Welcome to ionicviper.org


IONiC (Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists) is a virtual community of inorganic chemists working collaboratively to improve inorganic chemistry teaching. Our website VIPEr (Virtual Inorganic Pedagogical Electronic Resource, http://www.ionicviper.org) facilitates the collaborative development of learning materials and their dissemination to the wider inorganic chemistry community. It contains educational materials developed by chemistry educators and serves both as a repository for materials and as a user-friendly platform for social networking tools that facilitate virtual collaboration and community building. Since the goal of IONiC and VIPEr is to build an interactive community of inorganic chemistry educators, we expect that the materials on this website will be downloaded and used by other members of the IONiC community.

By using this web site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand these terms and conditions of use ("Terms of Use" and "Policies") and agree to be bound by them. We may change or modify these Terms of Use and Policies from time to time. Please review these terms to ensure your acceptance. When this document is modified, changes will be posted on the VIPEr website. All modifications will be binding to all users and registered members of VIPEr when published on the VIPEr website.


TERMS OF USE
Use of VIPEr

Your use of VIPEr, its materials, services, forums, and polls is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and VIPEr.

You agree to use VIPEr, its materials, services, forums, and polls only for purposes that are permitted by these Terms of Use.

You may use the materials, services, forums, polls, and web sites for legal purposes only. In connection with the use of VIPEr, you are required to abide by all applicable federal, state or local laws, including those pertaining to such areas as libel, slander, defamation, trade libel, product disparagement, harassment, invasion of privacy, tort, obscenity, indecency, and copyright or trademark infringement.

You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts any aspect of this website including, but not limited to, the materials, services, forums, and polls.

This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose without the express permission of IONiC. This applies both to materials found on VIPEr and works derived from them. The materials found on VIPEr are for non-commercial use only.

VIPEr is an educational resource. While commercial resources (e.g. software and textbooks) may be discussed, posts that are solely commercial solicitations for products are not appropriate.

IONiC and VIPEr logos may be used without written permission for the purpose of providing a link to http://www.ionicviper.org and its associated web pages to educational end users, for example, in the context of directing students to VIPEr from a course website. It may also be used on materials obtained from VIPEr as a means of giving credit to the source of the materials. Other uses of IONiC and VIPEr logos shall be only with prior written permission (e-mail or hard copy) from the Leadership Council of IONiC (http://www.ionicviper.org/leadership/). The IONiC Leadership Council may withhold approval at its sole discretion and reserves the right to terminate or modify permission to display the IONiC or VIPEr logo at any time.

The IONiC Leadership Council reserves the right to refuse service and/or terminate accounts at its own discretion if they believe that your conduct violates applicable law or is harmful to the interests of the IONiC Community, its members, and/or any third-party provider of digital content to the site, although they are under no obligation to do so.



Violations of Acceptable Use
The following constitute violations of the Terms of Use agreement.


  1. Using materials found on the VIPEr site in a way that is inconsistent with the Creative Commons license specified by the material's creator.
  2. Uploading materials to the VIPEr site that are protected under copyright, trademark or trade secret laws unless the express authorization of the owner is provided.
  3. Selling materials found on the VIPEr site that are protected under copyright, trademark or trade secret laws unless the express authorization of the owner is provided.
  4. Publishing materials found on the VIPEr site that are protected under copyright, trademark or trade secret laws unless the express authorization of the owner is obtained.
  5. Posting materials that are likely to defame or invade the privacy of any individual.
  6. Posting materials that are solely commercial solicitations for products and services.
  7. Collecting personal data of registered members from the member profiles found on VIPEr without proper authorization.
  8. Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail or bulk-mail to registered members.



    PARTICIPATION IN VIPEr FORUMS AND COMMENTING ON VIPEr
    VIPEr enables registered users of its site to post and/or submit comments to the site. Visitors to the site may browse comments. If you post comments on the site, you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the comments that you post on this site and that use of your comments by the site will not infringe upon or violate the rights of any third party. The IONiC Leadership Council has the right but not the obligation to edit or remove any user comments at any time. Neither the comments nor content on VIPEr, nor the links to other Web sites, are screened, approved, reviewed or endorsed by the IONiC Leadership Council or its sponsors. The IONiC Leadership Council takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party

    Any comments that you submit to the site become public information. Therefore, you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information. Unsubscribing from VIPEr will not remove any name, email address, or information that was part of any previous posting from any archive.


