Governance
Terms of Service
Client access to the Aureneum research library
Issued 16 October 2026 · Version 3.2
These terms govern client access to the Aureneum research library and to Aquila, the Aureneum client application. They form a contract between Aureneum Limited and the client named in the Subscription Confirmation. They do not apply to ordinary use of aureneum.com, which is governed by the Terms and Conditions.
1. The agreement
This agreement is made between Aureneum Limited, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 16790273, registered office 158 Bedford Road, Kempston, Bedford MK42 8BH ("Aureneum", "we", "us"), and the person or organisation identified in the Subscription Confirmation ("the Client", "you").
It comes into force on the date stated in the Subscription Confirmation, or on the date credentials are first issued to you, whichever is earlier.
2. Definitions
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Application | Aquila, the Aureneum client application through which the Library is made available. |
| Library | The body of research papers, white papers and long-form analysis Aureneum makes available to clients. |
| General Papers | Papers classified by Aureneum as available from Tier I upward. |
| Reserved Papers | Papers classified by Aureneum as available from Tier II upward. Classification is set at the point a paper is issued. |
| Authorised User | A named individual to whom Aureneum has issued credentials under this agreement. |
| Subscription Confirmation | The written record of your tier, term, fees, number of Authorised Users and start date, issued by us and accepted by you. |
| Reader Mark | The identifying mark applied to each page of a paper or record as it is displayed to an Authorised User. |
| Invitation | The private link issued by Aureneum to one email address, valid for seven days, through which access is accepted and settled. It states the tier, the price and the terms version that apply. |
| Purchase Page | The page on aureneum.com that an Invitation opens. It is not reachable from the public site and sells nothing to anyone who has not been invited. |
| Working Record | The record attached to a paper of how its conclusion was reached: the question, the hypotheses considered and rejected, the data and its lineage, the trials and their outcomes, the robustness checks, the judgement calls and the sign-off. It is historical and descriptive, and is not a method, a parameter set, or a view about the future. |
3. Order of precedence
Where documents conflict, the order is: first, any separate written agreement signed by both parties; second, the Subscription Confirmation, which for a subscription accepted through an Invitation is the Invitation together with the record of your acceptance; third, these terms; fourth, the Terms and Conditions. The Privacy Notice governs personal data throughout.
4. Access, and what each tier carries
| Tier | Access granted |
|---|---|
| Tier I · Individual | One named Authorised User. General Papers, in final form. Not transferable. |
| Tier II · Institutional | Licensed to the Client as an organisation, per institution, for the number of named Authorised Users agreed in the Invitation and stated in the Subscription Confirmation. General Papers and Reserved Papers, and the Working Record for each paper. |
| Tier III · Partnership | As Tier II, together with research conducted jointly under clause 16. Entered into by separate written agreement. |
Access is granted, not sold outright. You receive a right to read the Library at your tier for as long as this agreement is in force, and nothing more.
Aureneum classifies each paper as General or Reserved at the point of issue, in its editorial judgement. We may reclassify a paper, but we will not reclassify a paper you already hold access to in a way that removes access you have already paid for during the current period.
5. Credentials and Authorised Users
Credentials are issued by Aureneum to named individuals, after a person at Aureneum has reviewed the acceptance, within one working day of confirmed payment or recorded settlement. Each Authorised User receives a one-time activation code, sent separately by text message or given on a short telephone call, never by email, and valid for seven days. There is no self-registration, and no client-facing process creates an account. On first sign in, two-factor authentication must be enrolled and the activation code replaced by the Authorised User's own password.
Credentials are personal to the Authorised User. You must not share them, and you must not permit any person other than the named Authorised User to use them. A seat may be reassigned to a different individual on written notice to us, but it may not be used by two people.
You must tell us without undue delay if an Authorised User leaves your organisation, changes role so that access is no longer appropriate, or if you suspect that credentials have been compromised.
6. How you may use the research
Subject to your continued compliance with this agreement, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to read the Library at your tier, and to use what you read for your own internal business purposes and for the internal business purposes of your organisation.
That includes forming your own views, taking your own decisions, and discussing what you have read internally.
