Free Use Licence
DRAFT — not reviewed by a legal professional. This licence was prepared to be checked and completed by a qualified lawyer. Fields in [SQUARE BRACKETS] must be completed. Until it has been validated, its enforceability is not guaranteed.
Draft of 5 October 2026, for Manuscript Compass v1.23 (the “Application”: the home page, the pages of every research field and their “Congress submissions” and “Research collaboration” pages), taken over unchanged in substance from the draft of 3 October 2026 written for Cardiovascular Manuscript Compass.
© 2026 TH. Created by Thomas Hovasse. Rights owner: TH. Contact: t.hovasse@angio-icps.com. Official address: [OFFICIAL URL].
In short
The Application is free to use, including at work. It is not open source: it may not be sold, rebranded, republished in modified form or hosted publicly without written permission. Your manuscripts and the documents you produce remain yours.
1. What you may do, free of charge
You may, without payment and without asking:
1. Use the Application for your research, clinical, teaching or editorial work, alone or as a team, in a public or private institution, a company, a practice or at home. 2. Copy it as far as needed to use it locally and to keep backups, including on the computers and internal storage of your team or institution. 3. Pass an unmodified, complete copy to colleagues or co-authors, free of charge, with every attribution and licence notice intact. When an official address is published, please share that link rather than the file, so that others receive the current version. 4. Use and share the reports and documents the Application produces (reports, checklists, response letters, tables, exports) for your manuscripts, submissions and projects, including in paid professional work.
Being employed or paid for your work, or working in a private institution, does not by itself make your use “commercial exploitation of the Application” within the meaning of section 2.
2. What needs prior written permission
Subject to section 3, you need the prior written permission of the rights holder to:
1. remove, hide or alter the attribution, the creator’s name, the licence notices or the version signature; 2. present the Application, or a substantial part of it, as your own work or as the work of a third party; 3. sell, rent, sub-license or otherwise commercialise the Application, or charge for access to it; 4. integrate the Application, in whole or in part, into a commercial product or service, or redistribute it as a third party’s product; 5. distribute a modified, translated, renamed or rebranded version; 6. host a copy on a publicly accessible website or server.
Requests for permission: t.hovasse@angio-icps.com.
3. Rights you have by law
Nothing in this licence excludes or limits the rights that the applicable law grants and that cannot be waived by contract — in particular the rights of the lawful user of a computer program (acts necessary for its intended use, back-up copy, observation and study of its functioning, interoperability under the legal conditions), the statutory exceptions to copyright, and consumer-protection rules.
4. What is not claimed
- Your content. No right is claimed in the manuscripts, abstracts, data, reviewer comments, responses or other texts you enter, nor in the documents you produce with the Application. They are processed in your browser and are not received by the rights holder.
- Third-party components and images. JSZip, pako, pdf.js and the other components listed in “Third-party notices” remain under their own licences, which prevail over this licence for those components. The emblem is adapted from a public-domain reproduction credited in the Application.
- Facts and third-party texts. Journal and congress names, their instructions, limits, deadlines and bibliometric values belong to their respective owners or are plain facts; they are quoted briefly with their source.
- Ideas and functions. This licence concerns the Application as written and presented; it does not claim ideas, methods or functionalities as such.
5. Attribution
The Application identifies its creator in its source code, metadata and “Licence & attribution” notice, and signs its exports “Manuscript Compass v” followed by the version number. These mentions must be kept in any copy.
6. No technical restriction, no tracking
The Application contains no activation, remote control, telemetry or copy-protection mechanism. A stand-alone file can always be copied in practice; this licence states what is permitted, it does not prevent copying technically.
7. No warranty
The Application is provided free of charge and as it is, without warranty of accuracy, completeness or fitness for a particular purpose. Its results are indicative and do not replace the official instructions of journals and congresses. To the extent permitted by the applicable law, the rights holder is not liable for the consequences of its use. [TO BE REVIEWED BY COUNSEL: liability limits valid towards consumers and professionals.]
8. Termination, changes, applicable law
Permission under section 1 ends for a person who seriously breaches section 2 and does not remedy the breach after notice. Later versions of the Application may be released under updated terms; a version already obtained stays under the terms it was released with. This licence is to be read together with the “Terms of use”; for copying and redistribution, this licence prevails. [TO BE COMPLETED WITH COUNSEL: applicable law and competent courts; identity of the rights holder.]
Privacy notice
DRAFT — not reviewed by a legal professional. Fields in [SQUARE BRACKETS] must be completed by the publisher of the tool before publication. The technical description below reflects Manuscript Compass v1.23 as built on 2026-10-12.
In short
- Your manuscript is read and analysed in your browser. It is not sent to any server.
- There is no account, no cookie, no advertising, no analytics and no telemetry.
- Entries of the reference list are sent to two bibliographic services only if you tick the look-up option, which is off by default.
What stays on your device
- The manuscript you load or paste, the sections, counts and results derived from it, and the reports you export.
- A few preferences, kept in your browser’s local storage so that the Tool reopens on your last choice: for each field the journal and the article type, the stage and, if you use it, the study type (keys beginning with
mc_: mc_journal:<field>, mc_atype:<field>, mc_stage, mc_studytype). The field itself is not stored: it is chosen on the home page each time. They are not transmitted to anyone. You can delete them by clearing the site data in your browser.
