Terms and Conditions

Please read these terms and conditions of use ("Terms") carefully before using the 3Rs self-assessment tools ("Tools) and website ("Website").

If you continue to browse and use this Website, you are agreeing to comply with and be bound by the following Terms which together with our Privacy Notice, govern our relationship with you in relation to the Tools and the Website. When you set up your user account (either as a lead-user or sub-user) for the Tools, you will be asked to give your acceptance to these Terms. If you do not accept these Terms you will not be able to access the Tools. If you disagree with any part of these Terms, please do not use the Website or the Tools.

The Tools and Website are intended for use by post-graduate or post-doctoral scientists, principle investigators, and others engaged in the application or undertaking of 3Rs (Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of animals in research) activities. If you do not fit into these categories, please do not continue to use this Website or the Tools.

1) About Us

The 3Rs self-assessment tools are operated by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (“we”, “us” or “our”). Our office is at Gibbs Building, 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.

If you have any queries regarding the Website or the Tools or any of the information or materials contained on or in them, please contact us by email at self-assessment@nc3rs.org.uk or by telephone on 020 7611 2233.

2) About this Website and the Tools

We provide this Website and the Tools and the information contained in or on either of them (whether put there by us or provided or created by a user) (“Content”) on an ‘as is’ basis. Whilst we have endeavoured to provide an accurate and correct 3Rs self-assessment resource, no guarantee, representation or warranty is made as to the Website’s or the Tools’ accuracy, completeness or correctness or that it is free from any errors or omissions. Should you seek to rely in any way whatsoever upon any Content contained on, or the material downloaded from this Website or the Tools, you do so entirely at your own risk. It is your responsibility to ensure that any information available through the Website or the Tools meets your specific requirements and that you have appropriate local authorisation to undertake any activities suggested within the Tools.

The Content on the Website and in the Tools is provided for general information purposes and to assist you with achieving the Purpose (defined below). Nothing on the Website or in the Tools is intended to be exhaustive advice on which you should rely solely. The quality and content of the feedback you obtain from the Website and/or Tools is entirely dependent on the information you enter. You should always consider whether additional specialist input is required.

3) Availability and Access

No warranty is given that the Website and/or the Tools shall be available on an uninterrupted basis, and no liability can be accepted in respect of losses or damages arising out of such unavailability. We reserve the right to block your use of the Website or the Tools or withdraw them both entirely.

4) Your Use of the Website and the Tools

You can use the Website and Tools to i) assess how well either the Research Institution or Research Group is applying the 3Rs to current activities ii) receive feedback as to where improvements could be made to bolster 3Rs-related activities further, and iii) reflect on how the application of the 3Rs is changing over time (the “Purpose”).

Lead-Users: If you choose, you may set up an account to access the Tools. Upon verification, you will be able to create, store, submit and download self-assessments, invite others to become sub-users, and have administrative access to sub-user accounts, although you should note clause 3 regarding availability and access and clause 5 regarding changes to the Website and/or the Tools.

Sub-Users: Following invite by a lead-user, if you choose, you may set up an account to access the Tools. Upon verification, you will be able to submit information to the lead-user, although clause 3 regarding availability and access and clause 5 regarding changes to the Website and/or the Tools should be noted.

All users: You must keep your password and any other access information confidential and you must not disclose it to a third party. We have the right to disable any user account and/or password or access information at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of these Terms.

If you know or suspect that anyone other than you knows your password or access information, you must promptly notify us at self-assessment@nc3rs.org.uk and include the heading “URGENT TOOL SECURITY ISSUE” and flagging your email as urgent.

You must only use the Website and Tools for lawful purposes in compliance with any applicable laws. In particular you must not:

• use the Website and Tools to send or transmit, whether directly or indirectly, unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material, chain letters or pyramid selling schemes;
• use the Website or the Tools for mail bombing or flooding or to make deliberate attempts to overload a system;
• knowingly or recklessly introduce to the Website or the Tools, or use the Website or the Tools to transmit any viruses, trojan horses, worms, logic bombs, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, malware, adware or other materials which are malicious or harmful;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Website, or the Tools, the server, equipment or network on which the Website or the Tools is stored, any server, computer or database connected to the Website or the Tools or any software;
• use the Website or the Tools to attempt to gain unauthorised access to any other website, internet account, server, computer, equipment, system, network, data or information;
• use the Website or Tools to monitor data or traffic on any network or system;
• use the Website or the Tools to collect or use information, including without limitation email addresses, screen names or other identifiers, by deceit (such as phishing, internet scamming, password robbery, spidering, scraping and harvesting);
• use the Website or the Tools to distribute software; or
• carry out a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack on the Website or the Tools or use the Website or the Tools to carry out any such attack on any other website.

If you breach any of these Terms, your right to use the Website and the Tools will immediately end and we reserve the right to take further action, including legal action, as we consider appropriate.

