Terms of Service.

These Terms of Service govern your access to and use of Researchly, including the iPhone, iPad, and Mac app, related backend services, subscriptions, account features, and this website. By downloading, installing, subscribing to, or using Researchly, you agree to these Terms.

Last updated: July 4, 2026

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use Researchly. If you are under the age of majority in your jurisdiction, you may use the service only with consent from a parent or legal guardian. Institutions may impose additional rules for academic, classroom, library, or workplace use.

3. License to Use Researchly

Subject to these Terms, Researchly grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the app and website for personal, educational, academic, or internal research-management purposes.

You may not:

  • Copy, sell, sublicense, rent, lease, host, or distribute Researchly except as permitted by law or platform rules.
  • Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to discover source code, security controls, provider credentials, internal prompts, service logic, or non-public APIs except where such restriction is prohibited by law.
  • Interfere with account systems, cloud sync, encrypted PDF storage, quotas, provider limits, or normal service operation.
  • Use Researchly to violate law, infringe rights, distribute malware, harvest data at scale, abuse scholarly providers, or submit harmful, deceptive, unlawful, or infringing content.

4. The Researchly Service

Researchly is a reference, publication, and research-library manager for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Features may include local encrypted libraries, PDF attachments, scholarly search, DOI lookup, BibTeX and BibLaTeX import, Zotero and ORCID connections, citation formatting, citation-count refresh, H-index and library statistics, widgets, Live Activities, Spotlight indexing, export tools, cloud library sync, encrypted PDF cloud sync, external encrypted folder replicas, AI summaries, highlights, limitations, and translations.

Researchly may add, change, limit, suspend, or discontinue features at any time, including beta, experimental, local-only, provider-backed, cloud, or paid features.

5. Accounts and Cloud Features

Some features require a Researchly account. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials secure and for activity under your account. If you connect Apple, Google, ORCID, Zotero, or another provider, your use of that provider is also governed by its own terms and policies.

Cloud library sync and encrypted PDF cloud sync depend on Researchly's cloud services, network connectivity, account state, plan eligibility, device behavior, and provider availability. Researchly may limit cloud storage, file size, transfer, synced items, quota usage, or feature availability to protect reliability, security, and service cost.

6. Plans, Subscriptions, and Billing

Researchly may offer Free, Pro, Max, trials, discounts, regional pricing, and other plan configurations. Plan names, limits, storage allowances, quotas, prices, and included features may change over time. The App Store purchase sheet or other point-of-sale screen controls the price, billing period, and purchase terms shown before you buy.

When you purchase a subscription through the App Store:

  • Payment is charged to your Apple account at confirmation of purchase.
  • Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current billing period.
  • Your account may be charged for renewal within 24 hours before the end of the current period.
  • You can manage or cancel subscriptions through your Apple account settings.
  • Refunds are handled by Apple under Apple's refund policies unless applicable law requires otherwise.

Researchly may verify signed StoreKit transactions and sync entitlements to your Researchly account so your plan works across signed-in devices.

7. Free Trials, Quotas, and Fair Use

If Researchly offers a free trial, the trial lasts only for the period stated at sign-up. Unless you cancel before the trial ends, the trial may convert into the subscription you selected and you may be charged accordingly.

Online features such as metadata search, author recovery, citation refresh, ORCID import, cloud summaries, translation, and cloud PDF sync may be subject to daily, monthly, account, device, plan, region, provider, or fair-use limits. Researchly may throttle, suspend, or refuse requests that exceed limits or create risk for Researchly or its providers.

8. Your Content and Research Material

You keep ownership of papers, PDFs, metadata edits, notes, labels, profile images, exports, and other content you add to Researchly. You grant Researchly the limited rights needed to store, sync, process, display, transform, summarize, translate, export, delete, and otherwise provide the features you request.

You are responsible for ensuring you have the rights to import, store, sync, share, export, or process PDFs, abstracts, citations, papers, and other research material. Researchly does not grant you rights to third-party publications, publisher content, datasets, or provider metadata beyond what the relevant rightsholder or provider allows.

