Consultation Agreement

Last updated: 2 August 2026

Between Advances.in LTD (the “Client”) and the individual accepting these terms (the “Consultant”).

1. Engagement and Services

By clicking “Accept” on this agreement and accepting a specific review assignment, the Consultant is engaged as an independent contractor to provide peer review services for the manuscript identified in that assignment. Each accepted assignment forms a separate engagement under these terms.

2. Personal Performance

The Consultant shall perform the review personally. The Consultant shall not delegate, subcontract, share, or co-author the review with any other person — including colleagues, students, assistants, or AI systems — without prior written consent from the Client. The Consultant shall not disclose to any third party that they are reviewing the manuscript.

3. Compensation and Payment

3.1. The Consultant receives USD $100 for each completed review process per manuscript. A “review process” includes all rounds of review for the same manuscript.

3.2. Payment is made within 14 days of the Client’s receipt of a valid invoice from the Consultant, following completion of the full review process.

3.3. The Consultant is solely responsible for all taxes, social contributions, VAT registration where applicable, and any other levies in their jurisdiction. The Client makes no withholdings.

3.4. If the manuscript is withdrawn by the authors before the Consultant submits their first-round review, no payment is due. If withdrawn after, the Consultant is paid in full.

3.5. If the Client reasonably determines that the review materially fails to meet professional standards (non-substantive, plagiarised, or AI-generated in breach of clause 5), the Client may withhold payment in whole or in part.

4. Review Timeline

4.1. The Consultant shall deliver each review round within 21 days of accepting the assignment or receiving revised materials.

4.2. Failure to deliver within 21 days, without prior written agreement to an extension, may result in forfeiture of payment for that assignment and termination of the engagement.

5. Prohibition on AI / Large Language Model Use

5.1. The Consultant must not upload, paste, transmit, or otherwise input any part of the manuscript, supplementary materials, author identities, or related confidential information into any artificial intelligence system, large language model, or third-party online tool — including but not limited to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, or any similar service.

5.2. The Consultant must not use generative AI to draft, edit, or substantively produce the review itself. Local spell-check or grammar tools that do not transmit content to third-party servers are permitted.

5.3. Breach of this clause constitutes a material breach of confidentiality and may result in forfeiture of payment, removal from the reviewer pool, and liability under clause 12.

6. Confidentiality

6.1. Confidential Information. During the review the Consultant receives: (a) the manuscript and supplementary materials as submitted (the “Confidential Manuscript”); (b) communications with the editorial team and other reviewers; (c) any other non-public information related to the review process. These are collectively the “Confidential Information.”

6.2. Public-domain carve-out. Confidentiality obligations cease, with respect to specific content and only to the extent that the content has been: (a) lawfully made public by the authors (e.g., formal publication, or a preprint posted by the authors on a recognised preprint server); or (b) made public by the Client (e.g., under open peer review policy). This carve-out does not extend to: unpublished drafts or revisions, the fact that the manuscript was under review at Advances.in, the identities of reviewers, internal editorial communications, or reviewer reports — unless the Client’s policy provides otherwise.

6.3. During the review and until the relevant content is lawfully made public, the Consultant shall not: (a) share the Confidential Manuscript or any non-public portion with any third party without prior written consent from the Client; (b) publicly discuss or disclose the existence of the manuscript or the review, including on social media; (c) contact the authors directly regarding the manuscript or the review.

6.4. Use of ideas, data, and methods. (a) The Consultant shall not use, in their own research, teaching, grant applications, or any other work, any unpublished ideas, data, methods, or findings obtained through the review until the relevant content has been lawfully made public, except to the extent the Consultant can demonstrate, by contemporaneous written records pre-dating the start of the review assignment, that the same ideas, data, methods, or findings were already known to the Consultant, were independently developed by the Consultant, or had been lawfully obtained by the Consultant from a source other than the review. (b) Once the content is lawfully public, the Consultant may cite and engage with it as they would any other public work, with appropriate attribution. The Consultant shall not claim independent discovery of ideas first encountered through the review.