5) Changes to the Website and/or the Tools

We make every effort to, but we are under no obligation to, ensure that the content of the Website and the Tools is up to date and current. We may at our sole discretion change, edit, delete or revise the Content of the Website or the Tools from time to time. We will post any amended Terms on this page or you can access them at any time using the link at the bottom of each page of the Website. You will not be asked to accept these Terms every time you visit the Website or Tools. Your continued use of the Website and/or the Tools constitutes your acceptance of any amended Terms.

6) Acceptable Use

Wherever you make use of features that allow you to create Content in the Website and/or the Tools, you confirm that you are the owner of any Content or you have the requisite rights to provide it and you will continue to be the owner or have the requisite rights for as long as the Content remains on the Website or in the Tools. In addition, you confirm that: (i) no Content will be defamatory, obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory; (ii) no Content will promote illegal activity; (iii) no Content will be threatening, abusive, or invade another person’s privacy, or upset, embarrass or harass another person, and (iiii) no personal or identifiable information is provided unless specifically requested and required for the functioning of the Website and/or Tools.

7) Intellectual Property Rights

Content generated by you from your use of the Website or the Tools is your owned Content. All other Content and the associated intellectual property rights (including, without limitation, copyright, database rights, design rights, patents, trademarks and logos) included in the Content of the Website, the Website itself and the Tools is owned by or licensed to us unless otherwise stated.

You may print, copy, download or temporarily store extracts from the Website or the Tools solely for the Purpose. You must not alter any extract obtained from the Website or the Tools in any form, unless this is Content owned by you. Any other use is prohibited unless you first get our written permission. Without limiting the above, unless you first get our written consent, you may not reproduce, modify, adapt, transmit, publish, broadcast, create derivative works of, store, archive or in any way exploit all or any part of this Website or the Tools. If you breach any of these Terms, your right to use the Website and the Tools will immediately end and you must return to us or destroy (at our option) all digital and paper copies of our Content which you have.

You agree to use all reasonable efforts to ensure that Content created by you using the Website or the Tools does not infringe any intellectual property rights of a third party.

8) Licences

By using the Website and the Tools and by creating and storing Content in your user account, you grant us a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty free licence to use your Content on an anonymous basis (unless you have expressly authorised us in writing to use it on an identifiable basis), solely for the purposes of testing, developing and evolving the Website and the Tools.

Sub-users: by providing lead-users with Content, you are granting a non-exclusive royalty free licence to those users to use that Content under these same Terms.

Lead-users: by inviting sub-users, you are granting a non-exclusive royalty free licence to those users to use any Content under these same Terms.

We have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any Content created, stored or used by you on our Website or in the Tools constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights or of their right to privacy. We can also remove any of your Content which you have uploaded at any time.

9) Third Party Websites and Resources

The Website and/or the Tools may contain links to other websites and resources from time to time. These links are provided for your convenience. We have no control over, and no responsibility or liability for, those other websites/resources or their content.

You may create a link to the Website homepage or your Content and to no other page. You may only create these links if: (i) the website from which the link comes is one which you own (and is in accordance with our Acceptable Use policy); and (ii) you must not suggest that you have any association with us or that we approve of or endorse your website.

10) Liability

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability to you for:

• death or personal injury resulting from negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• any other matter for which we are not permitted by law to exclude or limit our liability.

All warranties, conditions and other terms relating to our Website and/or its content or the Tools which would otherwise be implied by law (whether by statute, common law or otherwise) are excluded.

We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage arising out of or in connection with your use of (or inability to use) our Website or the Tools or your use of or reliance upon any Content on our Website or the Tools, whether in contract, tort (including without limitation negligence), misrepresentation, restitution, under statute or otherwise.

We accept no liability for viruses or other computer contaminants. You are recommended to take all appropriate safeguards (such as installing appropriate anti-virus software) and firewalls before downloading information or images from the Website or the Tools.

Subject to the exceptions in clause 10 (a), (b) and (c) above, our liability to you in respect of any loss arising from these Terms or your use of the Website or the Tools will not exceed £50.00 GBP.

11) Data Protection and Cookies

Please refer to our Privacy Notice.

12) Governing Law

These Terms and the relationship between you and us shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. You agree that any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms (if not amicably resolved) will be subject to and within the jurisdiction of the English courts.

13) General

We will not be liable to you if we are prevented or delayed from complying with our obligations under these Terms by anything you do or fail to do or as a result of events beyond our reasonable control.

If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable by a court, it will be severed from the rest of these Terms which shall remain unaffected.

No delay or failure by us to exercise any powers, rights or remedies under these Terms will operate as a waiver of them, nor will any single or partial exercise of any such powers, rights or remedies preclude any other or further exercise of them.

Any notice given under these Terms must be communicated by post to the address most recently notified by the receiving party. Receipt of notice shall be deemed to occur at the time the notice would be in the ordinary course be delivered.

1. The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research whose office is at Gibbs Building 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE (“the NC3Rs”) is an independent scientific organisation, tasked by Government with supporting the UK science base through the application of the 3Rs. Though it is represented legally by the Medical Research Council (“the MRC”), the NC3Rs is managed independently. To avoid doubt references to the NC3Rs shall mean the MRC in relation to actual legal or contractual liability, loss, right or obligation.