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doc2doc User Terms and Conditions

doc2doc is a global clinical online community website (“the Website”) owned by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited (“BMJ Group”, “We” or “Us”). The BMJ Group is a private limited company incorporated in England and Wales with company registration number 3102371. Our registered offices are situated at BMA House, Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9JR, UK. Our VAT number is GB674738491. The BMJ Group, when operating as a publisher, is governed by the self-regulated Press Complaints Commission. Their code of practice can be viewed by accessing their website.

Use of this website

Please read the following User Terms and Conditions which relate to the rules that govern your use of the Website including, without limitation, all information content within including text images made available by Us, you, and third parties. By using the Website, you are agreeing to these User Terms and Conditions whether as a registered or unregistered user. By using the Website you are indicating you accept these terms of use and that you agree to abide by them. From time to time we may change these Terms and Conditions, and will post revisions on this website. We recommend that you read these Terms and Conditions prior to using our site and thereafter regularly review any changes, and you are responsible for doing so.

Privacy

Use of the data that you provide us, or which is collected by use on our website, is governed by our Privacy Policy. By using our site you consent to such processing.

Eligibility

This site is open to all healthcare professionals from anywhere in the world but is designed primarily for doctors. [Within this document, the term ‘healthcare professionals’ includes medical students.]

Open parts of the site can be viewed by anyone but are designed for reading by healthcare professionals. To post any content, you have to be registered with doc2doc. Some parts of the site (closed clinical areas of the Website) are only open to doctors who provide us verification details as set out below.

There are two types of registered users who may post content: (i) Registered Users, and (ii) Verified Registered Users. These are as follows:

i) Registered Users

Registered Users are users who are registered with doc2doc via completing our standard registration form. Such Registered Users are stating they are healthcare professionals and may have registered simply to contribute to the discussion forums without setting up a full profile but cannot contribute to discussions in the closed clinical areas of the Website. In special circumstances we will allow registration by non healthcare professionals but this is at the absolute discretion of BMJ Group.

To become a Registered User

  • You must complete and submit the online doc2doc registration form.

ii) Verified Registered Users

Verified Registered Users are users who are stating they are doctors and have also supplied us with one or more of the verification details outlined below to confirm they are medical practitioners. Verified Registered Users are the only users allowed access to the closed clinical areas of the Website (whether for viewing content, posting content, or both).

The following are what we require as verification details:

  1. details of registration with recognised medical regulatory bodies (e.g., GMC in the UK)
  2. details of workplace including job title, postal address, telephone number and website address and/or
  3. any other relevant information we might request in order to complete the verification process.

To become a Verified Registered User

  • UK-based doctors can provide their GMC number to complete the verification process automatically during registration.
  • Doctors based outside the UK, as well as UK-based doctors who don’t provide their GMC number during registration, can request to become Verified Registered Users by emailing our community manager (community.doc2doc@bmjgroup.com) with verification details outlined above.

Whether you are requesting to become a Registered User or a Verified Registered User, we reserve the right to ask for proof of your qualification as a medical doctor. Additionally if you have requested to become a Verified Registered User and our verification process reveals that you are not fully registered with a recognised medical regulatory body, the request to become a Verified Registered User will be denied. In the event that your registration with a relevant medical regulatory body for doctors is subsequently revoked, you will have no right to continue using the Website as a Verified Registered User. While we take steps to authenticate doctors we cannot guarantee that every Registered User or Verified Registered User on doc2doc is indeed qualified or a registered practicing doctor.

Accounts and passwords

If you have registered on the Website any user identification code or password must be kept confidential and used only by you (unless agreed in writing with the BMJ Group). We have the right to disable any user identification code or password without prior notice whether chosen by you or allocated by us at any time if in our option you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these User Terms and Conditions.

Personal doc2doc pages (My doc2doc)

doc2doc personal pages are profiles used solely for communicating with other users. You may not set up a doc2doc page on behalf of another individual or entity.We do not screen or approve any content on doc2doc personal pages nor guarantee that this is done on other parts of the Website. Any unprompted post publication moderation anywhere on the Website is entirely discretionary.

Other doc2doc pages

Some of these pages are open and some are closed or partially closed. Please always check the privacy settings on the Website to see who can access the area and what kind of material is expected to be included. We may or may not moderate this post publication.

Access to the Website

We try to ensure that the Website availability is uninterrupted and that transmissions will be error-free. However, we cannot guarantee that your access will not be suspended or restricted from time to time, including to allow for repairs, maintenance, or the introduction of new facilities or services. We, of course, try to limit the frequency and duration of any suspension or restriction. We make no assurance that the Website will continue to be available in the future.

