To help make sure that actions taken by ResearchGate are fair, we allow you to appeal our decisions. This means that if we decide to take action on your content or account, or we decide not to remove content that you reported as illegal, and you think our decision was made in error, you can submit an appeal to ask us to review our decision.
When you can submit an appeal
This process is only available when:
- We decided not to remove content that you reported as illegal.
- We removed, disabled access to, or restricted the visibility of your content because we believe that it violates our Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, or the law.
- We applied a strike against your account or disabled your access to your account because we believe that your content violates our Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, or the law.
The process is only available to you for six months from the date we informed you about the original decision. Appeals submitted after this period, or that don’t comply with the above criteria, won’t be reviewed.
Our appeals process and how it works
If we take action on your content or account, we’ll notify you of what action was taken and why. As part of that notice, we’ll let you know which rule or guideline you violated. Before submitting an appeal, we ask that you review our notification carefully. Please only submit an appeal if you think you didn’t violate the rule or guideline and our decision was therefore made in error.
After you submit an appeal that meets the above criteria, we’ll reassess our original decision, considering any additional information you provided in your appeal, and notify you of the outcome. To make sure we handle appeals fairly and diligently, this process is done by a human. We appreciate your patience while we look into your case.
If we find that our original decision was unfounded, or the action taken was unwarranted, we will reverse it. This means:
- If a strike was applied to your account in error, it will be removed.
- If your access to your account was disabled in error, it will be reinstated.
- If your content or access to it was removed in error, you will be permitted to upload it again. Please note that for technical reasons, content we remove cannot be restored.
- If our decision not to remove content you reported was made in error, we will remove the reported content.
We will notify you of the outcome of our review, unless we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons or if it would be unreasonable to do so, given the interests of involved parties.
You can only submit an appeal about a decision once. Please understand that if you frequently submit manifestly unfounded appeals, we may suspend the processing of your appeals.
Other possibilities for redress
If you are covered by the European Union’s Digital Services Act, you may also be entitled to ask an out-of-court dispute settlement body that has been certified under that Act to resolve a dispute. This applies to cases where you dispute:
- Our decision not to remove content that you reported as illegal.
- Our decision to remove, disable access to, or restrict the visibility of your content because we believe it violates our Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, or the law.
- Our decision to apply a strike against your account or disable your access to your account, because we believe your content violates our Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, or the law.
We will engage in good faith with the body to resolve the dispute, where required by law. However, please be aware that we are not bound by any decisions made by such out-of-court dispute settlement bodies. To date, no out-of-court settlement bodies have been certified. We will update this page as information becomes available.
You may also wish to seek redress before a court under applicable national law. If you believe our decision to remove, disable access to, or restrict the visibility of your content or to disable your access to your account was made in breach of our Terms of Service, you may, depending on applicable law, be entitled to bring a claim for breach of contract.