Terms of use

These terms are an agreement between you and Sigmer, of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Which parts apply to you depends on what you are doing.

• If you are reading this website, section 3 applies to you, with the general sections at the end. You do not need an account, and you agree to nothing else.
• If you have a Sigmer account, or you are a member of a workspace, all of these terms apply to you. You accept them when you create your account or sign in, and you accept an updated version by continuing to use Sigmer after it takes effect, as section 23 explains.
• If you took part in a study that runs on Sigmer, these terms are not your agreement. The study belongs to its research team, and what governs it is the information and consent they gave you. The page for participants explains what that means, and the privacy policy explains what we do with your answers.

The privacy policy explains what we do with personal information, and forms part of this agreement. Where you and we have both signed a written agreement about Sigmer, such as an institution's own contract, that agreement wins wherever the two conflict.

Sigmer, we, us, our

Sigmer, of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

You, your

The person using Sigmer. If you accept these terms for a university, a hospital, a lab or another organisation, you confirm that you may bind it, and you and it are both bound.

The Service

Sigmer's application for researchers, the study pages it serves to participants, its other applications and interfaces, and everything section 5 describes.

Workspace

Where a research team's projects, studies, members and plan live. Every account belongs to at least one. The workspace owner holds the workspace and its plan.

Study

A questionnaire, a task, or several of them in parts, built in Sigmer and published for people to take part in.

Participant

A person who takes part in a study.

Participant data

What a study collects about its participants: their answers, their consent records, and, where a study keeps a panel, their contact details.

Your content

Everything else you and your workspace put into the Service: plans, protocols, ethics documents, studies, analyses, manuscripts, references and comments.

Protection level

Confidential or Sealed, chosen for each study, as section 8 describes.

Region

Where a workspace's data is kept: the United States or Canada, chosen when the workspace is made. The privacy policy sets out what that covers.

You may read, print and share the pages of this website. The security page and the page for ethics boards are written to be printed and handed to a committee, and you are welcome to do that.

Everything else on the site is ours, and we keep every right we do not give you here. Please do not copy the site wholesale, frame it, present it as your own, or use our name or mark in a way that suggests we endorse you.

The site explains the product. Its pictures are drawn with made-up data. Nothing on it is an offer, and nothing on it forms part of our agreement unless these terms say so.

To use Sigmer you need an account. When you create one, you confirm that you are at least eighteen, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher, and that what you tell us is true and kept up to date.

Each person needs their own account. Do not share a login, and keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account. If you think someone else has got into it, tell us straight away at hello@sigmer.io.

Workspaces and their members

A workspace's owner and admins decide who joins it and what each member may do: they invite colleagues, guests and reviewers, set their roles, and remove them. Whoever runs a workspace is responsible for the people they let in, and for removing anyone who should no longer have access, such as a student who has left the lab.

If you were invited into a workspace, the workspace is its owner's. Your access ends when they remove you, and the work you did there stays with the workspace.

Sigmer is software for research with people. Within the limits of your plan, it lets a research team plan a study, write its ethics documents, build it, share it with participants, collect their responses, analyse the data and write the paper, in one workspace. The product page describes each stage.

We are still building Sigmer. We add features, change them, and sometimes withdraw them. If we withdraw something you rely on, or change it in a way that materially reduces what your plan gives you, we will tell you in advance where we reasonably can.

A feature marked as a preview is provided as it is, may change or disappear, and should not be relied on for a study that matters.

Sigmer is software. It is not:

• an ethics board. It helps you write an application and keep the promises your consent form makes, but only your ethics board can approve your research;
• a recruiter or a panel. It helps you share a study; finding participants, and paying them, are for you;
• a statistician or a reviewer. The analysis tools run the methods you choose on the data you give them, and checking that a method suits your data, and that a result is right, is your work;
• a system for regulated clinical trials, or for any study whose rules require a validated system. The security page lists what Sigmer does not offer yet;
• your lawyer or your privacy officer. Whether a study meets the rules that apply to it is for you and your institution to decide.

You run your studies, and Sigmer is the software they run on. So, whatever your plan, these are yours to do:

• obtain every approval your research needs before you collect anything, from an ethics board or anyone else, and keep to the protocol that was approved;
• tell participants who you are, what you are asking of them, what will happen to their answers and how to reach you, and obtain their informed consent, in the way your approval and the law require;
• where your approval or the law requires it, tell participants that you use a service provider to run the study and where their answers are stored. The privacy policy says where that is;
• make sure you have the right to collect, use and keep everything a study asks for, and ask for no more than the study needs;
• choose the region of a workspace before you make it, because a workspace stays in the region it was made in, and the protection level and retention period that suit each study and that your approval allows;
• answer participants who ask about their answers, who withdraw, or who want their answers deleted, using the tools Sigmer gives you to act on it;
• take particular care, and obtain the approvals required, before a study involves children, people who cannot consent for themselves, health information or other sensitive information, including a parent's or guardian's verifiable consent where the law requires it;
• keep the data you export safe once it has left Sigmer.

