Terms of use

What Synapse is

Synapse is a research-topic mapping tool. You type a topic; Synapse finds papers about it in OpenAlex, an open catalogue of research metadata, groups them by the citations and words they share, and shows how crowded each subtopic is. In these terms, “Synapse”, “we” and “us” mean the people who run it.

Maps are estimates, not advice

A map is computed from a sample of papers, not the whole field. The subtopics, the Open, Active and Saturated labels and the counts are computed estimates, and the names and summaries marked as AI-written are generated by a language model. Any of them can be wrong or incomplete, and they are not academic or professional advice.

Read the papers yourself and talk to your supervisor before you commit to a topic.

Your account

• Give accurate details when you sign up, and keep them up to date.
• Keep your password safe and don’t share your account. You’re responsible for what happens under it.
• If you think someone else has used your account, change your password and tell us at synapsepapers@gmail.com.

Using Synapse fairly

Please don’t:

• scrape Synapse, or download maps or papers from it in bulk with scripts or bots;
• overload it, or try to get around its limits (how often you can try to log in, how many maps you can save, how large they can be);
• try to reach other people’s information, or test or break Synapse’s security without our written permission;
• use Synapse for anything unlawful, or to harass or harm anyone.

Early access

Synapse is early-access software. It is provided “as is” and “as available”: features may change or stop, a map may fail to build, and we can’t promise that Synapse will always be available or free of errors. Keep your own notes of anything you can’t afford to lose.

What’s yours

You keep ownership of what you enter (your topics and profile) and of the maps you save. You let us store and process them only to run Synapse for you, as our Privacy policy explains.

The paper details come from OpenAlex, whose data is released under the CC0 public-domain dedication. The papers themselves belong to their authors and publishers: Synapse links to them and doesn’t host them. Synapse’s own name, design and software are ours.

Suspending and deleting accounts

We may suspend or delete an account that breaks these terms, or that puts Synapse or other people at risk. You can delete your own account at any time in Settings > Privacy & data.

Our responsibility

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or changes any right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law, or any other law, that cannot be excluded.

To the extent the law allows, we aren’t responsible for indirect or consequential loss, or for decisions made by relying on a map, a label or a summary, and our total responsibility to you for anything to do with Synapse is limited to supplying the service again.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms as Synapse changes. When we do, we change the date at the top of this page. If you keep using Synapse after a change, the new terms apply; if you don’t agree with them, you can delete your account.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of Victoria, Australia, and the courts of Victoria can hear any dispute about them.

Contact

Questions about these terms: synapsepapers@gmail.com. How we handle your information: our Privacy policy.