Blogging on doc2doc

Members’ accounts need to be upgraded to allow them to blog. This can be achieved by emailing community.doc2doc@bmjgroup.com with your blogging idea. Once you are granted blogging rights, your blogs will be reviewed for the first couple of months and you may be contacted if it is felt your blog content is in any way inappropriate. Bloggers are also asked not to blog more than twice a month unless there are special circumstances.

Social media connectors

By clicking the Facebook connect, Twitter, and/or any other third party social networking connection indicated within “My doc2doc”, users agree to share details of their doc2doc posts and personas with Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and/or other third party social networking followers. Any details appearing on third party social networking sites will be governed by the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the sites on which they appear.

User conduct

You understand that the Website is available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You represent, warrant and agree that no materials of any kind submitted by you, transmitted, or shared by you on or through the Website will violate or infringe upon the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary rights; or contain libellous, defamatory or otherwise unlawful material.

You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of what you say and post on the Website.

You may use the Website to post comments, messages, and material that are original or for which you have permission to use on the Website. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you shall not do any of the following:

  • upload or share any photographs or other material in any media other than original works that are created by you or for which you have permission to use on the Website;
  • include any content of any kind (including text) or upload files that contain software or other material protected by any intellectual property laws or by rights of data protection, confidentiality, privacy, or publicity (where applicable) unless you own or control the rights thereto, or have received all necessary consents, or otherwise violate the legal rights of any third party (such as rights of publicity privacy, and the data protection and confidentiality rights of patients) – please see our guidance on patient confidentiality in the faq section;
  • defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten, act maliciously, or swear, or upload, post transmit, or store content or material that is offensive or abusive, or racially, ethnically, or sexually offensive or abusive, or act fraudulently, or create any groups to communicate any of the foregoing;
  • delete any author attributions, legal notices or proprietary designations, or labels in any file that is uploaded;
  • publish, post, distribute or disseminate (including linking to) any material which is obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit indecent, or unlawful;
  • publish any content which depicts graphical gratuitous violence, make threats of any kind that intimidates, harasses or bullies anyone;
  • advertise, promote or offer to sell any goods or services, or conduct or forward surveys, contests or chain letters or create groups to discuss commercial purposes without prior written agreement. Please note we may, at our discretion, ask for any declaration of competing interests to be completed should we have any concerns around possible commercial promotions or, should we suspect this, we may remove any such content at our discretion;
  • upload files that contain viruses, corrupted files, or any other similar software or programs that may damage the operation of the BMJ Group’s or any other party’s computer, or do anything which may impair or overburden the Website;
  • attempt to circumvent any content filtering techniques that we may employ now or in the future;
  • include links or deep links to any website you are not authorised to link into absolute;
  • falsify the origin or source of any content or other material (including software contained in a file that is uploaded);
  • impersonate any personal entity or falsely represent yourself, your age, or affiliation with any other person or entity to the BMJ Group or others;
  • register anyone other than yourself including registering on behalf of any group or entity;
  • collect email addresses or other content information from uses of the Website for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or communications;
  • upload post transcript or otherwise make available any other unsolicited or unauthorised advertising solicitation, promotional materials, junk mail, spam pyramid schemes, chain letters or any other form of solicitation;
  • disclose on the Website any information of a personal nature of any third party including the name, address, telephone numbers, or email addresses, and/or other personal information without the prior written consent of that person;
  • upload, post, transmit, share, store, or otherwise make available any content that would constitute, encourage, or provide instructions for a criminal offence or violate any law;
  • download any file posted by another user that you know, or reasonably should know, cannot be legally distributed in such manner;
  • use the website to obtain personal medical advice for yourself, your family, or your friends;
  • upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content which, in the sole judgement of the BMJ Group, is objectionable or restricts or inhibits any person from using or enjoying the Website, or which may expose the Website or its user to harm the liability of any kind howsoever.

User content posted by you on the Website

We try to ensure that the Website availability is uninterrupted and that transmissions will be error-free. However, we cannot guarantee that your access will not be suspended or restricted from time to time, including to allow for repairs, maintenance or the introduction of new facilities or services. We of course try to limit the frequency and duration of any suspension or restriction. We make no assurance that the Website will continue to be available in the future.

