HEEL Submission Service Terms of Use

Contents

1. Agreement
2. The HEEL and HEEL Submission Service
3. User Submissions – Use and Exploitation of Intellectual Property (CC BY-NC 4.0)
4. User Conduct
5. Termination of this Agreement
6. Limitation of Liability
7. Assignment
8. Data sharing

Definitions

“HEAT” is the Higher Education Access Tracker, whose duties relate to hosting the system allowing Users to submit to the HEEL.

“HEAT Coordinators” are individuals within HEAT Member organisations who have the highest level of access to the HEEL Submission Service. Users with this level of access can manage access for all other Users within their organisation.

“HEAT Members” are organisations that have previously registered with HEAT to be a member of HEAT and user services provided by HEAT which are separate to the HEEL Submission Service.

“HEEL” is the online higher education evaluation library made available at www.taso.org.uk/heel for any Visitor to search the HEEL.

“HEEL Submission Service” is the services made available at data.heat.ac.uk/heel for Users to submit to the HEEL.

“Publish” means the act of successfully uploading all content, report (including evaluation reports), data, text, image, or other information that a User uploads to the HEEL via the HEEL Submission Service.

“TASO” is The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education, an independent organisation working to improve equality of opportunity in higher education. TASO collaborates with HEAT on the operation and development of the HEEL.

“User” (also referred to as “you” and “your”) means an individual acting on behalf of an organisation to accesses the HEEL Submission Service through a User account in their capacity as an employee of their organisation.

“User Submission(s)” are any content, report (including evaluation reports), data, text, image, or other information that a User records on the HEEL Submission Service.

“Visitor” are individuals and organisations having only read access to the HEEL.

1. Agreement

The HEEL Submission Service is available to Users provided that these Terms of Use are agreed and complied with. Additionally, Users can only access the HEEL Submission Service if you and the organisation you are representing meets the eligibility criteria explained in these Terms of Use.

1.1 What terms apply

These Terms of Use become binding on Users once they have agreed to them. For non-HEAT member organisations, this will be required before completing the registration process to access the HEEL Submission Service and each time Users Publish a User Submission to the HEEL.

For HEAT member organisations, agreement with the Terms of Use will be required before Users Publish a User Submission to the HEEL.

If you do not understand or accept any part of these Terms of Use, you are unable to use the HEEL Submission Service.

For HEAT member organisations, these Terms of Use apply to HEEL only. If the User is a HEAT member, these Terms of Use apply in addition to, and do not replace, the HEAT core agreement.

2. The HEEL and HEEL Submission Service

The HEEL is an online library of evaluations of interventions in the higher education sector in England related to access, participation and/or success. The HEEL website that allows access to the HEEL by a Visitor is hosted by TASO.

The HEEL Submission Service refers to the system and process through which Users submit to the HEEL. The HEEL Submission Service is hosted by HEAT.

The HEEL was designed by TASO in close collaboration with HEAT. The Office for Students (OfS) funded TASO to establish the HEEL as part of TASO’s renewed annual grant.

2.1 The HEEL’s overall aims are to:

Create a culture of sharing and learning: To help create a culture of sharing and learning from evaluations in the higher education sector. As a User, you will be able to Publish your evaluation reports to the HEEL via the HEEL Submission Service.

Enable the exchange of knowledge: To enable the exchange of knowledge and improve the sector’s understanding of trends in evaluation practice in the higher education sector. Any Visitors to the HEEL will be able to browse the reports published to the HEEL. Inform TASO’s evidence toolkits: To provide a source of evidence informing TASO’s evidence toolkits. Any Published User Submission may be included and referenced in TASO’s evidence toolkit and/or digests without further permissions being sought.

Support the dissemination of evaluations: Support the dissemination of evaluation evidence on what works, and what doesn’t work, to reduce risks to equality of opportunity in higher education. As a User of the HEEL Submission Service, if you have submitted an evaluation report, you will be able to signpost others to view your submission in the publicly available HEEL.

Inform TASO’s evidence toolkits: To provide a source of evidence informing TASO’s evidence toolkits. Any Published User Submission may be included and referenced in TASO’s evidence toolkit and/or digests without further permissions being sought.

Support the dissemination of evaluations: Support the dissemination of evaluation evidence on what works, and what doesn’t work, to reduce risks to equality of opportunity in higher education. As a User of the HEEL Submission Service, if you have submitted an evaluation report, you will be able to signpost others to view your submission in the publicly available HEEL.