Participants sometimes write to us instead of to you. When one does, we will tell them how to reach the research team, and where we can tell which study they mean, we will pass their request on to the workspace owner.

Each study has a protection level. It decides who can read the study's responses, and what the Service can do with them while they are stored. These sentences describe each level as the product implements it:

Choose the level before you publish. If you choose Sealed, the key is yours to look after: keep more than one copy, each somewhere safe. If every copy is lost, the responses are lost with it, and we are not liable for that loss. The security page compares the two levels line by line.

For participant data, you, or the institution you work for, decide what is collected and why. We process it on your behalf, to provide the Service to you, and for no purpose of our own. In particular:

• we use participant data only to provide the Service to you, as these terms and the settings you choose in Sigmer direct, or where the law requires us to, and we will tell you if we believe an instruction of yours would break the law;
• if a court or an authority demands your participant data, we will tell you, unless the law forbids it, and disclose no more than the demand requires;
• we do not sell participant data, use it to market anything to anyone, or use it to train artificial intelligence models;
• we require everyone who works on Sigmer to keep it confidential, and we give access to it only to those who need it to run the Service;
• we protect it as section 8 and the security page describe;
• we use the providers listed in the privacy policy, under contracts that require them to protect it, and we will tell the workspace owner at least thirty days before a new provider starts processing participant data, so that a team that objects can stop using Sigmer first;
• we will help you answer a participant's request about their data, and help you with your own security and privacy assessments, as far as we reasonably can, including by giving you the information you reasonably need to show that you meet your own obligations;
• if we learn of a breach of our security that affects your participant data, we will tell the workspace owner without undue delay, with what we know, and keep you informed as we learn more;
• participant data is deleted when you delete it, or as section 19 describes if we end this agreement.

If your institution needs these commitments in a separate agreement signed by both of us, or your study collects health information under a law that requires a written agreement with the service that holds it, write to hello@sigmer.io before you collect anything, and tell us what is required.

You may not use Sigmer, or let anyone use your account, to:

• run a study without an approval it needs, or in breach of the conditions of one it has;
• collect information about anyone without the consent or other authority the law requires, or deceive participants in a way your ethics board has not approved;
• ask participants for payment card numbers or passwords;
• hold health information for a United States health care provider, health plan or other organisation that needs a business associate agreement, which Sigmer does not sign;
• harass, threaten, defraud or harm anyone, or collect information in order to;
• send messages people have not agreed to receive, or use a study to advertise;
• publish anything unlawful, or anything that infringes someone else's rights;
• upload malicious code, or attack, probe, overload or interfere with the Service or anyone's use of it, including by testing its security without our written permission;
• get around a plan's limits, a protection level, a role or any other control, or try to reach data you have not been given access to;
• copy, resell or rebuild the Service, or take it apart to learn how it works, except where the law allows you to despite this term;
• use the Service where the law forbids it, including under sanctions or export rules that apply to you or to us.

If we reasonably believe a study or a workspace breaks this section, we may act as section 17 describes. If you find a security problem in Sigmer, please tell us at hello@sigmer.io before you tell anyone else, and we will work with you on it.

A workspace kept in Canada

Paying for Sigmer is not available yet for a workspace kept in Canada. Its plan is agreed with us and granted by us: to ask for one, write to hello@sigmer.io. The rest of this section applies to such a workspace only as far as that agreement says.

Paying by card

For a workspace kept in the United States, card payments are taken by our payment provider, Stripe, and your card details go to Stripe, not to us. Prices are set in United States dollars, and the amount you pay is the one shown at checkout, which may be in your own currency. Where we are required to charge sales tax or a similar tax, it is added to that amount.

A paid plan renews automatically at the end of each month or year, at the price then in effect, until you cancel it. The workspace owner can cancel, change the plan or the card, and see the invoices in the billing portal inside Sigmer. When you cancel, your plan runs to the end of the period already paid for and then does not renew. Seats added or removed part way through a period are charged or credited in proportion to the time left in it, on the next invoice.

Response packs

A response pack is paid for once and never renews. Its responses can be used for a year from the day it is paid for, after the plan's own allowance.