9. Scholarly Data and Third-Party Providers

Researchly may interoperate with scholarly, platform, billing, cloud infrastructure, intelligence, translation, and metadata services as needed to provide the features you request.

  • Metadata and citations: titles, authors, venues, abstracts, DOI records, open-access links, citation counts, and H-index inputs can be delayed, partial, duplicated, missing, inaccurate, or unavailable.
  • ORCID and Zotero: connections depend on provider authorization. Current Zotero access is intended for library access and does not require notes access, write access, or all-group access.
  • Cloud and platform services: authentication, sync, storage, widgets, Live Activities, Spotlight, Keychain, file import/export, and Quick Look previews depend on operating-system behavior, permissions, and provider availability.

Researchly is not responsible for third-party outages, provider policy changes, rate limits, data inaccuracies, account restrictions, or content removal by third parties.

10. AI Summaries and Translations

Researchly may provide summaries, highlights, limitations, translations, search classification, abstract reconstruction, or similar intelligent features. These outputs are generated from metadata or text you provide or request and may be incomplete, misleading, or wrong.

AI and translation features are reading aids. They are not legal, medical, financial, academic-integrity, peer-review, or professional advice. You remain responsible for verifying source material, citations, quotations, interpretations, submissions, publications, and compliance with institutional rules.

11. Acceptable Use

You agree not to use Researchly to upload, sync, process, or share content that is unlawful, defamatory, abusive, harassing, infringing, privacy-invasive, malicious, or otherwise harmful. You also agree not to misuse provider APIs, bypass quotas, attempt unauthorized access, scrape at scale, or misrepresent your identity.

12. Intellectual Property

Researchly, including its software, design, branding, text, graphics, interfaces, documentation, website, and related services, is owned by Tridib Banerjee or licensed to Researchly and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. These Terms do not transfer ownership rights to you.

13. Privacy

Your use of Researchly is also governed by the Researchly Privacy Policy, which explains how data is processed, stored, shared, protected, and deleted. If there is a conflict between these Terms and the Privacy Policy on a privacy-specific issue, the Privacy Policy controls for that issue.

14. Disclaimers

Researchly is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Researchly disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, uninterrupted operation, error-free operation, data accuracy, or data availability.

Researchly does not guarantee that local files, cloud sync, encrypted PDF sync, Keychain sync, backups, imports, exports, provider searches, citation counts, AI summaries, translations, ORCID imports, Zotero connections, widgets, Live Activities, Spotlight indexing, purchases, restorations, or account deletion will always be complete, accurate, timely, secure, or available.

15. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Researchly and its operator will not be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost data, lost research, missed deadlines, lost profits, business interruption, reputational harm, publication delays, citation errors, corrupted files, provider inaccuracies, or cloud sync failures arising from or related to your use of Researchly.

Where liability cannot be excluded, Researchly's aggregate liability will be limited to the greater of the amount you paid for Researchly during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim or EUR 50.

16. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Researchly and its operator from claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, losses, and expenses arising from your misuse of Researchly, violation of these Terms, infringement of third-party rights, or unlawful use of research material.

17. Suspension and Termination

Researchly may suspend or terminate access to cloud services, online features, accounts, or the app if you violate these Terms, misuse providers, exceed fair-use limits, create security risk, fail payment, or cause legal exposure. You may stop using Researchly at any time. Provisions that by their nature should survive will remain in effect.

18. Apple App Store Terms

If you download Researchly from the Apple App Store, you acknowledge that these Terms are between you and Researchly, not Apple. Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support beyond obligations imposed by law. The app is licensed, not sold, and your use is also subject to Apple's applicable App Store, Media Services, and usage rules. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms as they relate to your license to use the app and may enforce those terms against you.

19. Changes to These Terms

Researchly may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be posted on this page and may also be communicated in-app or by other reasonable means. Your continued use after the updated Terms become effective means you accept them.

20. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Germany and applicable European Union law, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. If you are a consumer, mandatory consumer protection laws in your country of residence remain unaffected. Unless applicable law provides otherwise, courts in Germany will have jurisdiction over disputes arising out of or relating to these Terms.

21. Contact

If you have questions about these Terms, email support@caliq.eu or use the contact page.