2.2 Who can access and use the HEEL

The HEEL is publicly accessible at www.taso.org.uk/heel, allowing all Published User Submissions to be viewed and downloaded by any Visitor to the HEEL. Visitors can be from any organisation from any country. Visitors will be able to view the HEEL but will not be able to use the HEEL Submission Service.

2.3 Who can access and use the HEEL Submission Service

2.3.1 Access for HEAT member organisations

HEAT member organisations can access the HEEL Submission Service via their existing HEAT account. Permission to submit to the HEEL by HEAT member organisations will be role based and controlled by HEAT Coordinators.

All HEAT Coordinators from HEAT member organisations will be given access to the HEEL Submission Service by default. HEAT Coordinators can grant or rescind access to the HEEL Submission Service for any other individuals within their organisation, both existing account holders and new ones. This will be managed through the My HEAT > Roles area of HEAT to which all HEAT Coordinators have access.

Within HEAT member organisations, HEAT Coordinators can grant access for individuals to carry out one or more of the following actions:

• View HEEL Submissions
• Edit HEEL Submissions
• Publish HEEL Submissions

HEAT Coordinators should ensure that any individual granted with ‘Publish HEEL Submissions’ access has proper authority to upload the research and accept these Terms of Use on behalf of the organisation that they represent.

All individuals with Publish HEEL Submissions access, will be required to agree to these Terms of Use at the point of publishing a HEEL Submission to the HEEL through the HEEL Submission Service.

2.3.2 Access for non-HEAT member organisations

Non-HEAT member organisations can register for an account with HEAT, free of charge.

Non-HEAT member Users of the HEEL must register for an account on behalf of an organisation which meets the registration criteria explained in these Terms of Use.

Registration criteria for non-HEAT Member Users

Our registration criteria require you to either register using an active email address with a domain of an organisation delivering equality of opportunity activity domiciled in England recognised and approved by HEAT. HEAT recognises and will consider approval of Higher Education Providers, Charities or third sector and Partnership organisations. Eligible organisations include:

• English higher education providers listed in the Office for Students Register;
• Charities registered with the Charity Commission as providing Education/training;
• Uni Connect Partnerships;
• Other Partnership organisations to be approved on a case-by-case basis.

Users from non-HEAT Member organisations will be required to agree to these Terms of Use before registering for an account with HEAT to access the HEEL Submission Service. This includes that they have proper authority to upload the research and accept these Terms of Use on behalf of the organisation that they represent.

At the point of registering, the User has the option to opt-out of receiving the HEAT email bulletin. If this if not selected, the name and email address of the User is copied to the HEAT bulletin email distribution list which is managed solely by HEAT who is the data controller for this data (see the HEAT Privacy Notice to understand how your personal data is managed with regard to the HEAT bulletin which is not part of the HEEL).

On successful registration, all individuals from the non-HEAT Member organisation will be provided by HEAT with an account which gives access to the HEEL Submission Service for their organisation. They will have no access to any other HEAT services.

Within non-HEAT member organisations, account holders will be given access to carry out all of the following actions:

• View HEEL Submissions
• Edit HEEL Submissions
• Publish HEEL Submissions

Users will be required to agree to these Terms of Use at the point of publishing a HEEL Submission to the HEEL through the HEEL Submission Service. By agreeing to the Terms of Use you allow the option for your personal data to be shared with TASO for the purpose of receiving encouragement to make a submission to the HEEL.

Up to three individuals from each non-HEAT Member organisation can register with HEAT to access the HEEL Submission Service. As access to the HEEL Submission Service is at organisational level, all account holders will have access to HEEL submission records created by other account holders within their organisation.

If you do not meet the registration criteria at the time of registration, HEAT may reject your registration or terminate your access if we subsequently learn that you successfully registered without meeting the criteria. If you have previously had your User status terminated by us, you may not register for the HEEL Submission Service again without good reason.

For more information about our processing of personal data recorded in the HEEL, see the HEEL Privacy Notice.

3. User Submissions – Use and Exploitation of Intellectual Property (CC BY-NC 4.0)

As a User of the HEEL Submission Service, you may Publish User Submissions. You (your organisation or other third party owner of the intellectual property rights in User Submissions, as the case may be) retain ownership of all intellectual property rights in your User Submissions, both before and after they have been Published.

By Publishing content to the HEEL, you agree to make User Submissions available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. This means:

• Anyone, including HEAT, TASO, and members of the public, may copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon your User Submissions, as long as the use is non-commercial and compliant with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence;
• whoever uses your work must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made, in accordance with the licence terms;
• Commercial use is not permitted without separate, explicit permission from the rights holder.