    USE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY FOUND OF VIPEr AND THE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
    Members of the IONiC Community recognize the effort and commitment of the many different kinds of community members who participate in building and sustaining the repository and services that comprise VIPEr. To protect the membership and its contributions to the community, VIPEr has adopted the intellectual property (IP) protection policies of the consortium Creative Commons (CC, http://creativecommons.org) to 1) encourage creators of online materials to share their work with others who might wish to reuse the materials in creative ways, and 2) ensure that contributions of materials to VIPEr by members of the IONiC Community are protected from misuse and abuse.

    Through the CC licence, it is possible to specify copyright terms that range between full copyright - all rights reserved - and the public domain - no rights reserved. Descriptions of the types of CC licenses and the restrictions associated with each license can be found at http://creativecommons.org/about/license. CC licenses are attached to all content on VIPEr and authorize everyone who comes in contact with the work to use it in a way that is consistent with the license.

    Neither the IONiC Community nor Leadership Council owns rights to the content contained in VIPEr; content is owned by the member who created and contributed it to VIPEr. The IONiC Leadership Council and its agents review content submitted to VIPEr only for topical suitability (relevance to inorganic chemistry). Content is subject to copyright and other proprietary rights protection as specified in the CC license. By viewing, downloading and using the content accessible through the Services on this site, you agree that you will not violate any of those copyright or other proprietary rights and that you will comply with the CC licensing terms that the author has specified. It is your obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing, using, or distributing content found on VIPEr. Appropriate citations are expected. You must make your own assessments of rights in light of the intended use of the content.



    UPLOADING CONTENT TO VIPEr
    When you upload materials to VIPEr, you certify that you are the owner of the rights to everything in the materials that you are making available. You certify that you have verified that you have not uploaded materials that are owned by others. Specific examples of materials that you do not own include, but are not limited to:


    1. published manuscripts;
    2. supplemental materials associated with published manuscripts;
    3. materials such as figures, problems, or examples copied from textbooks.


    As part of the submission process, you will be required to select a CC license (http://creativecommons.org/about/license/). As part of this process, you will choose a set of conditions that you wish to apply to your work and a license that indicates how others may use your creative work. You authorize the display and reproduction of all materials that you submit to VIPEr under the terms of the CC license that you have specified. You (or your institution, as applicable) retain your respective individual intellectual property rights with regard to individual resources contributed to VIPEr.

    The page on VIPEr that contains your contributed material will include your name and affiliation, the materials that you have submitted, and the CC license. Because it is likely that other members of the IONiC Community will download your work, you may wish to mark all documents with a statement such as

    Created by [author, author affiliation, author email] and posted on VIPEr on [date/year], Copyright [name, year]. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons [name of license you choose] License. To view a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/about/license

    A member of the IONiC Leadership Council or a community reviewer will check your materials for relevance to the field of inorganic chemistry. After this process, your learning object will be posted to VIPEr.  Most learning objects will be freely available to both members of the IONiC Community and unregistered guests visiting VIPEr.  Learning objects designated as "Problem Sets" will be available only to registered members of the IONiC Community with graduate student, post-doc, or faculty status.

    COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
    You are responsible for any information or materials you place on VIPEr. The IONiC Leadership Council and its agents have no obligation to monitor or control any material that is or becomes available in VIPEr. The IONiC Leadership Council and its agents reserve the right to review any material that is or becomes available on the site. The IONiC Leadership Council and its agents reserve the right to refuse to post or to remove any materials that are, in our judgment, unacceptable, undesirable or in violation of this policy. However, the IONiC Leadership Council and its agents have no obligation to exercise such reservation of rights. The IONiC Leadership Council and its agents will, in appropriate circumstances, terminate the accounts of users who infringe the intellectual property rights of others. The IONiC Leadership Council and its agents will terminate access for content providers or service participants who are found to repeatedly provide material without necessary rights or permissions.

    If you believe that your work has been used or copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please notify the IONiC Leadership Council and its agents in writing as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Contact information can be obtained from the IONiC Leadership Council at info@ionicviper.org. For the IONiC Leadership Council and its agents to act on your notice, you must be authorized to enforce the copyrights that you allege have been infringed. When informing VIPEr of an alleged infringement:
     

    1. Identify the copyrighted work that allegedly has been infringed. If multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are involved, please provide a representative list of such works on the site.
    2. Describe the material that is claimed to be infringing and provide sufficient information to permit the IONiC Leadership Council or their agents to locate that material.
    3. Provide your contact information including an e-mail address, telephone number, and mailing address.
    4. Certify or include a statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the copyright-protected material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, the owner's agent, or law.
    5. Certify that the information that you have provided to the IONiC Leadership Council is accurate. Attest under penalty of perjury that you are authorized to enforce the copyrights that you allege have been infringed.
    6. Include your physical or electronic signature.

