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Terms and conditions

Customers who wish to subscribe to our publications in electronic form must agree to the terms and conditions of an electronic access licence agreement and register their IP addresses.

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How to comply

This can be done for journals and databases by registering your IP address. While completing the form you will agree to the terms and conditions of the Single Site Electronic Access Licence Agreement.

Information about copyright, our licence to publish, and authors’ deposition and sharing rights can be found in the journal author and review guidelines.

Please contact your regional account manager if you would like more information.

Terms and conditions

These Terms & Conditions shall apply to all contracts for the supply of products provided by The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) to customers to the exclusion of all other terms and conditions, including any terms and conditions which the customer may purport to apply under any purchase order, confirmation of order or similar document.

1 Price & payment

1.1 The price of the product is set out on the RSC invoice.

The price is exclusive of all applicable taxes which shall be charged at the rate prevailing on the date of the invoice. Tax exemption certificates should be sent with orders prior to invoicing.

  • Customers in the UK will be charged VAT unless they can provide an exemption certificate.
  • Customers in the rest of the European Economic Area will be charged VAT, ALV, BTW, FPA, IVA, MOMS, MWST, OB, UMST, and TVA (as appropriate) on their invoices unless they can provide a current, valid VAT registration number.
  • Customers in India will be charged GST (as appropriate) on their invoices.
  • Customers in Canada will be charged GST, HST or PST (as appropriate) on their invoices.
  • Customers in Korea will be charged Korean VAT on their invoices.
  • Customers in South Africa and/or customers purchasing through South African subscription agents will be charged South African VAT (as appropriate) on their invoices.

1.2 Payment is accepted by bank transfer, by cheque or by credit or debit card.

1.3 Payment by bank transfer should be made in the currency stipulated on the invoice to the bank account detailed on the invoice.

1.4 Cheques should be made payable to The Royal Society of Chemistry as follows:

  1. Pounds Sterling drawn on a UK bank;
  2. US Dollars drawn on either a US or a UK bank.

1.5 Payments by card are accepted on most credit and debit cards (except Diners Club and AMEX) up to £20,000.

1.6 Payments by credit or debit card may incur a 3% supplement on the invoiced amount.

2 Dispatch

Unless specified otherwise by RSC, dispatches made outside the UK are by Priority to continental Europe, and by Standard outside Continental Europe, excluding the USA. Dispatches to the USA are by Airfreight.

3 Access to online products

Access to online versions of the products is made by IP address or federated access. Separate Terms & Conditions are applicable for accessing the online versions.

3.1 For access to journals and online-only journals register your IPs by visiting www.rsc.org/ip. You will be asked to accept the Terms & Conditions before sending your request.

3.2 For access to the RSC eBook Collection send your IP addresses to [email protected]. A licence agreement will be sent to you for review and signature.

3.3 Customers purchasing online content via a consortium or multisite arrangement will be required to sign an additional licence agreement.

4 Claims policy

Claims for:

4.1 damaged products must be made within seven (7) days of receipt of the product and photographic evidence provided;

4.2 missing issues of journals should be made no sooner than one (1) month after publication date and no later than four (4) months after publication or date of order (whichever is later).

5 Cancellation policy

5.1 An administration charge may be levied to cover some of the costs incurred when refunding duplicate orders/payments.

5.2 A cancellation charge of 5% of a subscription cost will be levied on journal subscriptions cancelled prior to publication of the first issue. There shall be no refunds after the subscription has commenced.

6 Data Protection

Publisher and Customer shall each comply with the requirements of any data protection legislation currently in force and applicable to them. The RSC privacy statement which applies to any personal data that the Customer shares is set out here.

7 Warranties & liabilities

7.1 All warranties, conditions, and terms, whether relating to fitness of purpose, merchantability or condition or otherwise howsoever and whether implied by statute or common law or otherwise, are excluded to the fullest extent permissible by law.

7.2 RSC reserves the right, upon giving prior notice in writing to the customer, to withdraw or refuse to provide its services, if, in its reasonable opinion, it may be liable to criminal prosecution by doing or continuing to do so.

7.3 RSC shall not in any circumstances whatsoever or howsoever arising be liable for any indirect or consequential loss howsoever caused.

8 Title & risk

8.1 Title to the products shall remain with the RSC until the customer has paid the price and VAT, if applicable, in full and has taken delivery.

8.2 Risk in the products shall pass to the customer on despatch.

9 Force majeure

9.1 Neither party shall be deemed to be in breach of this agreement by reason of any delay in performing, or any failure to perform, any of its respective obligations in relation to this agreement, if the delay or failure was due to any cause beyond its reasonable control including, but not limited to, acts of God, explosions, epidemic or pandemic, nuclear contamination, floods, fire or accident, war or threat of war, sabotage, civil disturbance, prohibitions or measures of any kind on the part of any governmental, parliamentary or local authority, import or export regulations or embargoes or industrial actions or trade disputes (whether involving employees of either party or of a third party), power, telecommunications or Internet failures or damages to or destruction of any network facilities (“Force Majeure”).

9.2 If either party to this Agreement is prevented or delayed in the performance of any of its obligations under this Agreement by Force Majeure and if such party gives written notice thereof to the other party specifying the matters constituting Force Majeure together with such evidence as it reasonably can give and specifying the period for which it is estimated that such prevention or delay will continue, then the party in question shall be excused the performance or the punctual performance as the case may be as from the date of such notice for so long as such cause of prevention or delay shall continue.

