1 · What CiteLink is
CiteLink is an open index of scholarly journals. It publishes a catalogue built from open citation data, and evaluates journals that apply, against a rubric published in advance.
The other party to these terms is CiteLink, which also operates under the business name Zeus Publishing. Where these terms say “we”, they mean CiteLink. The registration is in progress and the registry details are marked in the Privacy Notice §1; until it completes, the person operating the service stands behind these terms.
It is not a publisher, not a peer-review service, and not a route to publication. Nobody can buy a listing, a score or a quartile.
2 · Free, and staying free
Applying, being evaluated, being listed, holding the seal, displaying the standard digital badge, receiving the PDF certificate, seeing your criteria report and appealing a decision are all free of charge, permanently. There is no expedited route at any price.
Revenue is intended to come from readers and institutions — subscriptions, API access, custom reports — and from physical production such as a printed certificate or plaque. None of those exist yet: nobody is charged for anything today. A fee may attach to an object; it never attaches to a right. A journal that pays nothing loses nothing but a physical thing.
The prices we intend to charge are published in full on the membership and pricing page — the individual tiers, the institutional bands and the reasoning behind each number — and are marked there as planned. Publishing them changes nothing in the paragraph above: there is still no way to pay us, and the free half of that page is free permanently rather than until we change our minds.
3 · Using our data
The underlying bibliographic data comes from OpenAlex under CC0 and carries no restriction from us.
Metrics we compute ourselves — CNI, percentiles, C1–C4 quartiles, self-citation rates and the deposit scorecard — may be used and redistributed freely with attribution to CiteLink and the edition date. The edition matters: a quartile from one snapshot is not comparable with another, and quoting it without the date invites exactly the misreading we work to prevent.
Automated access must identify itself with a real contact address and stay within any published rate limits. There is no documented API or bulk feed yet, and the planned ones are described in the publisher pages. The database this site reads from does answer public read-only requests — that is how a static site works — and using it is permitted on the same terms as everything else here: attribute the data, quote the edition, and do not present a CiteLink metric under another name. It carries no undertaking of any kind: it is undocumented, may change without notice, and nothing in these terms promises it will keep answering. When the documented interface exists, this clause will name its limits.
4 · Evaluation and listing
Applying does not entitle a journal to be listed. Journals are assessed against the published criteria; the pre-check is pass/fail and the CiteLink Value is scored from evidence, most of which must be publicly visible on the journal’s own site.
You must not misrepresent a journal in an application. Claiming coverage by an index that does not list it, or displaying an invented impact factor, ends the application and may be recorded publicly.
Listing is not permanent. Journals are re-evaluated, and may be placed under observation or removed. Every applicant may appeal in writing, and every applicant — accepted or not — receives the evaluation report.
5 · Seals and badges
A listed journal may display the CiteLink badge on its own site at no charge, for as long as it stays listed. The badge must link to the journal’s live CiteLink profile so a reader can check it, and must not be altered.
If a journal is removed, the badge must come down. Continuing to display it misrepresents the journal’s status.
6 · Responsible use of the metrics
The CiteLink Value describes a journal. It must not be used to evaluate an individual researcher, a department or a grant application. Neither must the quartiles: a journal-level number says nothing about any single article in it.
We publish the formulas, the weights and the known defects — including in our errata — precisely so the numbers can be argued with. Using them as a substitute for reading the work is a misuse, and we will say so publicly if we see it.
7 · Acceptable use
- Do not attempt to gain access to data or accounts that are not yours.
- Do not submit false information, impersonate a journal, or apply on behalf of a journal you do not represent.
- Do not use the site to distribute malware or to attack the service.
- Do not present CiteLink data as your own, or a CiteLink metric under another name.
8 · No warranty
The service is provided as-is. We work hard on accuracy, publish our methodology and record our mistakes in a public errata — but bibliographic data contains errors, automated author disambiguation contains more, and we do not warrant that the site is complete, current or error-free.
We are not liable for decisions taken on the basis of these numbers. If a record is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
9 · Law and changes
Turkish law governs these terms. The operator, its records, its people and its assets are in Türkiye; a judgment obtained anywhere else would have to come back through recognition proceedings under Law No. 5718 and would buy nothing. Where the database happens to sit does not change this, and never did.
Disputes may be brought before the courts and enforcement offices of the operator’s registered seat. That sentence is an offer of a forum, not a restriction on yours, and we would rather say so plainly than let a clause imply more than it can carry:
- If you are not a merchant, it does not bind you. Turkish civil procedure lets only merchants and public legal persons agree a competent court in advance. You keep every forum the law already gives you.
- If you are a consumer, you may sue where you live, and below the statutory thresholds you must go to the consumer arbitration committee first. Nothing here removes either, and nothing here removes the minimum protection of the mandatory rules of your own country of residence.
- If you live in the EU or EEA, and to the extent we are found to direct this service at your country, you may sue in your own courts and we may sue you only there. A clause agreed before a dispute arises cannot change that, so this one does not try to.
- Data protection is not ours to choose. KVKK applies to us by force of its own scope, whatever these terms say, and the Privacy Notice governs it.
And a note on who these terms reach at all. The only place anyone accepts them is the declaration on the application form. Reading the catalogue accepts nothing, and creating an account does not require accepting them either. If you have not ticked that box, you have not agreed to this page — which is the honest description of the position and not an invitation to ignore it.
We will publish any material change here with its date, and no change applies backwards — not to an evaluation already completed, and not to an application already submitted, which is decided against the terms and the criteria in force on the day it was sent. If a change would alter what a listed journal has already agreed to, it takes effect for that journal only when they accept it.
Last updated: 16 September 2026 · draft, not yet in force.