Terms of Service
Last updated · February 2026
1. Acceptance of terms
By creating an account or using Arm's Length Validator (the "Service"), a product of Peer Verify LLC, an Illinois limited liability company ("Peer Verify", "we", "us", "our"), you agree to these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. These Terms form a binding agreement between you and Peer Verify LLC.
2. Description of the service
The Service is a research-integrity tool that helps customers verify whether a proposed peer reviewer has prior structural ties to a candidate being evaluated. The Service combines publicly available data from the ORCID public API, the PubMed E-utilities, and Google Search results into a single "Arm's Length Grid" with a 0–100 conflict-strength score. Findings are advisory; final arm's-length determinations always require human judgment per the customer's institutional policy.
3. Eligibility & accounts
You must be at least 18 years old and capable of forming a binding contract to use the Service. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately at hello@armslengthvalidator.com if you suspect unauthorized access.
4. Subscription & payment
Pro Solo is billed at $19.99 USD per month via Stripe. University tiers (15, 20, 50, 100 seats) are billed annually with a 20% discount and arranged manually via sales@armslengthvalidator.com. All fees are non-refundable except where required by law or as explicitly described in section 5.
5. Cancellation & refunds
You may cancel your subscription at any time from the in-app Billing settings — no phone call, retention email, or waiting period is required. Cancellation takes effect immediately; you will not be charged again. Refunds are issued, at our discretion, within the first 14 days of an initial subscription charge if no more than 3 verification reports have been run. After 14 days or beyond the usage threshold, refunds are not available.
6. Acceptable use
You agree not to: (a) use the Service to harass, defame, or unlawfully discriminate against any individual; (b) misrepresent results in committee proceedings as conclusive rather than advisory; (c) scrape, copy, or resell the Service or its outputs; (d) submit CVs or personal data without the legal authority to do so; (e) attempt to reverse engineer, breach, or interfere with the Service. We reserve the right to suspend accounts in violation.
7. Intellectual property
The Service, including its software, brand, methodology, and scoring algorithms, is owned by Peer Verify LLC. You retain ownership of CV files and evaluator names you submit; you grant us a non-exclusive license to process them solely to deliver the Service. Generated reports are licensed to you for internal institutional use; they may not be republished or resold.
8. Third-party data
The Service relies on third-party public sources (ORCID, PubMed/NCBI, Google, Stripe for payments, Resend for email, Anthropic Claude for CV parsing). We do not control those services and are not responsible for their accuracy, availability, or terms. ORCID identifiers and PubMed records are surfaced as-is with direct verification links.
9. Disclaimer of warranties
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We make no warranties about completeness, accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. Conflict-strength scores are heuristic estimates derived from public data; they are not legal findings of conflict of interest. You assume responsibility for how findings are used.
10. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service shall not exceed the fees you paid to us in the 12 months preceding the claim. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, including loss of profits, reputation, or data.
11. Termination
We may suspend or terminate your account for material breach of these Terms, prolonged non-payment, or activity that exposes us or other users to legal risk. Upon termination, your right to use the Service ends immediately; we may retain anonymized usage data for analytics and audit.
12. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. We will notify active subscribers via email at least 14 days before material changes take effect. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.
13. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Cook County, Illinois, and the parties consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.
14. Contact
Questions about these Terms can be sent to hello@armslengthvalidator.com. Sales and quote requests for institutional plans go to sales@armslengthvalidator.com.