7. What you may not do
You must not, and must not permit any person to:
- share, publish, sell, licence, lend or otherwise make available any paper or Working Record, or any substantial part of one, to anyone who is not an Authorised User;
- reproduce a paper outside the Application, other than as clause 8 permits;
- remove, obscure, alter or attempt to defeat a Reader Mark, or any other security or attribution measure;
- use any paper or Working Record, or any part of one, to train, fine-tune, evaluate, embed, index or ground a machine learning model, or to build any dataset or product derived from it;
- use the Library to produce a competing research product or service;
- circumvent or attempt to circumvent the tier you hold, or access Reserved Papers where your tier does not carry them;
- probe, scan or test the security of the Application, or attempt unauthorised access to it.
You may quote short extracts for the purposes of comment, criticism, review or news reporting, provided you attribute them to Aureneum Limited and do not distort their meaning.
8. Reader marks and traceability
Papers are displayed in the Application with a Reader Mark identifying the Authorised User to whom they were displayed. You acknowledge that this is how we trace an unauthorised disclosure back to its source, and you agree not to interfere with it.
Whether a paper may be downloaded is set per Client and per Authorised User, and is stated in the Subscription Confirmation. Where downloading is not enabled, papers may be read in the Application only. A Working Record may never be downloaded, whatever permissions apply to papers, and is read in the Application beside its paper.
9. Fees and payment
Fees are those stated in your Invitation and confirmed in the Subscription Confirmation, in pounds sterling. A Tier I fee is the total payable. Tier II and III fees are stated exclusive of any tax that may apply. Our published rate card sits at Access. It is the current price list, it may change as clause 22 provides, and your Invitation prevails over it.
No payment is taken inside the Application, and nothing in the Application sells access, quotes a price, or links to a purchase.
Tier II fees are charged per month, per institution, to the Client as an organisation. The number of named Authorised Users the fee covers is agreed in the Invitation and stated in the Subscription Confirmation.
| Tier | Settlement |
|---|---|
| Tier I | By card on the secure page of our payment provider, Airwallex, reached through your Invitation for the first period, and by Airwallex's renewal for each period after. |
| Tier II and III | By invoice, settled by bank transfer or by secure payment link, within the period stated on the invoice. |
Payment is processed by Airwallex. Card details are entered with Airwallex and are never held by Aureneum.
10. Term and renewal
The subscription runs for the period stated in the Subscription Confirmation, monthly unless stated otherwise, and renews for successive periods of the same length until cancelled.
Where a renewal payment does not settle, we attempt collection no more than twice, normally on the next working day after the first attempt. If the second attempt does not settle, access ends. We make no further attempt and raise no further charge, and no debt arises for a period in which you did not have access.
11. Cancellation
You may cancel at any time, without giving a reason and without a cancellation fee, by writing to us from the address on your account or, for a Tier II or III client, from an authorised address.
Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid for. Access continues to that point.
A summary of this position sits at Cancellation and Refunds. These terms prevail over that summary.
12. If you are a consumer
If you subscribe as an individual acting wholly or mainly outside your trade, business, craft or profession, you are a consumer and you have a statutory right to cancel within 14 days of entering into this agreement, without giving a reason.
Access to the Library is digital content. On the Purchase Page we ask you to request that supply begin at once, and to acknowledge that in doing so you lose the 14 day right. That request and acknowledgement are recorded against your Invitation with the time and the terms version. If you do not make the request, supply begins after the 14 days instead, and you may cancel within them for a full refund.
Nothing in this agreement affects any right the law gives a consumer.
13. Refunds
We refund in full where we have charged in error or charged twice. We refund the unused part of a paid period where we withdraw access for a reason that is not your fault, and a fair proportion of a period where the Application has been substantially unavailable for a material part of it.
We do not refund a period you have had access to on the basis that you read less than you intended, and we do not refund where access has been ended for a serious breach of this agreement.
Refunds are made to the original payment method within 14 days of our agreeing that one is due.
14. Suspension and termination
We may suspend access immediately where we reasonably believe credentials have been compromised, where the Application is under attack, or where we are required to by law. We will tell you why, and restore access as soon as the reason has passed.
We may terminate this agreement on written notice where you commit a material breach and, if the breach can be put right, fail to do so within 14 days of us asking. Sharing credentials, redistributing papers and using papers to train a model are each a material breach.
Either party may terminate on written notice if the other becomes insolvent or enters into any analogous process.
On termination, credentials are disabled and your right to read the Library ends. Clauses 7, 8, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 and 27 survive.
15. Intellectual property
All intellectual property in the Library, the Application, and the Aureneum name and marks belongs to Aureneum Limited or its licensors. Nothing in this agreement transfers any of it to you.
