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Terms of Use

Terms of Use

Welcome to KOKO Journal (“KOKO”), an online academic journal for the interdisciplinary exploration of theories and practices of alternative knowledge systems exploring the relations between media and expression, time and space. We hope you will find our efforts informative, inspiring, yet also academically rigorous, and welcome your efforts and contributions towards our aims.

Following is our agreement that we make with you when you use the KOKO site; it applies whenever you use the site, whether you’re merely browsing its content, interact with us and/or other users, purchase content, or in any other situations. These terms govern your use of our site, and set out your rights and obligations. If you can’t/don’t want to accept these terms, then you must not continue using KOKO Journal. We will take your continued use of this site to constitute your acceptance of our terms.Thank you for taking the time to read and understand them.

Affiliations

KOKO Journal is a publication by Shared Campus. Daily operation of the journal is primarily coordinated and jointly managed by the Editorial Board consistenting of staff members of Shared Campus partners.

Standards and Restrictions

KOKO is an academic journal that complies with internationally accepted academic standards including but not limited to peer-review, academic freedom and general freedom of expression. We do not limit or restrict the views expressed on our site, unless they are in direct breach with KOKO’s House Rules. While we don’t expect and don’t intend to showcase and/or disseminate any unlawful, abusive, obscene, or otherwise offensive content or materials, there is the possibility that some content is not suitable for all audiences. As such suitability is at least partly open to interpretation, you are responsible for complying with any and all local laws in your jurisdiction that may impact your right to use this website.

You need to be 13 years or over to be eligible to register an account with KOKO. If you’re under 13 you will need to be under the supervision of a parent or legal guardian who is at least 18 years of age, and this adult will be responsible for all your activities. You need to be 18 years or over to make any purchases from KOKO.

Accessibility

KOKO is an open access online publication accessible worldwide; it is also an open community for all academics, professionals, and members of the public who share an interest in our particular area of investigation. We give you permission to use our site and its content in exchange for your acceptance of and compliance with our terms.

All content available on KOKO is accessible free of charge, though we may – in the future – charge for some special services (e.g. PDF-downloads). This implies that we give you a revocable, non-exclusive license to access, read, copy, and use the content for personal and/or commercial purposes, as long as you attribute the original author/creator as well as KOKO Journal as the original source (i.e. a Creative Commons Attribution (BY)-license). Please refer to the rest of these terms for further details and specifications related to this license.

We’ll try to provide you with long-term access to our content. In any case, we can remove content at our discretion, for example if it becomes out of date or obsolete, or if we need to for legal or business reasons. We will take reasonable steps to let you know if any content was or will be removed, but this might not always be possible depending on the reason for or urgency of the removal.

Keeping our Free Content Free (funding)

We are grateful that the initial setup of KOKO Journal was funded through the joint efforts of the Shared Campus partners, especially the Zurich University of the Arts and the Academy of Visual Arts, HKBU. As we don’t charge any Submission Fees or Article Processing Charges (APCs), we may need to refer to some common strategies in the future to be able to sustain the operation of KOKO including in particular – but not limited to – paid special services, and advertising.

If any advertising was to be placed on KOKO it would be through Google AdSense: we’d set aside space on our pages, and leave it to Google to fill it with ads. Their choice of ads to place on our pages depends on an automated analysis of the textual content of the respective pages, and differs from viewer to viewer, based on the viewer’s individual previous browsing history. KOKO has used an option to exclude advertising from some specified categories, yet other than that we have no control over what advertising you will see. We receive a commission for every page visited that has an ad on it, but it is up to you whether you go on to visit any of the advertisers’ pages or make any purchases of products and services of those other sites. In any case, we don’t endorse any products or services of these other sites, and we don’t accept any responsibility for any of their contents or offerings.

While all content – including article and comments – on KOKO are openly accessible and may be read, printed, copied etc. for free, we may offer in the future a paid special service of downloading formal PDFs of individual contributions. Those PDFs are specially laid out for a comfortable reading experience, without any advertisement, and generally may be more suitable for formal filing, processing, use in class etc. As each PDF is typeset manually, we need to charge a small designer fee to cover our extra expenses. The fee by default is set at US$ 0.99 per PDF, though we reserve the right to charge other prices in special cases without further explanation.

