Terms of Service

1. About the Xenopus Care Project

Xenopus Care Project is a practical support initiative of the Xenopus Model Welfare Organization. It organizes reviewed project guidance, practical colony experience, and structured husbandry support for Xenopus research users.

Xenopus Care provides project-guided, structured husbandry and lab-process support based on Xenopus Care Project guidance, reviewed notes, and documented practical experience. Responses are intended to help users organize observations, compare husbandry or lab-process variables, document changes, and consider practical next steps.

It is designed to help Xenopus users, colony managers, technicians, animal care teams, and research facilities organize and review husbandry situations.

2. Educational and Practical Husbandry-Support Purpose

This site provides educational and practical husbandry-support information only. The Xenopus Care Project does not provide veterinary diagnosis, veterinary treatment, emergency animal care, facility-specific compliance advice, regulatory approval, or IACUC determinations.

Users are responsible for consulting appropriate facility, veterinary, institutional, or regulatory personnel when needed.

3. Project-Guided, Structured Output

Xenopus Care does not provide veterinary diagnosis, veterinary treatment, emergency animal care, or facility-specific compliance determinations. Output is project-guided structured support and may be incomplete or wrong and must be reviewed critically. The Xenopus Care Project does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or applicability of any output. No outcomes are guaranteed.

Software tools may assist with routing, formatting, organizing, or structuring responses. The purpose of these tools is to present Xenopus Care Project guidance and related structured review logic in a usable form. Xenopus Care Project guidance, reviewed notes, and practical experience are the source of the response; software helps organize and structure it.

4. Information You Submit

The site may collect colony questions, healthy colony descriptions, follow-up outcomes, email addresses, and later uploads such as feeding videos, tank photos, water records, pH calibration records, RO buffering notes, SOP excerpts, and noise/flow videos.

Users should not submit confidential, restricted, proprietary, personal, or institutionally sensitive information unless authorized to do so.

5. How Submitted Information May Be Used

When a colony problem arises, the initial inquiry you submit is recorded together with the structured Xenopus Care response as a dated record. Related colony events — follow-up notes, protocol changes, outcomes, and other updates you provide over time — may also be logged so that a colony history can be built and reviewed.

Submitted information may be stored, organized, summarized, analyzed, and used to improve the Xenopus Care Project. Recorded inquiries, logged colony events, healthy colony descriptions, and follow-up outcomes may be used for learning — to identify husbandry patterns and to make future guidance more specific and evidence-informed. Cases may later be shared with Frog Social only in anonymized or permission-based form. Uploads may be reviewed or summarized for husbandry-support purposes.

6. Acceptable Use

You agree to use the Xenopus Care Project only for lawful purposes related to Xenopus colony care and husbandry. You may not use the site to submit false or misleading information, to interfere with the operation of the service, or to attempt to access systems or data beyond what is made available through normal use of the site.

7. Third-Party Links

The site may contain links to third-party websites or resources. The Xenopus Care Project is not responsible for the content, accuracy, or practices of any third-party sites and does not endorse them. You access third-party sites at your own risk.

8. Intellectual Property

Content, design, and materials on the Xenopus Care Project site are the property of the Xenopus Care Project or its contributors unless otherwise noted. You may not reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from site content without permission, except as permitted by applicable law or as expressly allowed.

9. Disclaimer of Warranties

The Xenopus Care Project is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. The project does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components.

10. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Xenopus Care Project and its contributors shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of data, use, or outcomes arising from your use of the site or reliance on any information provided through it.

11. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Xenopus Care Project and its contributors from any claims, damages, losses, or expenses arising from your use of the site, your submissions, or your violation of these Terms of Service.

Planned Features (Draft — Not Yet Active)

The following features are planned but not yet implemented. This section is a draft and will be finalized before any such feature becomes active.

Accounts and Signup

Future account creation may collect a name, a role (for example, technician, veterinarian, colony manager, PI/researcher, or facility staff), institution or lab affiliation, and an institutional or work email. Early access is expected to be invite-only or institution-facing rather than open hobbyist signup.

Discussion / Chat Posts

A future lightweight husbandry discussion feature may allow approved users to post observations, questions, and practical responses. User-generated posts are the responsibility of their authors, must not contain restricted, proprietary, or institutionally sensitive facility information unless authorized, and remain subject to these Terms.

Moderation

Any discussion feature will be moderated or access-controlled. The Xenopus Care Project may review, edit, flag, or remove posts, and may restrict or revoke access, to maintain a professional, research-facing environment.

Email Notifications

Users may later opt in to email notifications — for example, responses to their questions or new discussion activity. Notifications will be opt-in and will include a way to unsubscribe.

Paid Lab Portal

A future paid lab portal tier may offer saved colony history, follow-up notes, protocol-change logs, outcome logs, and export tools. Pricing, terms, and billing will be described before any paid tier is offered.

12. Changes to These Terms

The Xenopus Care Project may update these Terms of Service at any time. Changes will be reflected on this page with an updated date. Continued use of the site after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

13. Governing Law

Governing law and jurisdiction will be specified before broader public launch.

14. Contact

Questions about these Terms of Service, and administrative, account, or records inquiries, can be sent to admin@xenopuscareproject.org. For general project inquiries, contact contact@xenopuscareproject.org.