characteristics is collected separately from your acceptance of these Terms.

12.1 The selection is non-exhaustive by design

Scienda does not flag every relevant article, and does not claim to. This is not an occasional defect; it follows from how the service is built.

12.2 The service recommends nothing

Scienda flags publications. It draws no conclusions, makes no recommendation, offers no medical advice, and performs no ranking by clinical value. It substitutes for neither primary sources nor the practitioner's judgement. The quality indicator describes the journal in its disciplinary category, and nothing else.

12.3 What this section does not do

This section describes the service. It does not release us from delivering the service you paid for, nor from the statutory guarantees set out in Section 13.

---

13. Statutory guarantees

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, you have the statutory guarantee of conformity for digital services under Articles L224-25-12 and following of the French Consumer Code, implementing Directive (EU) 2019/770. Because the service is supplied continuously, that guarantee applies for the whole life of your subscription, and the burden of proving conformity is on us.

Where the service does not conform, you may require it to be brought into conformity at no cost and, failing that within a reasonable time, obtain a price reduction or terminate the contract. For continuous supply, a refund is due pro rata for the non-conforming period, even if you used the service. Any refusal to bring the service into conformity is given to you in writing with reasons.

These provisions are mandatory law and cannot be waived.

To rely on them, write to [email protected] describing the problem.

---

14. Data and sources

Your personal data is handled as described in the Privacy Policy. Billing data is processed by Stripe. Proof of your consent — boxes ticked, timestamps, document versions — is kept for three years.

Bibliographic data comes from PubMed and the NLM Catalog (public domain), and the quality indicator is computed by us from CC0 data. The required provider notices appear in the Legal Notice.

---

15. Changes to the service and to these Terms

Updates needed to keep the service conforming are provided throughout your subscription, and we tell you about them.

Other changes. The service evolves, and you accept that it will, for reasons inherent to what it is: bibliographic sources and their interfaces change; classification models and quality indicators are improved; the NLM imposes technical constraints upstream; defects get fixed; the law changes.

Such changes are announced clearly, reasonably in advance, on a durable medium, with the date they take effect, and are made at no extra cost. If a change has a negative impact on your access to or use of the service, you may terminate free of charge within 30 days of being told, unless the impact is minor.

We do not reserve the right to change the duration, price or essential characteristics of the service mid-term.

Changes to these Terms are notified at least two months before your renewal date and apply only from the following period. If you do not accept them, the contract ends at the end of the current period at no cost.

---

16. Liability

16.1 What we are responsible for

We are liable for loss we cause by failing to meet our obligations. Nothing in these Terms is intended to remove or reduce your right to compensation, and nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

Note that our undertaking is one of reasonable care and skill, that no minimum service level is offered (Section 10), that the characteristics described in Section 12 were specifically disclosed to you and separately agreed, and that we are not responsible for decisions you take after reading a digest — the service recommends nothing.

We are not responsible for the availability or content of third-party sites the service links to, including PubMed and publishers' sites.

16.2 Disclaimer — not applicable to EU consumers, see 16.5

EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY SET OUT IN THESE TERMS AND SUBJECT TO SECTION 16.5, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY. WE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, RELIABILITY, TIMELINESS OR CURRENCY OF THE SERVICE OR OF ANY REFERENCE IT DELIVERS. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT IT WILL IDENTIFY EVERY RELEVANT PUBLICATION.

16.3 Limit — not applicable to EU consumers, see 16.5

Subject to Section 16.5, our total liability arising out of or relating to the service, in aggregate, will not exceed the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, and (b) fifty US dollars (US$50).

Subject to Section 16.5, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data or loss of goodwill.

16.4 Time limit — not applicable to EU consumers, see 16.5

Subject to Section 16.5, any claim arising out of or relating to the service must be brought within one year of the event giving rise to it.

16.5 Mandatory consumer rights are unaffected

Nothing in Sections 16.2, 16.3 and 16.4 limits, excludes or modifies the mandatory rights of consumers resident in the European Union, or any other rights that cannot be limited or excluded under the law applicable to you. For consumers resident in the European Union, Sections 16.2, 16.3 and 16.4 do not apply, and Sections 13 and 16.1 govern.

---

17. Auto-renewal — United States

We aim to meet ROSCA (15 U.S.C. § 8403) and state automatic-renewal laws, including California (AB 2863), Colorado, New York, Maryland, Virginia and Connecticut. In practice:

• before we collect any billing information, the recurring nature of the charge, its amount, its frequency, the renewal date and how to cancel are disclosed clearly and conspicuously;
• we obtain your express informed consent to the recurring charge, by a separate tick that is not bundled with anything else, and we keep proof of it for three years;
• cancellation is available online, in a single step, through the same interface you subscribed through, and is never conditioned on a phone call, a chat session or a retention offer;
• for annual plans we send a renewal reminder 45 days ahead; for the 60-day trial we email you between 14 and 4 days before the first charge (California requires 3 to 21 days for trials longer than 31 days), restating its date, amount and frequency and how to cancel.

---

18. Complaints and mediation

Send complaints to [email protected] or to the postal address in Section 1. We acknowledge them and reply within a reasonable time.

If a complaint is not resolved within two months, EU consumers may refer the matter, free of charge, to our consumer mediator: Médiation de la Consommation & Patrimoine (MCP) — 12 square Desnouettes, 75015 Paris — https://www.mcpmediation.org. Mediation is free and optional; it is not a precondition to going to court. The mediator must be contacted within a maximum of one year from your initial written complaint (Art. R612-2 of the French Consumer Code). For cross-border EU disputes, the European Consumer Centre France can also help.

---

19. Governing law and courts

These Terms are governed by French law. If you habitually reside in another EU Member State, you keep the benefit of the mandatory consumer-protection rules of your country of residence.

You may bring proceedings either in the French courts or in the courts of the place where you live. We may bring proceedings against you only in the courts of the place where you live.

There is no arbitration clause.

---

20. General

Language. These Terms exist in French and English. For consumers resident in France, the French version prevails (fr/02-cgv.md).

Severability. If any provision is held void or unenforceable, the rest stands.

Assignment. We will not assign this contract to a third party without your agreement where doing so would reduce your rights.

Entire agreement. The documents listed in Section 3 are the whole of the agreement between us.

---