10 Governing law & jurisdiction

The supply of products and services shall be governed by and construed in all respects in accordance with the laws of England and the parties hereto hereby submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts. Any difference arising between the parties shall be submitted to a mediation procedure in accordance with the Centre for Dispute Resolution (CEDR) Model Mediation Procedure. Should the mediation be unsuccessful, neither party is precluded from instigating legal proceedings under this Clause 10.

Click-through licensing agreement

The click through licence can be accepted and used only by customers who have purchased a subscription at the standard subscription price and want to access the publications at a single site. 

A customer must sign a licence agreement in the following instances:

  • RSC Gold (with or without archive lease) – subscriptions
  • The Merck Index* Online – subscriptions and perpetual access
  • Journal Archive, RSC eBook Collection and / or Historical Collection
  • RSC Select
  • Multi-site access (more than one site is to be included)
  • The terms** of the click through licence cannot be accepted.

* The name THE MERCK INDEX is owned by Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp, a subsidiary of Merck & Co, Inc, Whitehouse Station, NJ, USA, and is licensed to The Royal Society of Chemistry for use in the USA and Canada.

**A site is defined as one institution or company, or within a five mile (8 KM) radius of the subscriber’s address.

Please get in touch with your regional sales representative if you would like more information.

Licensing agreement forms

Electronic Access Licence Agreement – Academia

Electronic Access Licence Agreement – Company

SPR purchasers' agreement forms

Purchasers of specialist periodical reports (SPRs) applying for free access to electronic chapters must agree to an SPR purchasers' agreement.

SPR Purchasers' Agreement – Academia

SPR Purchasers' Agreement – Company

IP address registration

Unless specified above, customers who wish to access our publications in electronic format must agree to the terms and conditions of one of the above electronic access licence agreements, and then register their IP addresses.

Please contact your regional sales representative if you would like more information.

Non-commercial terms of use of information from the Royal Society of Chemistry

The following Terms and Conditions apply to users accessing RSC publishing content which is not published under a Creative Commons licence. This applies to journal articles, book chapters or database records accessed for free or via an academic or personal subscription on the RSC’s website and accepted manuscripts accessed in non-commercial repositories, including institutional repositories. Users from commercial subscribers should contact their information specialist for the commercial Terms and Conditions.

Definitions

Commercial Use: means use which is for direct economic or commercial advantage, whether by or for the user, by means of the sale, resale, loan, transfer, hire or other form of exploitation of RSC Information. For the avoidance of doubt:

  1. use of RSC information by the user in the course of research funded by a commercial organisation is not deemed to constitute Commercial Use
  2. use of RSC Information by the user in the course of contract research carried out for a commercial organisation to which the research results will be provided is deemed to constitute Commercial Use.

RSC Information journal articles not published under a Creative Commons licence, book chapters or database records available for free or via an academic or personal subscription on the RSC Website and accepted manuscripts available in non-commercial repositories, including institutional repositories.

RSC Website means www.rsc.org and sub-websites such as pubs.rsc.org and books.rsc.org.

Secure Authentication: means access by a username and password provided by the RSC to the user.

Prohibited uses

  1. Users of RSC Information on the RSC Website shall not use any automated software, including without limitation webcrawlers, to download RSC Information. Such activities may have a detrimental effect on RSC Website or access thereto, and they are strictly forbidden.
  2. Users of RSC Information may not make the RSC Information available on any other publically available website.

Permitted uses

Users may access RSC Information via Secure Authentication.

Users of RSC Information are permitted to:

  1. search, retrieve, display, and view RSC Information
  2. copy (including printing and downloading) RSC Information and retain it as long as you wish for your own personal non-Commercial Use
  3. use RSC Information for the purposes of research, lectures or private study only, and not for Commercial Use
  4. store RSC Information electronically, provided the use is consistent with the other terms and conditions described here
  5. include RSC Information (for example, a figure, diagram or chart) in a presentation or in a in a published work provided always that permission has been sought and obtained from the RSC in advance, except as permitted in accordance with fair use/fair dealing principles.

You need to obtain permission from the RSC to carry out any other activity not explicitly mentioned above, including but not limited to, inclusion in a course pack. Details of the RSC’s procedures for processing permission requests can be found on the RSC’s website at http://rsc.li/permissions.

All cases of reproduction must carry the relevant credit and include a link back to the publication on the RSC’s website.

Copyright

The RSC and any other applicable copyright owner(s) retains all applicable intellectual property rights, including but not limited to, copyright, and database rights, and these Terms and Conditions do not have the effect of transferring any such rights to any user. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured, or modified in any way. Users must take all reasonable precautions to prevent theft or inadvertent illicit use of the intellectual property in RSC Information. The relevant copyright notice must be displayed on all copies made from RSC Information.

Availability of RSC Information via RSC Website

The RSC shall use all reasonable endeavours to make RSC Information available via the RSC Website on a continuous basis, but if your access is suspended or interrupted or a fault or defect occurs which prevents access to RSC Information, the RSC's liability shall be limited to restoring access as soon as is reasonably practicable. Otherwise the RSC shall have no other liability to the user. The RSC reserves the right to alter the availability of RSC Information.

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