6.5. Retention and deletion. The Consultant shall securely delete the Confidential Manuscript and any extracts upon the earlier of: (a) the manuscript being lawfully made public, after which the public version may be retained on the same basis as any other public work; or (b) the manuscript being rejected or withdrawn. Reviewer reports submitted to the Client may be retained by the Client per its editorial records.

6.6. Reviewer identity. The fact that the Consultant reviewed the manuscript remains confidential indefinitely unless the Client’s policy or the Consultant’s express consent provides otherwise (e.g., signed or open reviews).

6.7. Survival. Obligations under this clause survive termination indefinitely with respect to information that has not become public.

7. Anti-Bribery and No Side Payments

7.1. The Consultant warrants that they have not accepted, and will not accept, any payment, gift, favour, or benefit of any kind from the authors of the manuscript, their institutions, or any party with an interest in the manuscript’s outcome, in connection with the review.

7.2. The Consultant shall immediately notify the Client at support@advances.in if any such offer is made.

7.3. The Consultant complies with the UK Bribery Act 2010 and equivalent applicable anti-corruption laws.

8. Reviewer Warranties

The Consultant warrants and represents that: (a) their identity, credentials, ORCID, institutional affiliation, and qualifications as stated in their profile are true and accurate; (b) they have the expertise required to review the assigned manuscript; (c) they are not currently subject to any finding of research misconduct, retraction sanction, or institutional disciplinary action that would reasonably disqualify them from peer review; (d) accepting the assignment does not breach any obligation owed to a third party, including employer policies.

9. Conflict of Interest

The Consultant shall promptly disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest, including: personal or professional relationships with the authors, co-authorship or collaboration with the authors within the past 4 years, financial interests in the subject matter, competing research currently in preparation, or any circumstance that could reasonably be perceived as compromising objectivity. Disclosures go to support@advances.in.

10. Independent Contractor Status

The Consultant is engaged as an independent contractor. Nothing in this agreement creates an employment, partnership, agency, or joint venture relationship. The Consultant provides services on their own time, using their own equipment, and is solely responsible for their own tax, national insurance, social security, pension, and insurance arrangements.

11. Intellectual Property

11.1. The Consultant retains copyright in their review.

11.2. Licence to the Client. By submitting the review, the Consultant grants the Client a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to use, reproduce, store, modify (for editorial purposes only — e.g., light copyediting), and distribute the review for editorial, publication, and archival purposes.

11.3. Open peer review — Creative Commons licence. Where the Client’s policy provides for publication of the review alongside the manuscript (open peer review), the Consultant additionally grants that the published review will be made available to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). The Consultant acknowledges that this licence permits any third party to copy, distribute, adapt, and use the review (including commercially) with appropriate attribution. Reviews not published as part of open peer review are not licensed under CC BY 4.0 and remain subject only to clause 11.2.

11.4. Attribution. Where the review is published anonymously under the Client’s policy, attribution will be to “Anonymous Reviewer” or equivalent. Where the Consultant has signed the review or otherwise consented to attribution, attribution will be to the Consultant by name and ORCID.

12. Limitation of Liability

12.1. The Client’s aggregate liability under or in connection with this agreement is limited to the compensation payable for the relevant assignment.

12.2. Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages.

12.3. The Consultant’s liability is similarly capped, except that the cap does not apply to: (a) breach of confidentiality (clause 6), (b) breach of the AI/LLM prohibition (clause 5), (c) breach of anti-bribery obligations (clause 7), (d) IP misuse, or (e) fraud, wilful misconduct, or gross negligence — in which cases the Consultant is liable to the full extent of damages caused.

12.4. Nothing in this agreement limits liability for death, personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited under English law.

13. Data Protection

13.1. Data we process about you. The Client processes the following personal data about the Consultant: profile picture, ORCID, first and last name, email, year of PhD, broader discipline, research field, expertise keywords, methods used, availability status, country of residence, number of papers reviewed, and invoicing details. Where the Consultant chooses to provide them, the Client also processes optional diversity data: country of residence, ethnic/racial minority status and sexual/gender minority status.