When you post any material on the Website, you authorise and allow us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of that material on the Website. By posting material to any part of the Website, you assign to the BMJ Group, by way of present or future assignment, all intellectual property rights for the full period of such intellectual property right protection (including any extensions and renewals) throughout the world, in any media known now or created in the future, in all material that you post to this site, other than where these are not owned by you and for which you have obtained permission for use. Such material should be clearly identified with the copyright owner noted. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you hereby waive all moral rights in connection with that material. Please also note that we will only re-use any such material to the extent that this is consistent with our Privacy Policy.

You are, however, granted a non exclusive, non transferable, perpetual, royalty free, worldwide licence back for any use of the material of which you have assigned to the BMJ Group for any lawful purpose. Please note, however, this excludes any responses to the content you have posted and permission must be sought from us for use of that by you.

Intellectual property rights of the rest of the Website

In addition to the intellectual property rights in content posted by you and mentioned above, the content, layout, design, data, databases and graphics on this Website are protected by UK and other international intellectual property laws and are owned by the BMJ Group or its Licensors (which may include users as mentioned above). Unless expressly permitted in writing herein or in a subsequent licence agreement and other than printing a very small proportion of content (such as a single discussion thread on one topic) or displaying this on your screen or both, (strictly for your personal, non-commercial use), no part of the Website may be reproduced, stored in any medium, including, but not limited to, a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or broadcasting), nor shown in public. You may not create any derivative work or make any other adaptation, without our prior written consent. You must not modify the copies you have displayed or printed in any way and you may not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences, or any graphics separately from any accompanying text. Any permitted use of our material is subject to ensuring that our copyright notices and trade marks appear as they do on all copies online and customary bibliographical citations including author attribution, date, article title (where applicable) and the URL to this Website are included. If you print off or download any material from our Website in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our site(s) will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made. All rights not expressly granted in these terms or any express written licence, are reserved.

The BMJ Group and doc2doc trademarks, and logos which are displayed on the Website are the trademarks of the BMJ Group and its licensors. Any use including framing, metatags, or other text utilising the BMJ Group’s trademarks or other trademarks displayed, is strictly prohibited without our (or our Licensor’s) express written consent.

Permission for use of our intellectual property

Any request for permission of any of our content or images, should be made via the Contact Us details.

Complaints

If you discover any content on this website which you consider breaches any of these terms, or is otherwise unacceptable, you should notify the BMJ Group immediately by clicking on the “Report Abuse” icon or for non Registered Users or non Verified Registered Users the “Contact Us” icon. The system will provide your name and contact details and details of the relevant content (including a description of its location).

Should we received a complaint, we will consider the complaint and will usually make our own judgements on the sorts of things mentioned in our “user conduct” section, rather than refer them to our lawyer, and if in doubt, this will be removed. In many cases, considering the in depth legal issues which may apply, we won’t want to spend money to confirm and so may simply remove the content. The same applies to all alleged breaches or anything which we may discover (in the event that we choose to moderate post publication).

We reserve the right, whether as subject to a complaint or whether we discover anything should we moderate post publication, in our absolute discretion, to edit any responses before and after publication or to remove whole or part of the contribution and state that we have done so. If only a line or two of an otherwise OK response is unlawful or in breach of our terms, we may delete the words or line and leave the rest. Again this is at our discretion.

We try to avoid entering into lengthy correspondence about why we have removed any postings and are not obliged to advise anyone alleged to have or whom we think has infringed the terms that we are or have altered, removed, or edited any material they have posted. It’s not a good use of our resources and any response we give it is at our absolute discretion.

You acknowledge, consent and agree that the BMJ Group may access, preserve, and disclose your account information and any content posted by you in order to: (a) comply with any legal process; (b) enforce these User Terms and Conditions; (c) respond to claims that any content posted violates the rights of any third party; (d) respond to your requests for assistance; or (e) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of the BMJ Group, other users of this Website and the public. Further detail can be seen in our Privacy Policy.

User Disputes

You are solely responsible for your interactions with other doc2doc users. We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to moderate the Website. If you believe that another user has violated our terms or infringed your rights, please use the complaints form mentioned above.

Infringers

In accordance with all applicable laws and our overriding discretion, we have adopted a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances and at our sole discretion, users who have generally infringed our User Terms and Conditions and whom we deem to be repeat infringers. We may also, at our sole discretion, limit access to the Website and/or terminate use of any users who infringe any of our terms whether or not there is any repeat infringement.

Termination

The BMJ Group may terminate your user rights, delete your profile and any content or information that you have posted on the Website, and/or prohibit you from using or accessing the Website or any portion, aspect or feature of the Website for any reason, or no reason, at any time in its sole discretion, with or without notice, including if it believes that you are not a doctor registered in your country of residence.