Network requests made by the Tool
1. Nothing is loaded from third parties. The whole Tool is one file: its code, its style sheet and the libraries it uses to read Word and PDF files (JSZip, pdf.js) are embedded in it. It loads no external script, font, style sheet, image or tracker.
2. Loading the page. If you open the Tool from a web address, your browser requests the page from the server that hosts it. Like any web server, that host receives your IP address and technical request data. [TO BE COMPLETED BY THE PUBLISHER: name and country of the host, whether access logs are kept, for how long and on what legal basis.] If you open a copy saved on your computer, no request is made at all.
3. Reference look-up — only if you switch it on. When the box “Look up each reference in Crossref and PubMed” is ticked and you run the check, the Tool sends, for each entry of the reference list, the text of that entry (authors, title, journal, year, and DOI or PMID if present) to:
- Crossref —
api.crossref.org (Crossref, United States); - PubMed, through the NCBI E-utilities —
eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (U.S. National Library of Medicine, United States).
These services receive your IP address and the reference text, as for any request made to them, under their own privacy policies. Nothing else is sent: not the manuscript, not its title, abstract or authors, and no identifier of yours. Requests are sent without cookies and without a referrer. If the list contains an entry you consider confidential (for example an unpublished work), remove it from the reference box before switching the option on, or leave the option off.
4. Links you choose to click. Links to the journals’ official pages and to DOI or PubMed records open those sites in a new tab. The “search” links next to each reference (PubMed, Google Scholar) carry the text of that reference in the address when — and only when — you click them.
Personal data
The publisher of the Tool does not collect, receive or store the content of manuscripts or any data about how the Tool is used. The only personal data that may be processed in connection with the Tool are the technical data received by the host when the page is loaded (point 2).
Data controller for that processing: TH — contact: t.hovasse@angio-icps.com. [TO BE COMPLETED AND REVIEWED: legal basis, retention period, recipients, your rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction and objection and how to exercise them, and your right to lodge a complaint with the data protection authority (in France, the CNIL).]
Look-ups described in point 3 are made at your initiative directly from your browser to services located in the United States; the publisher of the Tool does not receive them.
Changes
This notice describes the version shown at the top. If the Tool changes in a way that affects network requests or storage, this notice must be updated before that version is published.
Third-party notices
Manuscript Compass v1.23 embeds the open-source components listed below, unmodified, as published on the npm registry. Each component remains under its own licence; for that component, its licence prevails over the terms of use of the tool. The licence headers of the components are also kept inside the file of the tool.
| Component | Version | Used for | Licence | Source |
|---|
| JSZip | 3.10.1 | reading Word (.docx) files | MIT (dual-licensed MIT or GPL-3.0; used here under MIT) | https://github.com/Stuk/jszip |
| pako (bundled in JSZip) | 1.0.x | decompression | MIT and Zlib | https://github.com/nodeca/pako |
| lie (bundled in JSZip) | 3.3.0 | promises | MIT | https://github.com/calvinmetcalf/lie |
| immediate (bundled in JSZip) | 3.0.6 | scheduling | MIT | https://github.com/calvinmetcalf/immediate |
| setimmediate (bundled in JSZip) | 1.0.5 | scheduling | MIT | https://github.com/YuzuJS/setImmediate |
| pdf.js (pdfjs-dist) | 3.11.174 | reading PDF files | Apache-2.0 | https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js |
Emblem of the first page: adapted from Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man (c. 1490, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice). Reproduction by Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be, marked “Public domain” on Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg, consulted 2026-10-03; attribution requested by the photographer, not legally required). Changes: reduced crop, ink extracted as ivory line art, compass rose drawn over it.
The tool loads no web font and no other external resource. The journals’ instructions and the bibliographic records returned by Crossref and PubMed are not components of the tool and are not covered by these notices.
JSZip 3.10.1
Copyright (c) 2009-2016 Stuart Knightley, David Duponchel, Franz Buchinger, António Afonso
The MIT License
===============
Copyright (c) 2009-2016 Stuart Knightley, David Duponchel, Franz Buchinger, António Afonso
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.
pako
(The MIT License)
Copyright (C) 2014-2017 by Vitaly Puzrin and Andrei Tuputcyn
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.
lie 3.3.0
Copyright (c) 2014-2018 Calvin Metcalf, Jordan Harband
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
**THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.**
immediate 3.0.6
Copyright (c) 2012 Barnesandnoble.com, llc, Donavon West, Domenic Denicola, Brian Cavalier
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
setimmediate 1.0.5
Copyright (c) 2012 Barnesandnoble.com, llc, Donavon West, and Domenic Denicola
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
pdf.js 3.11.174
Copyright Mozilla Foundation. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Apache License
Version 2.0, January 2004
http://www.apache.org/licenses/
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION
1. Definitions.
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and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document.
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outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity.
"You" (or "Your") shall mean an individual or Legal Entity
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"Source" form shall mean the preferred form for making modifications,
including but not limited to software source code, documentation
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"Object" form shall mean any form resulting from mechanical
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"Work" shall mean the work of authorship, whether in Source or
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END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