Your submission information, including the name of any key contacts or authors and your organisation, may be displayed alongside your Published User Submissions on the HEEL, or accessed by HEAT/TASO, to support appropriate attribution.

You confirm that you have the necessary rights and permissions to licence your User Submissions under the CC BY-NC 4.0 licence. You agree not to submit content that contains third-party material unless those materials are also available under a licence compatible with CC BY-NC 4.0, or you have secured the appropriate rights to share them.

By Publishing your User Submissions, you grant HEAT and TASO the right to use, adapt, reproduce, and create derivative works from your content for the purposes of hosting the HEEL, promoting learning in the sector, and developing non-commercial resources, including but not limited to, evidence toolkits, reports, and digests.

TASO shall own all rights, including intellectual property rights, in any aggregate data, metadata, summaries, thematic analyses, or other derived data sets that result from TASO’s analysis, classification, or transformation of User Submissions which have been Published to the HEEL. This includes the structure, tagging, indexing, or evaluation frameworks applied to support the administration, searching, reporting, and knowledge synthesis across the HEEL.

HEAT shall own all rights, including intellectual property rights, in any aggregate data, metadata, summaries, thematic analyses, or other derived data sets that result from the analysis, classification, or transformation of User Submissions to HEAT.

You may edit your Published User Submissions at any time through the HEEL Submission Service. Please note that:

• Any derivative works already created by TASO, HEAT, or third parties under the CC BY-NC 4.0 licence may continue to be used in accordance with that licence.
• Metadata or summaries derived from your content may continue to be displayed within the HEEL and associated services.

For more information about the licence, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Redaction of entries may be achieved via editing of the User Submission but this must be detailed and explained via the ‘Audit’ section of the HEEL Submission Service. Please provide comment on the rationale for any redactions or changes, so that there is a clear audit trail. Full deletion of Published User Submissions is only possible in exceptional circumstances and must be agreed and actioned at the discretion of HEAT and TASO. Registered Users are not able to delete their Published User Submissions directly themselves via the Submission portal so this would need to be done by HEAT.

If information in a Published User Submission has been entered incorrectly (for example, information put into the wrong boxes or small typing errors) HEAT and TASO hold the right to modify and edit entries at our discretion.

Whilst HEAT does not exercise editorial control over the Published User Submissions, HEAT  reserves the right to remove any published content which it considers inappropriate or which has been notified is objectionable, whether or not the objection is substantiated. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and to the extent permitted in law, HEAT accepts no responsibility or liability for any User Submissions or material uploaded or communicated by third parties through the Heel Submission Service.

In future, TASO may create TASO-generated summaries of Published User Submissions that may feature on the HEEL alongside Published User Submission content. These will be clearly labelled as generated by TASO, or other third party, as the case may be, not the registered User.

4. User Conduct

To make sure the HEEL is a constructive and civil space dedicated to the sharing of knowledge, you agree to follow the basic rules set out here.

4.1 Integrity and authenticity

As HEAT and TASO strive to connect equality of opportunity evaluation and make research open to all, we think it is critical that HEEL Users stay accountable for their opinions and actions. For this reason you agree to:

• Identify yourself using only your real name.
• Only affiliate yourself with organisations that you have an affiliation with.
• Only register for one account for yourself. Do not register for or operate an account after you have had an account restricted, suspended, or terminated, register for or operate an account for a third party or on behalf of an entity, or circumvent the registration criteria or assist a third party to do so.
• Use a strong password and keep it confidential. Do not give others access to your account or transfer your account to anyone else.
• Only connect your account with email addresses that belong to you as an individual. Do not use a non-personal email address, such as a generic organisation email address.

4.2 Safety and security

By submitting to the HEEL you agree:

• That you have proper authority to upload and Publish the research and accept these Terms of Use on behalf of the organisation that you represent.
• Not to include or share any personal data (as defined under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018) in your User Submission except:
  • The name/email of a key contact for the submission
  • Author names
  • Names of cited individuals who would reasonably expect to be identified in a public forum
• To ensure that all research/evaluation data included in your submission is fully anonymised and aggregated, with no risk of re-identification of individuals by any reasonable means.
• Not to share confidential or proprietary information, trade secrets, or any information you do not have a right to share.
• Not to upload content that contain viruses, worms, or harmful code, or otherwise pose a risk of compromising HEAT, HEEL, or others’ online data or security, including through malicious software or websites, browser extensions, or mobile applications.
• Not to share content that is explicit, derogatory, discriminatory, shocking, graphic, objectionable, offensive, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive, immoral, potentially harmful, or potentially dangerous, including demonstrably false claims, disinformation, misinformation, or harmful health claims.
• Not to share content that does not comply with all applicable laws, regulations, or other legally binding obligations, promotes illegal activity, or infringes the legal rights of the HEAT Service, HEEL or others.
• Not to share content that does not comply with your organisation’s policies and procedures, or those policies and procedures of the organisation you are affiliated with, as the case may be.
• That you agree to the use of your Intellectual Property as set out in our User Submissions – use and exploitation of intellectual property Policy (Section 3 above).

