Terms of use

In brief. These terms govern participation in Bracket, an independent research programme on the UN climate negotiations. You keep the copyright in your writing and permit its use within the programme. In Bracket, only you and the project owner can read your notes; access to the collated research dataset requires a separate arrangement. You accept these terms and the Acceptable use rules, while optional research about your background requires a separate choice. Write to contact@bracketresearch.org with questions or concerns.

1. The programme and its responsibilities

Matthew Winkler runs Bracket personally and is the controller: the person responsible for deciding why and how personal data is used. The controller uses the project owner's account. Bracket is independent of any institutional affiliation; affiliation alone does not make an institution responsible for the programme.

Bracket is for invited adult researchers observing sessions of the UN climate negotiations, starting with COP31. A meeting is an individual event in a room during a session. Use the service for the programme's research and coordination. Your account is personal and cannot be transferred.

The project owner operates the service, manages access, and handles research releases, rights requests and reported incidents. Administrators organise people and meetings; administrative status does not give access to researchers' notes.

2. Your contributions and permission to use them

You retain copyright in your writing. You give the project owner non-exclusive permission to store, analyse and code your contributions, share them with authorised programme researchers and named collaborators, and use them in the programme's publications. Non-exclusive means that you retain the right to use your own work. Recipients must follow written conditions for access, confidentiality and handling of research data.

This permission covers the Bracket programme's research and publications. It does not authorise public release of the dataset, transfer ownership of your contributions, or waive your rights under data-protection law. Publication does not by itself prevent a rights request.

You may use your own notes in your thesis or papers, with project credit and the same confidentiality and no-delegate-names rules. Tell the project owner before submitting, so that overlapping uses can be discussed. Access to another researcher's notes or to the collated dataset requires a separate programme arrangement. Downloading your own data grants neither that access nor permission to redistribute other people's contributions.

Credit and authorship follow the arrangements in Research participation. Operating Bracket alone does not entitle the project owner to authorship of another researcher's paper.

3. Access and sharing

Only the project owner creates collated exports. The usual export replaces researcher identities with stable labels within each conference. This is pseudonymisation, not anonymity: the project owner can identify contributors, and context may identify someone to colleagues. An identified export is a separate, recorded choice for authorised analysis.

Public dataset release is outside this agreement's scope. Any proposal requires a separate decision, appropriate contributor terms and information, and a review of confidentiality, identification risks and conditions of public access. Contributors will be told what is proposed and given an opportunity to raise objections before any release. No public release of note text is assumed.

4. Fieldwork and confidentiality

Record delegations, negotiating groups and roles, not individual delegates' names. For a chair, use the role and Party, such as “Co-facilitator, Norway”. Do not record audio or video of meetings or photograph delegates. You may photograph a projected text or a document you are entitled to hold.

Respect the meeting's access and confidentiality conditions. Admission alone does not establish permission to disclose what is said. Do not take notes from inside a meeting to which you were not admitted. Mark information from a closed room as closed, and distinguish a second-hand account from your own observation. Under the Chatham House Rule, do not identify a speaker even by delegation where that would identify the person.

Bracket's name check can miss names and indirect identifiers. Review your wording and correct inappropriate identifiers. Cite published sources without copying delegate identities into the team's observations. The Acceptable use rules explain these boundaries.

Share research data only with authorised recipients under the written handling conditions. Never send research data or raw support reports to external AI assistants. Keep research findings in notes: chat is for coordination and is visible to members of its channel, including administrators.

5. Personal information and optional research

The Privacy notice explains information held about you, recipients, retention and your rights. It is information, not contractual acceptance or consent to every use of personal data. Research participation explains a separate, optional choice about using background details to study observers. Refusing or withdrawing that choice does not affect account access, contributions or earned credit.

6. Devices and availability

Keep your account and devices secure. Do not share passwords or allow another person to work under your name. Keep your browser up to date and report a lost device or suspected unauthorised access promptly.

Bracket keeps local working copies for use without a connection. Successful sign-out attempts to remove that account's local work and saved pages after allowing recovery of unsent work. Failed sign-out or blocked browser storage can leave copies behind. Downloaded files are not removed. On a shared device, confirm sign-out and clear Bracket's site data before handing it to someone else.

The service may be unavailable or fail to save or synchronise work. Check the saved and synced status and use recovery downloads when offered. The project owner is responsible for responding to reported faults and incidents. These terms do not exclude responsibilities or rights that the law does not allow to be excluded.

7. Leaving, deletion and complaints

Contact the project owner to leave. Access may also be suspended for a serious or repeated breach, with an explanation and a way to raise a mistake. Leaving ends account access but does not automatically erase contributions already used in research or remove earned credit.

You may request a copy, correction, erasure or restriction, or object to continued use. Requests are assessed individually and the outcome explained. Deleting a note in Bracket hides its current version but retains its history; complete removal requires a separate request. The Privacy notice sets out retention and rights, including what happens to other copies. You do not need an active account or acceptance of new terms to make a request.

Write to contact@bracketresearch.org with a complaint or question. French law applies, subject to applicable mandatory rights. Nothing here limits the right to complain to a competent data-protection authority.

8. Accepting terms and later changes

Joining requires an affirmative acceptance of the Terms of use and Acceptable use rules. The Privacy notice and Research participation information are provided alongside them. Your profile provides a record of acceptance and the wording supplied.

The project owner, as operator, is exempt from the acceptance requirement. Everyone else must accept before an account is created or existing account access is enabled. There is no period of continued use without acceptance. Declining does not prevent requests about your data or rights, downloading your existing notes, withdrawing optional consent or signing out.

Material changes are explained and issued as a new version for acceptance before continued use. Silence is not acceptance. A wording correction that does not alter rights or obligations does not require fresh acceptance.