13.2. Lawful bases. The Client processes Consultant data on the bases of: (a) performance of this contract (UK GDPR / GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) for assignment, communication, and payment; (b) legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) for matching reviewers to manuscripts and managing the reviewer pool; (c) legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) for tax and accounting records.

13.3. Special category data. Optional diversity data constitutes special category data under Art. 9 GDPR. It is processed solely on the basis of the Consultant’s explicit, freely-given, opt-in consent, used only in aggregated and anonymised form for diversity reporting, and may be withdrawn at any time without affecting the Consultant’s eligibility to review or any other aspect of this agreement.

13.4. Retention. Personal data is retained while the Consultant is active in the reviewer pool and for 7 years thereafter for accounting and audit purposes, or longer if required by law. Reviews are retained indefinitely as part of the editorial record.

13.5. Rights. The Consultant has the right to access, rectify, erase (subject to legal retention requirements), restrict, port, and object to processing of their personal data, and to withdraw consent for optional diversity data at any time. To exercise these rights, contact support@advances.in. The Consultant also has the right to lodge a complaint with their local data protection supervisory authority.

13.6. Confidentiality of authors’ personal data. The Consultant acknowledges that author and manuscript data accessed during review is processed under the Client’s instructions, must be used solely for the purposes of the review, and must not be retained, shared, or used for any other purpose (see clause 6).

13.7. International transfers. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK/EEA, the Client uses appropriate safeguards (e.g. Standard Contractual Clauses) in accordance with applicable law.

14. Term and Termination

14.1. This agreement applies to each assignment from the time the Consultant accepts it until completion or termination under this clause.

14.2. Either party may terminate an assignment with written notice if circumstances prevent completion of the review.

14.3. The Client may terminate immediately for material breach (including breaches of clauses 5, 6, 7, or 8) without payment liability.

14.4. Clauses 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 17–21 survive termination.

15. Notices

All formal notices under this agreement shall be given in writing by email to support@advances.in (for notices to the Client) or to the email address on the Consultant’s profile (for notices to the Consultant). Notices are deemed received on the next business day after sending, absent bounce-back.

16. Dispute Resolution

16.1 The parties shall first attempt to resolve any dispute by good-faith negotiation within 30 days of written notice of the dispute.

16.2 If the dispute remains unresolved after the 30-day period and the amount in dispute is USD $10,000 or less (or the claim is non-monetary and arises from a payment, timeline, or assignment-administration matter), the dispute shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. The parties acknowledge that claims falling within the relevant financial limits may be brought on the small claims track of the County Court.

16.3 If the dispute remains unresolved after the 30-day period and the amount in dispute exceeds USD $10,000, or the claim alleges breach of clauses 5, 6, 7, or 11, the dispute shall be referred to and finally resolved by binding arbitration under the LCIA Rules. The seat of arbitration is London, England. The language is English. There shall be one arbitrator. The LCIA Expedited Procedure shall apply where the amount in dispute is USD $50,000 or less.

16.4 Each party bears its own costs unless the court or arbitrator orders otherwise.

17. Governing Law

This agreement is governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales, without regard to its conflict-of-law provisions.

18. Force Majeure

Neither party is liable for failure or delay in performance caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including natural disasters, war, terrorism, civil unrest, pandemic, government action, internet or infrastructure outage, or serious illness. The affected party shall notify the other promptly. If the event continues for more than 30 days, either party may terminate the affected assignment without liability, save for payment for work already substantially completed.

19. Severability

If any provision of this agreement is held invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, that provision shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.

20. Assignment

The Consultant may not assign, transfer, subcontract, or delegate any of their rights or obligations under this agreement, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of the Client. The Client may assign this agreement to a successor entity (e.g. on corporate restructuring).

21. Entire Agreement

This agreement, together with the assignment details provided at the time of acceptance, constitutes the entire agreement between the parties regarding peer review services and supersedes all prior agreements and understandings. Amendments must be in writing.