User organisations are responsible for ensuring that account holders comply with this Section 4.2.

5. Termination of this Agreement

You are free to terminate this Agreement at any time. HEAT can also terminate this Agreement with notice or without notice for good cause.

As a User, you can terminate this Agreement at any time without cause by contacting HEAT and requesting that your accounts are deleted.  HEAT may require that you verify your identity before we agree to do so, to protect you and others from accidental or unauthorized account deletion.

In the interests of data privacy and security, HEAT may delete an account in accordance with the HEEL Privacy Notice.

HEAT may terminate this Agreement without cause with at least 30 days’ prior written notice or immediately for good cause at any time. Good cause for immediate termination is defined as an event that makes it unacceptable for HEAT to continue the Agreement until the end of the termination period, taking into account all circumstances of the individual case and weighing up the interests of both parties. A good cause for HEAT includes, but is not limited to, the following events:

• You repeatedly or materially fail to comply with any applicable legal provision, a contractual obligation of these
• HEAT or TASO’s reputation is substantially impaired by your online presence.
• You expose the HEAT Submission, HEEL, Service, yourself, or any third party to potential harm, risk, legal liability, or regulatory impacts.
• A legal requirement or court order requires HEAT to terminate.
• HEAT has good reason to believe your account is not under the control of the person identified in your profile, or is under the control of a person or group of persons operating multiple accounts.
• HEAT learns that you have registered without meeting the criteria.

In the event of termination HEAT, may either delete your account(s) or disable your access to your account(s). In the event of termination, the following shall survive:

• The ability of HEAT and Users to access, use, and share your Published User Submissions in accordance with these Terms and applicable laws, when appropriate.
• HEAT’s right to retain certain account and submission-related data as necessary to comply with legal obligations, maintain the integrity of the HEEL archive, and enforce its rights, as outlined in the HEEL Privacy Notice.
• Your ability to access the HEEL as an Unregistered Visitor.

6. Limitation of Liability

6.1 No Guarantee of Accuracy or Availability

The HEEL and the HEEL Submission Service are provided on an “as-is” and “as available” basis. While HEAT aims to maintain a reliable and accessible platform, it makes no warranties or guarantees regarding the availability, accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or completeness of any content submitted to or displayed on the HEEL.

6.2 Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we,  HEAT, or TASO  (including HEAT and TASO affiliates, employees, agents, and partners) shall not be liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, including but not limited to loss of profits, goodwill, data, or other intangible losses, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the full extent permitted by law, HEAT and TASO’s total liability to you, for any and all claims arising under or in connection with this Agreement (whether in contract, tort, or otherwise), shall be limited to the total amount you have paid us in connection with your use of the HEEL or the HEEL Submission Service — which, for most Users, will be zero.

6.3 Your Indemnification obligations

You agree to indemnify and hold  HEAT and TASO (including HEAT and TASO affiliates, subsidiaries, and their officers, directors, employees, and agents) harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable legal fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your User Submissions, your breach of these Terms of Use, your improper use of the HEEL or the HEEL Submission Service, or your violation of any law or third-party rights. You agree that TASO shall be entitled to enforce this indemnity pursuant to the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

Neither HEAT nor TASO are a contracting party to any agreements between Users or between a User and a third party. HEAT and TASO are not liable for any outcomes or breaches related to such agreements. If a dispute arises between you and another party, you agree that HEAT and TASO are not responsible and have no obligation to become involved.

6.4 Intellectual Property of the Platform

The system running the HEEL Submission Service is managed by HEAT. The HEEL and aggregate collection of Published User Submissions, are the intellectual property of TASO. By registering, you are granted a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, and royalty-free licence to use the software and platform solely for submitting content to the HEEL, subject to these Terms of Use. You may not reverse-engineer, copy, modify, distribute, or commercially exploit the system or its components or content unless explicitly permitted by law.

6.5 Governing Law and Jurisdiction

This Agreement and any disputes (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of or in connection with it shall be governed by English law. The English Courts will have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any such disputes.

7. Assignment

HEAT may transfer all or part of this Agreement to TASO or the Office for Students (OfS), or, to a third party. Users will be notified if a new data controller takes over the HEEL Submission Service.