You own the views, decisions and internal work product you create from what you read. You do not own, and acquire no right in, the papers themselves.
16. Commissioned and joint research
This clause applies only where the Subscription Confirmation or a separate written agreement says it does.
Commissioned research
Where we write a paper to your commission, we own it unless we agree otherwise in writing. Where we agree that it is held exclusively to you, we will not make it available to any other client for the period stated, and we will say in writing what that period is.
Joint research, Tier III
Where research is conducted jointly, and unless the separate written agreement provides otherwise:
- each party retains ownership of everything it contributed, and of its own pre-existing material;
- the output created jointly is owned jointly, and each party may use it for its own internal purposes without accounting to the other;
- neither party may publish, sell or otherwise make the joint output available to a third party without the other's prior written consent, and consent may be withheld;
- on termination, rights already granted in joint output survive, and each party keeps the right to continue using it internally.
This clause states a default. Where a partnership has a different intention about ownership, publication or what happens on termination, that intention must be written into the separate agreement, because it will not be read into this one.
17. Confidentiality
Each party will keep the other's confidential information confidential, use it only for the purposes of this agreement, and disclose it only to those who need it and are bound by equivalent obligations. This does not apply to information that is public through no breach, was already lawfully held, or must be disclosed by law or by a regulator.
The contents of Reserved Papers and of every Working Record are our confidential information.
18. Nothing here is advice
Aureneum Limited is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Nothing in the Library constitutes financial advice, a personal recommendation, an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any financial instrument, or an invitation to engage in investment activity. Nothing in the Library takes account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. You take your own decisions and should take your own professional advice.
Aureneum does not hold, manage or receive client money or client assets under any arrangement.
The value of investments can fall as well as rise. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
19. Warranties and disclaimers
We warrant that we will provide access with reasonable care and skill, and that we have the right to grant the licence in clause 6.
Research is a matter of judgement and information changes. The Library is provided on an "as is" basis. We do not warrant that any paper is complete, current or free from error, and we are not obliged to update one. We do not warrant that the Application will be uninterrupted or fault free.
20. Liability
Nothing in this agreement excludes or limits either party's liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Subject to that, and except for your obligations under clauses 7, 15 and 17:
- neither party is liable for loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, loss of anticipated savings, loss of opportunity, or any indirect or consequential loss;
- our total liability arising out of or in connection with this agreement is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.
If you are a consumer, you keep every right the law gives you, and nothing here affects them.
21. Data protection
We process personal data as described in the Privacy Notice. Each party will comply with applicable data protection law. Where you provide us with personal data about your Authorised Users, you confirm that you may lawfully do so and that they have been told how it will be used.
22. Changes to these terms and to fees
We may change these terms and our fees, and if we do:
- your fees are fixed for the period you have already paid for. A change never applies part way through a period;
- we will give you at least 30 days' written notice before a change takes effect;
- the change takes effect at your next renewal;
- if you do not accept it, you may cancel before that renewal at no cost, and nothing further is owed.
We may make a change without notice where it is required by law or by a regulator, or where it is wholly in your favour.
23. Force majeure
Neither party is liable for failure to perform caused by an event beyond its reasonable control, provided it tells the other promptly and does what it reasonably can to limit the effect. If such an event continues for more than 30 days, either party may terminate on written notice.
24. Assignment
You may not assign or transfer this agreement without our prior written consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld. We may assign it to a successor to our business on written notice to you.
25. Notices
Notices to us go to legal@aureneum.com, or by post to the registered office. Notices to you go to the address in the Subscription Confirmation. Email notice is effective when sent, unless the sender receives a delivery failure.
26. General
This agreement, the Subscription Confirmation and the documents referred to in clause 3 are the entire agreement between us on their subject matter, and replace anything said or written beforehand. Nothing in this clause limits liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest continues in force. A failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it. Nothing creates a partnership, joint venture or employment relationship. No third party may enforce this agreement under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
27. Governing law and jurisdiction
This agreement, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it or its subject matter, is governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, save that if you are a consumer resident elsewhere in the United Kingdom you may also bring proceedings in your own jurisdiction.
Before commencing proceedings we ask that you raise the matter with us at legal@aureneum.com so that we have a fair opportunity to resolve it. This does not limit either party's right to go to court, or to seek an injunction to protect confidential information or intellectual property.