Paying by invoice

Paying by invoice, against a purchase order, is available on the Lab plan, billed annually. A workspace that pays by invoice agrees to pay each one within thirty days of its date, and changes its plan or its seats by writing to us. A purchase order is for your records and your payment process: terms printed on it do not change this agreement unless we have signed them.

Academic pricing

Academic pricing is for researchers who confirm, through a link we send to it, that they hold an address at a recognised university, college or research institution. That confirmation lasts a year, and we will ask for it again. If it lapses, or you are no longer eligible, we may charge your plan at the standard price from its next renewal, after telling you.

If a payment fails

Our payment provider tries the payment again, and Sigmer shows the workspace's owner a notice saying what will change and when. For the first fifteen days after a payment fails, nothing changes. From then until the thirty-first day, the workspace cannot publish a study or invite anyone new. After that, the free plan's limits apply until the amount is paid. At every stage, studies already collecting keep collecting, every response stays readable, and nothing in the workspace is deleted.

Changes in price, and refunds

We may change our prices. A new price applies to a plan you already have only from its next renewal, and we will tell the workspace owner at least thirty days before it does. Payments are not refunded for part of a period, for a plan you did not use, or for a response pack once bought, except where the law requires a refund or we have charged you by mistake.

Your content and your participant data are yours, or your institution's. We claim no ownership of either.

You give us permission to host, store, copy, transmit, process and display them, only as far as we need to provide the Service to you, keep the backups the privacy policy describes, help you when you ask us to, and meet a legal obligation. That permission ends when they are deleted from the Service.

You can export your studies' responses, and the documents you write in Sigmer, at any time while your account is open. The documents Sigmer drafts from its templates, such as an ethics application or a consent form, are yours to use, change and submit as you wish.

Sigmer's software, its templates, its documentation, and its name and mark belong to us or to those who license them to us. While your account is open, we give you a personal permission, which you may not transfer, to use the Service under these terms. Nothing else passes to you. Parts of the Service are open-source software, and their own licences apply to those parts.

If you tell us how Sigmer could be better, we may use the idea without owing you anything. We would rather hear it than not.

Some of what you can do in Sigmer relies on services that other companies run. Where you use one, its own terms apply between you and that company, and we are not responsible for what it does. In particular:

• card payments for a workspace kept in the United States are processed by Stripe, under Stripe's terms;
• a study can deliver its responses straight to your own Firebase project or an S3-compatible bucket, or to the Open Science Framework through Sigmer. That storage is yours, under your agreement with its provider, and keeping it secure, and erasing responses held there, are for you. A Firebase project Sigmer sets up for you keeps its database in the United States, even for a workspace kept in Canada;
• where you deposit a project's materials with the Open Science Framework or Zenodo, using your own account there, their terms apply to the deposit;
• where you recruit participants through another service, your agreement with that service governs the recruitment and any payment to participants.

Each of us may learn things about the other that are not public, such as an unpublished study or how our systems work. Neither of us will use that information except for this agreement, or disclose it except to people who need it and are bound to keep it confidential, or where the law requires. This does not cover information that is public, that the other already knew, or that was worked out independently.

We work to keep Sigmer running, but we do not promise it will always be available or free of errors, and we do not offer a service level guarantee yet. The Service may pause for maintenance, for a problem at a provider we depend on, or for reasons outside our control. Where we reasonably can, we will tell you in advance about maintenance we expect to interrupt a live study.

Support is by email, at hello@sigmer.io. We answer as quickly as we reasonably can.

We may suspend a study, an account or a workspace, in whole or in part, where we reasonably believe it is necessary because of a breach of section 10, a risk to participants, to other users or to the Service, or a legal obligation or the order of a court or regulator. An unpaid amount is handled as section 11 describes, not by suspension.

We will tell you when we suspend something and why, and what would put it right, unless the law or someone's safety prevents it. We will keep a suspension to what is necessary, and lift it when the reason has gone. While it lasts, participant data is kept as it was, at the protection level it was collected at.

You can stop using Sigmer at any time. A paid plan stops when you cancel it, as section 11 describes.

You decide when your workspace's data is deleted, and Sigmer gives you the means to do it: erasing a study erases its responses and destroys its key, a workspace can be deleted once its projects and studies have been and it has no live subscription, and you can close your own account from its settings once you no longer own a shared workspace or a project, in any region. A workspace that has ever been invoiced keeps its invoices, so it is closed by writing to us rather than deleted. Closing it ends your memberships and withdraws your invitations in every region; if a region is out of reach at that moment, your account stays open and you can try again shortly. Export what you need first, because deletion is permanent. If you need help with any of this, write to hello@sigmer.io.

