Usage Policy

This policy says what litscout may and may not be used for. It forms part of our Terms of Service, so breaking it breaks the Terms.

It is short on purpose. litscout finds and ranks research literature; it does not generate open-ended content, so most of what fills an AI acceptable-use policy does not apply here. What follows is what actually matters for a retrieval engine.

1. Do not let it make decisions about people

Do not use litscout as the sole or primary basis for a decision affecting a person's health, legal position, finances, employment, housing, insurance or education. In those settings a qualified professional must read the underlying sources and take responsibility for the decision.

This is a restriction, not a disclaimer. We rank papers against a research objective; we do not read them, weigh their quality, or check whether they have been retracted or superseded. A ranked list is not an evidence review, and a relevance score is not a finding.

You also may not build or operate a product or service on top of litscout that produces advice, recommendations or decisions in those areas unless a qualified professional reviews each output before it reaches the person affected, and that person is told AI was involved in producing it.

Using it for your own research in medicine, law, finance or any other field is entirely fine — that is what it is for. The line is between researching a question and deciding someone's case.

2. Cite honestly

• Verify anything you rely on against the primary source. Results can be incomplete, out of date, or wrong.
• Do not present our output as your own literature review, or submit it as work you did without saying a tool was involved, where the journal, funder or institution you are submitting to requires that disclosure.
• Do not cite a paper you have not read on the strength of our summary of it.

We cannot police this and are not trying to. It is here because our users publish, and a retraction is a worse outcome for you than for us.

3. Do not put other people's data in it

Do not enter patient data, client data, personnel records, or anyone else's personal information in a query, note or attachment. Do not enter health, legal or other sensitive details about yourself either — the box is a search field, not a confidential record.

Do not use the service to find, assemble or infer private information about a person.

4. Do not work around the limits

• Do not circumvent rate limits, quotas, security controls or access controls.
• Do not open additional accounts to get more free usage, and do not share one account between people.
• Do not open a new account to get around a suspension.
• Do not access the service through bots, scripts or scrapers, or automate it in any way we have not provided for.
• Do not probe, load-test or attack the service, or upload malware.

Quotas are how the service pays for itself. Working around them is not a clever use of the product; it is the thing that makes the free plan impossible.

5. Do not use the output to rebuild the product

Do not bulk-extract results, relevance scores or explanations to build, train or evaluate a competing retrieval or ranking system, and do not resell or redistribute the service. See Terms section 9.

6. Do not use it unlawfully

Do not use litscout in breach of any law that applies to you, to infringe anyone's intellectual property or other rights, or to bypass a publisher's paywall or licence terms. Where we link to material, the publisher's terms govern your use of it.

7. How we enforce this

If we believe you have broken this policy we may limit, suspend or close your account, and we will tell you what we think you did and when — unless we are prohibited from telling you.

If we get it wrong, tell us. Reply to the notice or write to support@litscout.app and a person will review the decision. If we were wrong we will restore your account and credit any paid time you lost. The full process is in Terms section 8.

To report someone else's misuse, or content that should not be in our results, write to support@litscout.app.

8. Changes to this policy

We version this document separately from the Terms so that we can keep it current as the product changes. When we change it materially we bump the version shown above. Where a change materially reduces what you are allowed to do with a paid plan, Terms section 7 applies.