Links

Subject always to the “User Conduct” requirements above, this Website will contain links including hyperlinks which may take you outside the Website. An inclusion of any link by a User or us does not imply endorsement or approval by us of the linked website, its operator or content. We have no control over the contents or functionality of those sites and accept no responsibility for any loss or damages that may arise from your use of them. We are not responsible for any website outside the BMJ Group websites, and in all cases (including other BMJ Group websites) such websites use will be subject to relevant terms and conditions and privacy policies.

You may link to articles or the home page of any BMJ product or service websites otherwise you must not deep link to any of our websites without our agreement in writing unless this is stated on our relevant site as being acceptable by us to do so. You may not provide a link which suggests a form of association, approval or endorsement on our part, unless we have expressly agreed to this in writing. We reserve the right to withdraw any linking permission upon notice to you or by amending these terms and conditions.

Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the BMJ Group will not be liable for any material posted by you or any third party. It is provided on an “as is” basis. Nor shall we be liable for any errors in transmissions nor do we warrant that the Website will be available at any time. Should you chose to rely on any professional opinions on the Website you do so at your own risk.

You may link to articles or the home page of any BMJ product or service websites otherwise you must not deep link to any of our websites without our agreement in writing unless this is stated on our relevant site as being acceptable by us to do so. You may not provide a link which suggests a form of association, approval or endorsement on our part, unless we have expressly agreed to this in writing. We reserve the right to withdraw any linking permission upon notice to you or by amending these terms and conditions.

With regard to user conduct, we rely on users to adhere to these terms and our User Conduct, and, other than for miscellaneous reviews of the Website post publication (which may or may not occur), we do not promise that we will monitor the Website for breaches. We therefore do not control and are not responsible for what material users submit on the Website or any breaches of our User Terms and Conditions or User Conduct. Users should complain using the above mentioned process for any legitimate complaint.

The BMJ Group may at any time amend, alter or delete the functionality, software or any other elements related to the Website of any nature at any time without further notice to you. The BMJ Group may bring down the Website on a temporary or permanent basis at any time without further notice to you.

Any reference to any services, processes, products, trade marks or suppliers on this Website whether by users or the BMJ Group does not constitute or imply endorsements, recommendation by the BMJ Group or any affiliation such as third parties.

Limitation of Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE BMJ GROUP EXPRESSLY EXCLUDES ANY LIABILITY TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY SPECIAL OR PUNATIVE DAMAGES, DIRECT OR INDIRECT CONSEQUENTIAL LOSSES INCLUDING LOSS OF INCOME OR REVENUE, LOSS OF BUSINESS, LOSS OF PROFITS OR CONTRACTS, LOSS OF ANTICIPATED SAVINGS, LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, WASTED TIME, AND ANY OTHER LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND HOWSOEVER ARISING AND WHETHER CAUSED BY TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), BREACH OF CONTRACT OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF FORSEEABLE.

NOTHING IN THIS PROVISION AFFECTS ANY STATUTORY RIGHTS THAT MAY NOT BE EXCLUDED BY LAW.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW THIS WEBSITE IS SUPPLIED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS AND THE BMJ GROUP DISCLAIMS ALL AND ANY REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON INFRINGEMENT OR AVAILABILITY FUNCTIONALITY OF THE WEBSITE. SHOULD YOU FOLLOW ANY ADVICE OR PROFESSIONAL OPINION ON THE WEBSITE YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. USERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CHECKING AND VERIFICATION OF ANY ADVICE GIVEN ON THIS WEBSITE.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY VIRUSES WHICH YOU MAY DOWNLOAD BY OPENING ANY FILES ON THE WEBSITE OR ANY OTHER DAMAGE OR LOSS TO DATA, SOFTWARE, HARDWARE OR ANY DAMAGE THAT MAY OCCUR OF ANY NATURE BY USE OF THE WEBSITE.

Contact Us

To contact us about your account or generally (and excluding relating to a “complaint” set out above) you may get in touch with us via the Contact Us page or via emailing us at enquiries.doc2doc@bmjgroup.com

Governing law

To the fullest extent permitted by law, these User Terms and Conditions shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales, whose courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to our right to bring proceedings against you for breach of these conditions in your country of residence or other relevant country where necessary or advisable for enforcement purposes.

View terms & conditions as a PDF

Last updated October 2011

© BMJ Publishing group 2011

BMJ Group