Terms of Service

Last updated: October 14, 2026

1. About these Terms

These Terms govern your use of the Journal of Youth Scientific Research website at youthscienceresearch.org ("JYSR", "we", "us"). JYSR is operated by Journal of Youth Scientific Research LLC, a California limited liability company.

By creating an account, submitting a manuscript, reviewing, or otherwise using the site, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Statement. If you are under 18, your parent or legal guardian must also agree to these Terms on your behalf. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

2. Eligibility and accounts

Who may submit. Authors must be enrolled in high school, an undergraduate program, or community college, or have graduated within the past six months for work completed while enrolled.
Minimum age. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13; if we learn we have, we will delete the account and its information.
Authors under 18. A parent or legal guardian must sign our Parent/Guardian Consent Form for each author under 18. By signing, the parent or guardian agrees to these Terms on the author's behalf and accepts responsibility for any fees.
Accurate information. Give accurate, current information about yourself, your school and your co-authors, and keep it up to date.
One person per account. Keep your password private and do not share your account. Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you think someone else has used it. You are responsible for activity on your account.

3. Submissions and author responsibilities

By submitting a manuscript, the submitting author confirms, on behalf of all authors, that:

The work is original research and your own. It is original or mostly original research, not a literature review. Anything it builds on, extends or recreates is clearly stated and cited, and any use of others' work, data or code is properly credited.
Authorship is accurate and signed. Up to four students may be authors, and a student is the first author. Adult mentors may be co-authors only if they contributed, and the manuscript includes a contribution statement saying who did what. Every student author has signed the JYSR Authorship & Integrity Statement, and everyone listed has agreed to the submission.
AI was not used to create the work. No AI tool created any of the manuscript's text, figures, analysis or results. Any minimal use, such as explaining a concept or debugging the authors' own code, is described in an AI-use statement in the Acknowledgements.
Data and code are available. The manuscript includes a data and code availability statement, and the authors will share their data and code on reasonable request. Data about people is de-identified.
Research was conducted ethically. If the work involved human participants (including surveys or interviews), vertebrate animals, or hazardous materials, you followed the applicable rules, obtained any required approval (for example, from a school or institutional review board) and participant consent, and describe this in the manuscript.
No simultaneous submission. The work has not been published in another journal and is not under review elsewhere while under review at JYSR. Preprints and science fair entries are allowed.
Verification. You agree that JYSR may contact your named mentor, or ask for working files (such as code history, a lab notebook or raw data) or a short video call, to confirm the work is yours. If you worked without a current mentor, you have provided an independent research statement.
Nothing unlawful or harmful. The manuscript contains no personal information about others without their permission, and nothing defamatory or otherwise unlawful.

The full requirements, format and evaluation criteria are set out in our Author Guidelines. We may decline or withdraw a submission that does not meet them, at any stage.

4. Peer review and editorial decisions

Process. An editor screens every submission. Manuscripts that pass screening are reviewed by at least one professional referee: a scholar pursuing or holding a PhD in a related field. Review is double-anonymous.
Editorial discretion. Acceptance, revision requests and rejection are decided by the editors, using our published criteria. Paying a fee does not guarantee acceptance, and no one can buy a particular outcome.
Timelines are targets. We aim to reach a first decision within 4–8 weeks, but this is not a guarantee. Delays do not entitle you to a refund except as stated in Section 5.
Selectivity. Our target acceptance rate is about 25%. The actual rate may vary with the overall quality of submissions.
Appeals. If you believe a decision was based on a factual error or a procedural problem, you may appeal once, in writing, to [email protected] within 14 days of the decision. The appeal decision is final.

5. Fees, payment, refunds and scholarships

Fee	Amount (USD)	When it is due	Refunds
Submission fee	$25	Before you submit, paid through our PayPal link; you enter the PayPal transaction ID with your submission	Non-refundable, except in exceptional circumstances at the editors' discretion
Publication fee	$150	Only after acceptance, before publication	Refunded in full if we do not publish within 60 days of payment; non-refundable once the article is published

No fee, no screening. A submission without a valid transaction ID for the submission fee will not be screened.
Withdrawing. You may withdraw at any time. If you withdraw before paying the publication fee, you owe nothing further.
Scholarships. A very limited number of publication fee scholarships are available for authors with financial need. Apply after acceptance with a brief statement of need, or proof of eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunch (college students may instead show Pell Grant eligibility). Scholarships are not guaranteed and do not affect editorial decisions.
Payment processing. Payments are handled by PayPal under PayPal's own terms. JYSR does not receive or store card or bank account numbers.
Reversed payments. If a payment is reversed or charged back, we may pause the submission or publication until the fee is resolved.
Misconduct. Fees are not refunded if an article is withdrawn or retracted because of author misconduct.
Changes. We may change fees for future submissions. The fees in effect when you submit apply to that manuscript.