If you or your organisation would like to arrange for bulk purchase of PDFs, please contact us.

If you like what you see and get from KOKO Journal you’re welcome to donate to us. All donations are appreciated with gratitude, and all donors will receive a formal receipt for their contribution for potential tax-deduction etc. However, donations will in no way warrant any influence on KOKO’s editorial or other decisions, we insist on our unconditional independence.

Purchased Content (PDFs)

At this point the only content we may consider for purchase are the specially layouted PDFs; when they become available you may buy any number of them through our online shop. While we say you “buy” the PDFs, as explained above, you’re getting a license to use this content rather than “owning” it outright. You pay for the purchased content you’ve selected via PayPal only. All prices on our site are in US dollars (USD). You are responsible for meeting all costs of currency conversion from your local currency to USD. These currency conversion costs are imposed by your financial institution and not controlled by us. After the selling process in our shop is completed you may download the PDF to your personal desktop. We do not create any account in your name or about your purchase, thus if you should “loose” your purchase, we have no possibility of confirming any previous purchases, and we will not provide any replacements once the first download was completed successfully.

Refunds

It’s hard to think of when you might need a refund given that you will have had the chance to read all article content before you purchase it, and once you’ve downloaded the PDF there is no way to “undo” the download. We therefore do not generally offer refunds unless required under Swiss consumer law or other relevant consumer protection laws. If you think you’ve got a genuine claim please let us know your reasons. We will assess your request on its merits, with regard to the digital nature of the content and previews available before purchase.

There is no obligation to provide a refund in situations like the following:
– you have changed your mind;
– you bought purchased content by mistake;
– you do not have sufficient expertise to understand/use the purchased content; or
– you ask for goodwill.

Refunds will be paid using the same manner of purchase. When a refund is granted your license for the initially purchased content is cancelled.

Ownership and Use

We, or our authors/creators, own or have licensed the rights in the content. We also own the rights in the design, compilation, look and feel of the KOKO Journal site. This includes – but is not limited to – intellectual property rights like copyright.

Fair Use

Our “fair use” policy requires that your use of the site, especially of any content you copy or download, must be fair, genuine, and reasonable. For example, we expect that our articles – if used further in an academic context – are properly cited according to academic standards; if our articles are used in educational situations we equally expect to be properly attributed. While we accept that you may produce additional copies of the PDF you purchased, the number of such copies should be within reasonable limits. There are numerous further scenarios how our articles may be further used and utilised, but we hope you get the idea. In cases in which we suspect “unfair use” of our and our authors work, we will use our reasonable discretion to decide whether you have met our “fair use” policy, or whether we need to consider sanctions, e.g. suspending or terminating your access to purchased content.

Usage Restrictions

Our work, and that of our authors/creators, is based on intellectual property (IP) including copyright. We need to protect our IP for us to keep the trust of our contributors and stakeholders, and thereby maintaining the basis of KOKO’s existence. We therefore have to insist that you won’t re-sell, redistribute, frame, repurpose or copy content except within academically common citation frameworks or unless specifically allowed in these terms. While you may utilise and appropriate the knowledge and insights you receive from our content for your personal commercial and non-commercial endeavours, you cannot e.g. re-sell or disseminate in unreasonable numbers the PDF(s) you purchased. If you like our content, please send others to the KOKO site rather than sending the content to them! The trademarks and logos on the KOKO site belong to KOKO or to others, and you must not use these without the approval of the owner.

Sources Files

Much of the content published through KOKO will include audio-visual materials – like e.g. images – that have their own licenses. While we ensure that we have the licenses to publish those materials on our own website – and in the subsequent PDFs – these will usually not extend to any parties beyond KOKO. This means if you want to use or redistribute any of these files you need to get your own licenses from the original owners.

Restricting Access

We may restrict, suspend or terminate your access to our shop at any time at our discretion if we decide you’ve breached these terms or any law that applies. We’ll be reasonable in exercising our discretion and making such a decision. In particular, your access to our shop will be suspended or terminated if payment is reversed by the payment agent.

Intellectual Property Concerns

We respect the IP rights of others, including those who have contributed in any way to our site and its content. Please contact us if you believe that your intellectual property or other rights are being affected by anything on the site.