We can end this agreement for any reason by giving the workspace owner at least thirty days' notice. We can end it sooner if you materially breach these terms and do not put it right within fourteen days of our asking, or at once where a breach puts participants or the Service at serious risk.

If we end this agreement, we give the workspace owner thirty days from our notice to export what they need, unless the law or a serious risk to participants requires us to act sooner. We then delete the workspace's content and participant data from the live service.

Whoever deletes something, copies held in backups expire on their normal cycle, as the privacy policy describes. Some records are kept after deletion:

• the workspace's audit log, kept in the workspace's region, which records who did what to its data, with their name and email address at the time, and never contains anyone's answers;
• invoices and payment records, for as long as tax law requires;
• a closed account's profile record, in each region it was used in, emptied of its name and email address.

Responses a study delivered to your own storage are not affected: they are yours, where you keep them. Anything you owe us becomes payable when the agreement ends. section 12, section 15, section 20, section 21, section 22, section 24 and section 25 continue after it ends, with anything else that by its nature should.

Except where this agreement says otherwise, the Service is provided as it is and as it is available. As far as the law allows, we exclude every other term, condition and warranty, whether express or implied, including any about quality or fitness for a purpose. In particular, we do not promise:

• that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely or free of errors;
• that any analysis, figure, template or export is correct, complete or suitable for your study;
• that using Sigmer will make a study meet any law, approval or standard;
• that a service run by another company will work.

Where the law does not allow a term to be excluded, it applies only to the extent the law requires.

Neither of us is liable to the other for lost profits, revenue, funding or goodwill, for lost data, for the cost of running a study again, or for any indirect or consequential loss, even if told it was possible.

Our total liability to you for everything arising out of this agreement, in any twelve months, is limited to the greater of what you paid us in the twelve months before the event that gave rise to the claim, and one hundred United States dollars.

These limits do not apply to your obligation to pay us, to section 22, or to anything the law does not allow to be limited, such as liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

You will cover our reasonable losses and legal costs from a claim someone else brings against us that arises from a study you ran without an approval or consent it needed, from your content or your participant data, including a claim that collecting it was unlawful, or from your breach of section 10.

We will tell you promptly about such a claim, let you control its defence if you confirm you will cover it, and co-operate reasonably. You will not settle it in a way that admits fault for us or binds us to anything without our agreement.

Some public institutions may not give this kind of promise. If yours is one, this section applies only as far as the law allows.

We will change these terms from time to time, and post each new version here with the date it takes effect.

• For a change that materially affects you, we will tell you at least thirty days before it takes effect, by email to the address on your account or by a notice in Sigmer.
• A change we have to make sooner to meet a legal obligation, or one that does not materially affect you, takes effect when we post it.

If you do not accept a change, stop using Sigmer and close your account before it takes effect. If the change materially reduces what a paid plan gives you, you may cancel it, and we will refund the part of the period you have paid for and not used. Continuing to use Sigmer after a change takes effect means you accept it.

This agreement is governed by the law of Prince Edward Island and the federal law of Canada that applies there. The courts of Prince Edward Island have jurisdiction, and we both submit to them. If you are a consumer, this does not take away any right you have to bring a claim where you live.

Before either of us starts a proceeding, we agree to try to settle the matter. Write to us at hello@sigmer.io, setting out the problem and what you want, and we will reply within thirty days. Either of us may go to court at once for urgent relief.

The whole agreement

These terms, the privacy policy and the plan you choose are the whole agreement between us about the Service, together with any written agreement we have both signed, and they replace anything said before.

Transfer

You may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it to someone who takes over our business, and we will tell you if we do.

If part of it does not hold

If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, that part is limited or removed as little as possible, and the rest stays in force. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.

Things outside our control

Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something outside our reasonable control, such as a failure of the internet or of a hosting provider, a natural event, or an act of government.

We are not partners

Nothing here makes us partners, joint venturers, employer and employee, or principal and agent. Neither of us can bind the other.

Notices

We will write to you at the email address on your account, or by a notice in Sigmer. You can write to us at hello@sigmer.io. A notice counts as received on the day it is sent, unless it bounces.

Language

These terms are in English, and the parties have required that they be drawn up in English. Les parties ont exigé que le présent document soit rédigé en anglais.

Sigmer, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. Write to hello@sigmer.io.

If you took part in a study and have a question about it, the research team named on its consent page is the place to start, because the study is theirs. If you cannot reach them, write to us and we will help where we can.