Terms and Conditions

Community Rules & Etiquette and Privacy Guidelines

*AALAS is the host for branch and affiliate communities, which may have additional rules or guidelines. All community participants must follow the general community rules established by AALAS.*

Thank you for being part of an American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS) community. To ensure the best possible experience for all community participants, AALAS has established the following rules and conditions for participation in a community.

By joining and using an AALAS community, you agree that you have read and will follow these rules and conditions. Questions should be directed to our community administrator at community-admin@aalas.org.

Please take a moment to acquaint yourself with these important rules and conditions since participation in a community is conditioned on your specific agreement to comply with the rules and conditions listed herein. In order to preserve an environment that encourages respectful and beneficial dialogue, AALAS reserves the right to suspend or terminate membership in a community for anyone who violates these rules and conditions.

The Rules

  • You are responsible for all content you post or add to a community. AALAS reserves the right to remove any content it determines, in its sole discretion, violates these Rules and Conditions and may ban the sources of such messages from participation in the community(ies).
  • Respect others. Focus on the content of posts and not on the people making them. Please extend the benefit of the doubt to newer members.
  • Advertising or promotion of products and services by a company or their employees and representatives is prohibited in a community.
  • Use caution when discussing products and services. The information posted is available for all to see, and comments are subject to libel, slander, and antitrust laws.
  • All defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive as determined by AALAS, and/or illegal content and/or materials are strictly prohibited. Do not post anything that you would not want the world to see or that you would not want anyone to know came from you.
  • Respect intellectual property. Post content that you have personally created or have permission to use and have properly attributed to the content creator.
  • Users may not harvest email addresses or other personal information from a community. A community’s success relies upon our ability to maintain members’ privacy.
  • Users may not use the community's email system for advertising or promoting products or services, for campaigning, nor for fundraising.
  • Do not use the community to conduct market research.
  • Surveys from commercial or nonprofit organizations are not allowed unless approved by the AALAS Board of Trustees. Surveys for academic or institutional research are permissible if the topic is relevant to the laboratory animal science field, the data is collected outside of the community platform, and the results are shared within the community platform.
Community posts may not contain:

  • job position openings or resumes;
  • meeting or event announcements (these can be posted in the "Meetings & Events" community, however);
  • product or service advertisements or announcements;
  • campaign announcements for public, private, or volunteer organizations; or
  • fundraising, including, but not limited to solicitation of donations; membership recruitment; promotion of meetings, programs and events; and promotion of an entity’s website,
as determined by AALAS, by an entity other than AALAS or the AALAS Foundation. Meeting or event announcements may be posted on the AALAS website calendar. Job position openings and resumes may only be posted on AALAS Career Center. Affiliate, branch, or district purchased communities may have their own rules relating to meeting/event postings, announcements, and fundraising.

Discussion Group Etiquette

  • State concisely and clearly the topic of your comments in the subject line. This allows community members to respond more appropriately to your posting and makes it easier for community members to search the archives by subject. 
  • Do not send messages such as "thanks for the information" or "me, too" to the community. Instead, reply to the sender by using the "Reply to Sender" link in every message. Members may also use the “Like” button to show their thanks or support for another community member’s discussion post.
  • Do not send administrative messages, such as “remove me from the community list,” to the community. Instead, use the web interface to change your settings or to remove yourself from a community. If you are changing email addresses, you do not need to remove yourself from the community list and rejoin under your new email address. Simply change your settings. 
The Legal Stuff

  • The communities are provided as a service for the members of AALAS and authorized users. AALAS is not responsible for the opinions, comments, information, and any other material posted in a community by community participants or others.
  • AALAS disclaims all warranties with regard to information posted on in a community, whether posted by AALAS or any third party; this disclaimer includes all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness.
  • In no event shall AALAS be liable for any damages, including, but not limited to, special, indirect, or consequential damages and/or any damages resulting from loss of use, data, or profits, arising out of or in connection with the party’s participation in a community and/or the accuracy, use or performance of any information posted on a community site.
  • The posting of defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, and/or illegal materials is prohibited.
  • Do not post any information and/or material protected by copyright without the permission of the copyright owner. By posting such information and/or material, the posting party warrants and represents that he or she owns the copyright with respect to such material or has received permission from the copyright owner to post such information and/or material. In addition, the posting party grants AALAS and users of the community the nonexclusive right and license to display, copy, publish, distribute, transmit, print, and use such information or other material.
  • Messages that encourage or facilitate members to arrive at any agreement that either expressly or impliedly leads to price fixing, a boycott of another's business, or other conduct intended to illegally restrict free trade are prohibited. Messages that encourage or facilitate an agreement about the following subjects are also prohibited: prices, discounts, or terms or conditions of sale; salaries; profits, profit margins, or cost data; market shares, sales territories, or markets; allocation of customers or territories; or selection, rejection, or termination of customers or suppliers.
  • AALAS will periodically monitor each community for inappropriate postings and will remove such postings at its discretion. In the event that any inappropriate posting is brought to the attention of AALAS, it will take all actions it deems appropriate. 
  • AALAS reserves the right to terminate access to any user who does not abide by this community code of conduct & privacy guidelines. 
  • AALAS reserves the right to modify this community code of conduct rules and conditions at any time at its sole discretion.
Violations of the Community Code of Conduct & Privacy Guidelines

AALAS will investigate complaints of possible violations that come to its attention and take any action that AALAS believes is appropriate, including, but not limited to issuing warnings, removing content, and terminating accounts and/or subscriptions. However, because situations and interpretations vary, AALAS also reserves the right to take no action.

If you see what you believe is inappropriate content in the discussion forums, resource libraries or member profiles, notify AALAS immediately by clicking on the “report inappropriate content” link or by emailing community-admin@aalas.org.

If you believe that any materials published in a community infringe the copyrights of others, please notify the community administrator by emailing community-admin@aalas.org.

AALAS members may seek to appeal the decision by contacting the Executive Director in writing at 9190 Crestwyn Hills Drive, Memphis, TN 38125 or via email at community-appeals@aalas.org

Disclaimer

While AALAS does our best to protect your personal information, AALAS cannot guarantee the security of any information that you transmit to AALAS and you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of any passwords or other account information. In addition, other Internet sites or services that may be accessible through the community have separate data and privacy practices independent of AALAS, and therefore AALAS disclaims any responsibility or liability for their policies or actions. Please contact those vendors and others directly if you have any questions about their privacy policies. For any other information, please contact the community administrator at community-admin@aalas.org.