If you are specifically making a copyright-based claim about content, please send the following information to editor@koko.zhdk.ch:
– your name and contact details (i.e. your address, telephone number, and email address);
– a description of the location of the alleged infringing material;
– a description of the copyright work that has been allegedly infringed (the “source”);
– a statement by you that you warrant that the information given in your claim is accurate and that you are either the copyright owner or are authorised to act on the copyright owner’s behalf; and
– your physical or valid electronic signature.

User-generated Content

We image KOKO Journal to develop into a lively online community and discussion platform for all matters concerning academic exchange related to creative practices in research and education, and therefore encourage you to participate in any KOKO dialogues. Often you’ll have the opportunity to comment or post your views on our site. You retain ownership of any intellectual property in your content but by posting it on KOKO you give us permission (a license) to use it on our site. This permission includes allowing us to publish it (or not), to feature it, to move it to a more appropriate forum, and to store or delete it. For a few basic rules regarding nature and content of comments, please visit our House Rules.

In using KOKO you agree that you will not:
– use a false email address, impersonate others, or misrepresent your affiliation with others;
– attempt to gain unauthorized access to computer systems or materials from or through KOKO Journal;
– engage in automatic gathering of information from or through KOKO Journal (such as “spidering”, “screen scraping”, “database scraping” or harvesting of e-mail addresses);
– attempt to interrupt or alter KOKO’s operation in any way (for example through sending mass unsolicited messages, “flooding” servers, or introducing a virus, time bomb, trojan horse, worm, cancelbot or other computer routine);
– use KOKO or any of its content in a way that violates applicable law, that violates the intellectual property or other rights of us or others, or that is fraudulent, obscene, offensive, misleading, or defamatory;
– use scripts to automatically mass download content;
– insert advertising, branding or other promotional content into the site or content; and/or
– except as allowed in these terms, copy, distribute, transmit, modify or otherwise exploit content, data or code on the sites.

Privacy

Our information collection and use of any personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy. We can only use personal information that you disclose in relation to your use of KOKO for certain purposes explained in our Privacy Policy. At no point will we pass on your details to others except to satisfy a law, regulation or government request; especially we won’t sell your details to marketing companies or similar. However, please bear in mind that any information that you post on our site will become public information and can be collected and used by other parties.

Liability and Disclaimer

There may be consumer laws where you live (‘non-excludable consumer laws’). We don’t purport to exclude or modify them if they apply.

Except as required by a non-excludable consumer law:
– we are only bound by the express promises we make in these terms. We’re not bound by implied terms;
– we don’t promise that the content or your access to KOKO will be uninterrupted or error-free, that any defects will be corrected, or that the site or content are free of viruses or any other harmful components;
– we don’t make any promises about (and we’re not liable for) your access to or reliance on KOKO or its content in terms of correctness, accuracy, timeliness, completeness, reliability or otherwise;
– we’re not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, loss or revenue or loss of profits which result from any use of or access to, or any inability to use or access KOKO or its content; and
– to the fullest extent permitted by law, our liability for breach of any warranty or condition which cannot be excluded is limited, at our option, to either replacement or paying the cost of replacement.

Access and Availability

We’ll try to make sure that you have 24/7 access to KOKO Journal and we’ll try to keep any downtime to a minimum. We may need to interrupt or suspend access to the site or the provision of the site’s services and content, for maintenance, technical or other reasons but we’ll make every effort to be quick.

Taxes, Fees and Charges

You are responsible for paying all fees and taxes associated with your use of KOKO wherever levied (including withholding tax, if applicable).

Changes to Terms

We can change terms at any time but we’ll do our best to post information about this on the site. If you continue to use KOKO after the terms change, you will be accepting the new or revised terms.

Interpretation

Words like ‘include’ and ‘including’ are not words of limitation and where anything is within our discretion we mean our sole discretion (unless these terms say otherwise).

Applicable Laws

KOKO is controlled and operated by Shared Campus via its office in Zurich, Switzerland. The laws of Switzerland govern these terms and you and KOKO submit to the jurisdiction of the courts there.

Congratulations! You’ve reached the end. Thanks for taking the time to learn about KOKO Journal’s terms of use. Please, enjoy your time on our site!