6. Copyright and license

Authors keep copyright. You retain copyright in your work.
License to JYSR. If your manuscript is accepted, you grant JYSR the right of first publication and a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to publish, display, distribute and archive it, including in indexes and preservation services.
Open access under CC BY 4.0. Published articles are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Anyone may share and adapt the article, including commercially, if they credit the authors and JYSR. This license cannot be withdrawn once the article is published.
What you promise. You have the right to grant these permissions for all of the content, including figures, images and data, or you have obtained permission from the owners and credited them.
Your account content. Material you upload that is not published (drafts, reviews, messages) stays yours. You let us store and use it only to run the journal.

7. Corrections, retractions and misconduct

Published articles are part of the permanent scholarly record and are not removed on request, except for legal reasons or serious privacy or safety concerns.

Corrections. If you find an error in your published article, contact us. We may publish a correction notice linked to the article.
Retractions. If an article is found to contain plagiarism, fabricated or falsified data, undisclosed AI-generated content, or serious errors that invalidate its conclusions, we may retract it. The article stays online, clearly marked as retracted, with a short explanation.
Investigating concerns. If we receive a credible concern about a submission or article, we will contact the authors (and, for authors under 18, their parent or guardian) and give them a fair chance to respond before deciding. We may also contact the authors' mentor or school when integrity is in question.
Consequences. For serious misconduct, we may reject the manuscript, retract the article, and decline future submissions from the authors involved.

8. Reviewers and editors

Referees and editors who use the site also agree to the following:

Confidentiality. Treat every manuscript as confidential. Do not share it, cite it, use its ideas, or upload it to AI tools or other online services.
Anonymity. Do not try to identify the authors, and do not reveal your identity in your comments.
Conflicts of interest. Decline, or tell the editor before reviewing, if you have a conflict as described in our reviewer guidelines (for example, having mentored, taught or tutored an author).
Respectful conduct. Many of our authors are minors. Keep comments professional and constructive, and never contact an author directly outside the journal's system.
Honoraria. Any honorarium for a completed review is a thank-you, not employment. It does not depend on your recommendation.

9. Acceptable use

When using the site, you agree not to:

create accounts with false information, for someone else without permission, or by automated means;
try to access accounts, manuscripts or data you are not authorized to see, or get around the site's security or bot checks;
upload malware or anything that could harm the site or other users;
scrape or bulk-download the site, other than published articles, which are open access;
harass, threaten or contact other users inappropriately, or use the site for advertising or spam;
use the site in any way that breaks the law.

10. Privacy

Our Privacy Statement explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have, including the extra protections for authors under 18. It is part of these Terms.

11. Disclaimers

Independence. JYSR is an independent journal. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any university, employer, government body or accreditation organization. Affiliations listed for editors and referees identify them only and do not mean their institutions endorse JYSR.
No promised outcomes. Publication in JYSR is a research-publishing outcome only. We make no promise about how submission or publication may affect college admissions, scholarships, awards, employment or any other outcome.
Indexing. We will not claim indexing, impact factors or listings we do not have.
Content of articles. Published articles reflect the views and findings of their authors. Peer review reduces errors but does not guarantee that every result is correct.
The service. We work to run a careful, fair process and keep the site available, but the site and services are provided "as is" and "as available." To the extent the law allows, we disclaim warranties not stated in these Terms.

12. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, JYSR and its editors, referees and operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages arising from your use of the site or services, such as lost opportunities or lost data. Our total liability for any claim relating to the site or services is limited to the fees you paid JYSR for the manuscript involved.

Some places do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot legally be limited.

13. Suspension and termination

By you. You may close your account at any time by contacting us. Published articles stay online under their CC BY license.
By us. We may suspend or close an account, or decline future submissions, if someone breaks these Terms, commits research misconduct, or puts other users or the site at risk. Where practical, we will tell you why.
What continues. Sections on copyright and license, corrections and retractions, disclaimers, and limitation of liability continue to apply after an account is closed.

14. Changes, governing law and contact

Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms as the journal develops. We will post the new version here with its date and, for significant changes, notify registered users by email. Changes do not apply retroactively to fees already paid.
Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Disputes will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Monterey County, California.
Whole agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Statement, the Author Guidelines and, for authors under 18, the signed Parent/Guardian Consent Form are the whole agreement between you and JYSR about the site. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
Contact. Questions about these Terms: [email protected].