ProofForum is a free scholarly repository and verification service, not a journal and not a substitute for independent mathematical, legal, safety or professional review.
1. Acceptance and eligibility
By creating an account, submitting content or using authenticated features, you agree to these Terms and the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. You must be legally capable of entering into this agreement or have any consent required by applicable law.
2. Account accuracy and security
You must provide accurate account and professional information, keep credentials secure, and not impersonate another person or institution. ProofForum may verify email addresses, affiliations and referee qualifications and may suspend or restrict accounts for abuse, security risks, false identity claims or policy violations.
3. Submission and repository agreement
Submission eligibility. Paper submissions and new paper versions are available only to accounts with a currently verified university or academic institutional affiliation. Verification is completed through the institutional-affiliation process and may use the account email or a separate institutional email address. If the verified affiliation changes or is revoked, submission access is suspended until the new affiliation is verified. The site administrator may perform repository operations as an administrative exception.
When you submit a paper, new version, comment, review or related material (the “Work”), you represent that you are the author/rightsholder or are authorized by all relevant rightsholders and co-authors to submit it; that you have authority to grant the selected license and repository rights; that included third-party material is lawfully used and properly attributed; and that hosting the Work will not knowingly infringe copyright, privacy, confidentiality, trademark, patent or other rights.
Private drafts. An eligible submitter may save multiple private working drafts and resume them later. A saved draft is not a repository submission, is not public, does not send coauthor invitations, and does not create publication or editorial rights. Final submission remains subject to the current eligibility, file-safety, authorship, email-confirmation, license, repository-preflight and other submission checks. A successful submission consumes the associated draft; you may also delete a draft before submission.
Structured authorship. The account that uploads a new submission is the submitter; the submitter may be one of the people listed as Generated by or may be acting on their behalf. The ordered Generated-by list is derived from the uploaded LaTeX and then disambiguated in a separate ProofForum identity roster. The submitter must explicitly state whether they are one of the listed people. Email, affiliation and ORCID metadata for a Generated-by entry are optional. If the submitter supplies an email for another listed person, the submitter must manually confirm that it belongs to that person before ProofForum prepares an invitation or in-app notice; no invitation is created when no email is supplied. An email extracted from source metadata is only a suggestion until the submitter confirms it. The submitter may add a missing person to the structured roster, but must not use another person’s email for unrelated contact or falsely list a person as a generator.
Authorship invitations may be resent. Each security link is individually expiring and revocable; resending replaces prior unused links rather than creating a permanent shared password. A recipient whose submitted address is old or incorrect may request a claim from an authenticated account. The submitter or an administrator may resolve a pending claim; legacy papers may also retain previously stored authorship-management permissions. An administrator may reopen an accepted authorship identity when there is a documented identity error or dispute. These actions are recorded for repository integrity.
You grant ProofForum a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable and royalty-free license to reproduce, store, back up, preserve, index, display, distribute and make available each submitted version and its metadata, and to create technical, accessibility, preservation and machine-readable representations reasonably necessary to operate the repository. This repository license is non-exclusive and does not transfer copyright ownership.
Each paper version also carries the public reuse license selected by the submitter at submission time. The available choices and their effects are described on the Licenses page. ProofForum treats the license recorded for a published version as permanent; later versions may carry a different license if the submitter has authority to grant it.
4. Scholarly record and versions
ProofForum keeps versioned records so readers can understand provenance and editorial history. Publication status may change, and access to non-public versions may be limited to the submitter, administrators, subject-assigned Managing Editors, and identity-bound invited/claiming coauthors when access is necessary to respond to an authorship request. ProofForum may preserve metadata, audit records and moderation history even when public access to a Work is withdrawn or restricted, subject to applicable law.
4A. Verification records for works hosted elsewhere
What a verification record is. A verification record lets ProofForum users review an exact version of a work hosted on an external repository (currently arXiv and Hexagon). The external repository remains the source of record for that work; ProofForum records what parts of that exact version humans have checked, and who. A record never moves to another version: reviews, concerns and Certified Referee judgments belong to the exact version they were made on.
Metadata from external services. The title, authors, abstract, subjects, license, dates, identifiers and links shown on a verification record are taken from the public interfaces of the external repository, as published there when the record was created or last refreshed. ProofForum may store and refresh this metadata, and may show that it could not be refreshed. It may be incomplete or out of date, and ProofForum does not guarantee its accuracy. The current state of the work is the one shown by the repository.
No endorsement. Linking a work from arXiv or Hexagon does not mean its authors submitted it to, or endorsed, ProofForum. Neither repository is affiliated with ProofForum. ProofForum was not reviewed or approved by, nor does it necessarily express or reflect the policies or opinions of, arXiv or Hexagon; their names are used only to say where a work and its data come from. Acceptance by an external repository is not treated as evidence of mathematical correctness on ProofForum.
Requesting a record. Requesting a verification record is not submitting a paper. When you request one you confirm: “I understand that I am requesting verification of this work and am not claiming authorship or ownership.” A request gives you no authorship, ownership, editorial or review privilege over the work. You must not present yourself as an author of a work you did not write, and you must not use requests to harass, spam or misrepresent anyone. Requests are limited per week. ProofForum may refuse, remove or reject requests, and suspend accounts that misuse them.
Editorial review. A new record is published only after an administrator or a Managing Editor of its subject has checked its scope, possible abuse and its subject classification. That check is not a judgment of mathematical correctness.
Authors of the work. The authors listed by the repository are shown as listed there. They are not ProofForum accounts unless they claim the work. A ProofForum user may ask to be recognized as one of the listed authors; an administrator or a Managing Editor in scope decides on the evidence provided. A connected ORCID iD equal to the one the repository lists for that author is strong evidence. A recognized author:
- may comment and answer concerns on the record;
- may authorize ProofForum to host the work, as described below;
- cannot verify their own work, decide on it, or count toward its Certified Referee status. This also applies to a user whose ORCID iD is listed on the work.
