Terms of Service
Effective date: June 11, 2026. These terms govern your use of Opendelphi, a consensus-driven research data-collection platform. Please read them carefully.
Acceptance of Terms
By accessing or using Opendelphi (opendelphi.org), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you are using Opendelphi on behalf of an organization — a university, hospital, research institute, or company — you represent that you have authority to bind that organization to these terms.
The Service
Opendelphi lets research teams design studies, converge expert panels on data-collection instruments through a structured Delphi process, deploy the resulting instruments across contributing institutes, and collect and export research data. The Delphi and data-collection core is free. Any future paid offering will be limited to aggregated cross-study analytics and public-repository unification — collecting your own study data will not be put behind a paywall.
Account Responsibilities
You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials and for all activity under your account. You must provide accurate registration information and keep it current. Role-based access within a study (investigator, panelist, institute staff) must reflect the real people performing those roles.
Research Data, PHI, and Compliance
If your study collects protected health information (PHI), a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with us must be executed before PHI collection begins; collecting PHI without one violates these terms. You are responsible for obtaining all approvals your research requires — including IRB or ethics-committee approval, data use agreements between institutes, and informed consent from participants (the platform's eConsent tooling supports this, but the legal adequacy of your consent process is your responsibility). You must not upload PHI or other regulated data into free-text fields of study-design surfaces (for example, AI-assisted instrument drafting), which are not intended for participant data.
Roles and Data Stewardship
For research response data, the sponsoring organization is the data steward and decides how data is used, shared, and retained; Opendelphi processes that data only as directed and, where PHI is involved, acts as a business associate under the applicable BAA. As between you and us, you retain all rights to your study content — instruments, Delphi contributions, and collected responses. You grant us a limited license to store, process, and display that content solely to provide the service.
Instruments and Third-Party Rights
Some validated research instruments (for example, certain licensed clinical scales) require a license from their rights holder. The platform flags suspected licensed scales and will not knowingly reproduce their text, but you are responsible for securing any license your study's instruments require. AI-drafted instrument items are grounded in a corpus of validated instruments with citation binding; you remain responsible for the scientific and legal review of any instrument before deployment.
Acceptable Use
You may not use Opendelphi to collect data without a lawful basis, to conduct phishing or fraud, to distribute malware, to violate intellectual-property rights, to re-identify de-identified data, or to disrupt the platform or other users. You may not attempt to circumvent row-level security, audit logging, or panelist anonymity. We may suspend accounts that violate these policies, and where PHI is involved we may be obligated to report violations under the governing BAA.
Service Availability and Modifications
We work to keep the platform reliable but do not guarantee uninterrupted service, and we make no uptime commitments outside a written agreement. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue features with reasonable notice. Where a change affects active data collection, we will provide a path to export your data first.
Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability
Opendelphi is provided 'as is' without warranties of any kind. Opendelphi is a data-collection and consensus tool, not a source of medical, legal, or regulatory advice; AI-drafted content requires expert review. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages. Our total liability is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim. Nothing in this section limits obligations that an executed BAA places on either party with respect to PHI.
Termination and Changes to These Terms
You may stop using the service and delete your account at any time; export your data first, as deletion is processed per the retention terms in our Privacy Policy. We may update these terms by posting a revised version with a new effective date and notifying account holders of material changes. Questions: hello@opendelphi.org.