    Without the information listed above, the IONiC Leadership Council may not be able to act on your complaint promptly or at all.

    If you know, or have reason to believe, that there has been a violation of these Policies or Agreement, please contact the IONiC Leadership Council at info@ionicviper.org. Please provide as much information as possible such as: the date and time of the alleged violation; evidence of the alleged violation; name, IP address, or URL of alleged violator. The absence of such information may render the IONiC Leadership Council unable to act upon your report of violation.

    The IONiC Leadership Council wants to hear from any copyright owners who are not properly identified on this web site so that we may make the necessary corrections.


    PRIVACY POLICY
    The goal of our privacy policy is to balance the privacy needs of our users with a need for information to provide users with high quality services.

    You may visit parts of the VIPEr website without identifying who you are or revealing personally identifiable information. To obtain full access to VIPEr, registration is necessary. Members of the IONiC Community who register for services on VIPEr will need to provide personal information to gain full access to VIPEr.

    When you use the VIPEr site, our servers may collect information indirectly and automatically (through, for example, the use of your "IP address") about your activities while visiting the site, including the web pages that you view, the number of times you view them, the length of your visit, and information about the browser you are using. An IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer when you use the Internet. In some cases your IP address stays the same from browser session to browser session; but if you use a consumer internet access provider, your IP address probably varies from session to session. We do not link browsing information to the Personal Information you submit to us; we use this browsing information for internal purposes such as to help understand how the site is being used and to improve it, and for systems administration purposes.

    We use the information that we collect to help us measure the use of particular services, different parts of VIPEr, and to help us improve VIPEr's organization, performance and usefulness. This information is only examined in the aggregate.

    If you are a registered user of VIPEr:


    • We use personal identifying information from users in various ways to provide support. For example, we use your email address to respond to your questions and submissions.
    • From time to time we may conduct surveys of users in order to evaluate the use of our services, etc. and we may use your information to contact you about participation in the evaluation.
    • Registered users may search the site's member directory to learn more about other registered users. Please note that any information that you post in you member profile is available to all registered persons accessing the site. Registered members may choose the types and amount of information that is available to other registered users by adding it to or omitting it from your member profile.

    Member information (such as name, address, and affiliation) is provided as a service for registered members of VIPEr, offering a convenient way to network with colleagues. The data provided will not be sold to others or employed for any commercial purpose. IONiC and VIPEr will not share, or otherwise distribute your personal data to third parties, except that such data may be transferred to third parties who act for or on behalf of the IONiC Leadership Council, or in connection with the business of IONiC for further processing in accordance with the purpose for which the data were originally collected.

    Removing or Correcting your Personal Information
    As a registered user of VIPEr, you can login with your username and password to view and change your personal information. You may contact the IONiC Leadership Council at any time, by emailing info@ionicviper.org, to request that your personal information (and/or any submitted materials) be removed from our database or if you have any questions or concerns regarding the site.


    DISCLAIMERS
    This site (VIPEr) and the Services provided on it is provided by the IONiC Community on an "as is" basis. IONiC makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, as to the operation of the site or the information, content, materials, or products included on this site. To the full extent permissible by applicable law, IONiC disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. IONiC will not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from the use of this site, including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, incidental, punitive, and consequential damages.

    All activities described on the VIPEr website involving the use of chemicals, instrumentation, or other apparatuses are are intended to be carried out by chemistry practitioners with sufficient training in the chemical sciences for safe performance of these activities. Anyone unsure of their ability to carry out an activity should refrain from carrying out the activity.     The use of chemicals, especially those with demonstrative effects, is often potentially hazardous, and requires the use of appropriate equipment, clothing, precaution, care, education, training, and, above all, common sense. The IONiC Leadership Council bears no responsibility for your safety or the safety of any students or third parties who may be harmed as a result of these activities. The IONiC Leadership Council has the right but not the obligation to remove any experiment or demo they feel to be unsafe.

    IONiC reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove content from any Service. You understand that by using the Services you may be exposed to content that you may find offensive or objectionable and that, in this respect, you use the Services at your own risk. If you feel you might be offended by the content of a Service, you should not continue.

    Questions or comments regarding this Agreement should be sent to info@ionicviper.org.