Copies of the manuscript. Rights in the work remain with its rightsholders. ProofForum stores and serves the PDF and source of an exact version only in two cases:
- the repository states, for that exact version, CC BY 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC0 1.0, and ProofForum gives the attribution that license requires; or
- a recognized author confirms that they hold, or are authorized by all the holders of, the rights needed for ProofForum to store and serve that exact version unchanged, with attribution. All the holders means every co-author who shares the rights and any publisher or other party to whom rights were transferred. The arXiv non-exclusive license grants rights to arXiv only and is not enough on its own.
The files are always fetched from the repository itself and never modified. Otherwise the record is link-only: it points to the version on the source repository, and ProofForum does not host the manuscript. A license stated for one version is never assumed to cover another version. Other licenses, including NonCommercial or NoDerivatives licenses and Creative Commons licenses older than 4.0, give link-only records.
Hosting authorization. By confirming a hosting authorization, the author grants ProofForum, for themselves and for the other rightsholders, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to store, preserve and serve that exact version, unchanged and with attribution, as part of its verification record. The license does not transfer copyright and gives the public no further rights. The author or any other rightsholder can ask ProofForum to stop serving the copy by writing to proofforum@hotmail.com. ProofForum then stops serving the files; the record links to the source repository again, and its statements, reviews and discussion stay visible.
Assessments and replies. Reviews, concerns and Certified Referee judgments on a record are not removed because an author or rightsholder disagrees with them. Authors reply by claiming the work and taking part in its discussion. Content is removed or restricted only under these Terms (for example abusive content), where the law or a competent authority requires it, or because of a rights problem with a hosted copy. When ProofForum stops serving a hosted copy, the reason is shown on the record and the requester and the recognized authors are notified.
5. AI-generated mathematics and provenance
ProofForum accepts mathematics produced or revised with AI systems. Submitters and reviewers must not knowingly falsify model identity, prompt/provenance information, AI-check results, authorship or review history. AI checks are provenance evidence only; they are not human certification and do not guarantee correctness.
6. Human review, Certified Referees and Managing Editors
Human reviews express the reviewer’s assessment of the specific version or mathematical structure reviewed. A person linked as an accepted Generated-by identity may discuss their own paper and answer comments, but may not submit a human-verification review or Lean/Palomar alignment review that contributes to verification of that paper. Certified Referees and Managing Editors may have authority limited to one or more mathematical subjects.
Within an assigned subject, a Managing Editor may inspect private editorial versions, run checks, add AI-check attestations, correct subject classification and take editorial decisions, except on a paper they own. A Managing Editor's own submission must be accepted/rejected by the site administrator or by another Managing Editor whose scope covers that exact version. The owning editor is excluded from the corresponding Managing-Editor queue email.
A later version may be uploaded by the paper owner, the administrator, or an in-scope Certified Referee/Managing Editor who is otherwise eligible to submit. This technical upload does not transfer ownership: submission receipts and editorial decision communications are sent to the paper owner. Only site administrators may manage user accounts, assign privileged roles/scopes, perform global security overrides or exercise other site-wide administrative powers.
7. Moderation and curation
ProofForum may classify, reclassify, accept, reject, withdraw, unpublish, restrict or remove access to content to enforce these Terms, protect users or systems, respond to rights claims or legal obligations, or maintain repository integrity. A moderation decision is not a personal judgment about the submitter and does not guarantee the mathematical correctness or novelty of accepted content.
8. Comments and acceptable use
Do not upload malware, exploit payloads, unlawful material, harassment, spam, deceptive identity information, confidential information you are not authorized to disclose, or content intended to interfere with the service. Mathematical disagreement and critical review are welcome when expressed in good faith and focused on the work.
9. Copyright complaints and third-party rights
If you believe content infringes your rights, contact proofforum@hotmail.com with enough information to identify the work, the complained-of material, your relationship to the rights, and a reliable way to contact you. ProofForum may restrict access while reviewing a credible claim.
Verification records. Authors and rightsholders can contact ProofForum at proofforum@hotmail.com about the attribution of a verification record or about the rights to a hosted copy. If a rights claim about a hosted copy is credible, ProofForum may stop serving that copy. The record then stays link-only and its verification history remains visible. Questions about the metadata itself are best raised with the source repository, whose record ProofForum reflects.
10. Free service and conflicts of interest
ProofForum is intended to remain free to read, submit and review. Payment must not purchase acceptance, favorable review, referee certification, ranking or visibility. Unavoidable infrastructure, compliance and personnel costs may exist, but financial support must remain separated from mathematical judgment.
11. No warranty
To the extent permitted by law, ProofForum is provided “as is” and “as available.” Publication, automated scanning, AI checks, comments, community consensus, referee signatures and editorial decisions do not warrant correctness, novelty, fitness for a purpose, availability, non-infringement or suitability for consequential use. Users must independently evaluate mathematical claims.
12. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, ProofForum and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses arising from use of the service or reliance on user-submitted content. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability or mandatory rights that cannot lawfully be excluded.
13. Suspension, termination and service changes
ProofForum may restrict or terminate accounts for serious or repeated violations, security reasons or legal requirements. The service, features and limits may change. Material changes to these Terms will be published with a new effective date and, where required by law, additional notice or renewed consent will be requested.
14. Applicable law
Mandatory consumer, data-protection and other statutory rights remain unaffected. Any governing law or forum that cannot validly be chosen without further information about the operator will be determined by applicable law; these Terms do not attempt to waive mandatory jurisdictional protections.
15. Contact
Questions about these Terms, submissions or rights issues: proofforum@hotmail.com.