The Author and EFLTechnologies K.K. (the owner of Extensive Reading Central (ER-C)) express the following terms, conditions, rights and responsibilities for uploading texts to the EFLTechnologies / ER-C systems.

A. Definitions

• Author – an Author is you, a person who is uploading a text to the ER-Central.com reading environment
• Text – a text refers to a written digital text and its associated metadata (title, blurb, intended level etc.) and images either moving or static,
• ER-Central.com – ER-Central (Extensive Reading Central) is a free website owned and run by EFL Technologies K.K.
• User – a person who may read the text, typically students

B. Terms, rights and responsibilities when uploading a text

EFLTechnologies K.K.  (Extensive Reading Central) will:

• 1. host the text on its systems for users to read and learn from
• 2. use security procedures to try to prevent the theft of any text from the system
• 3. NOT distribute any text for financial gain (or in kind) to any other publisher, website, or other providers in digital, print or other media without express consent from the Author at any time.

The Author:

• 1. allows ER-Central to distribute any uploaded texts and their associated metadata (title, blurb, intended level etc.) and any audio or visual or moving images to computers, mobile devices or suchlike for users to download to read.
• 2. agrees to upload the texts under a Creative Commons license for all users to share with attribution while retaining copyright over the text.
• 3. allows any user to read the text and associated metadata for free and waive all rights to royalties, fees or other remuneration for the text
• 4. agrees NOT to upload any material which infringes the copyright and other rights of any third party and agrees to the terms as set out in the Certificate of Originality.
• 5. agrees NOT to upload Offensive Texts. Offensive Texts are texts that may offend, disparage, insult, belittle users or non-users, or blatantly use ER-Central for political, religious promotion, self-promotion, or promotion of any products or services, or post any text that might upset or infringe on the rights of others. Authors who consistently violate this policy may be removed from the system. The Author agrees that ER-Central is the sole arbiter of what constitutes an Offensive Text.
• 6. agrees NOT to abuse the system or the website in any way (as determined by ER-Central) including hacking, downloading software code and so on as deemed inappropriate by EFLTechnologies K.K.
• 7. understands that all submitted texts will need to be read by an ER-Central Administrator prior to publication on the system. This is to ensure the text meets the conditions B4-6 above.
• 8. allows ER-Central to make minor changes to the text (for example to fix awkward phrasings, incomplete sentences, spelling and grammatical mistakes, formatting and such like). ER-Central will also tag each word in the text for analysis by the computer systems.
• 9. allows ER-Central to use some segments of the texts in the learning environment for example a phrase or sentence may be used to provide context for vocabulary learning in the flashcard environment.
• 10. understands that the initial level of a text as assigned by the Author on submission will not be fixed, but determined by user ratings and feedback
• 11. understands that the text will be rated by users for comprehensibility, enjoyability and so on. These ratings will determine the relative ranking of a given texts as compared to other texts in the system with the higher rated texts being the ones most highly recommended.
• 12. understands that once a text has been submitted to the system that it cannot be modified by the Author. The reason for this is that it will affect the student data. If changes are required, the Author can ask an ER-Central Administrator to make any necessary changes.
• 13. understands the texts will become part of a corpus which will be used for vocabulary analysis with the data being made available freely on the web to all users.

Extensive Reading Central agrees to allow the Author to:

• 1. retain copyright over the text
• 2. distribute the text (for free or otherwise) with other distributors or publishers in digital, print or other formats at any time without remuneration of any kind to ER-Central.
• 3. remove or delete any of their texts at any time. Note that because of the way the system logs student data, the text itself will not be removed from the system completely as that will alter the students’ data regarding the number of texts they have read, the words they have learn and so on. The text will thus be hidden from all Users and made unavailable to future Users. Any ‘deleted’ texts will not be distributed to third parties.
• 4. add a short promotional message promoting themselves or the provenance of the text, if so desired, in the Attribution field in the Text Creation Editor This will be displayed to Users who have finished reading the text. This might be a link to a bookstore, a reference to publication data, a webpage or otherwise.

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

The Author

• 1. warrants that any uploaded material (text or otherwise) does not infringe the copyright or rights of any third party who may have created the text, its associated data, images, or parts thereof.
• 2. agrees to post details of all permissions received from a third party copyright holder which have been granted to the Author, including the right to post the text on ER-Central in the Attribution field in the Text Creation Editor prior to the text being made live on the system
• 3. understands that ER-Central may use digital tools (such as Copyscape.com) to check that the text has not infringed copyright.
• 4. understands that any text found to be in breach of copyright will be removed from the reading environment immediately and without consultation.
• 5. understands that Authors who consistently do not adhere to the Certificate of Originality may be removed from the system

By uploading this form, I certify that the text, images other data contained in this submission form do not contain copyrighted material, or I have obtained the relevant permissions for txt or images that do not infringe on the original author’s copyright or ownership in any way.

By uploading this form, I understand that the above information (text, image, title etc.)  may be slightly edited by the editor and that if major changes are to be made I will be contacted by the editor to make the changes myself.