Terms & Conditions


ACCESSSS is a service made available by McMaster University's Health Information Research Unit that incorporates the McMasterPLUSTM email alerting system and searchable database of best evidence from the health care literature.


Use of this website. Please read the following Website Terms and Conditions, which relate to information regarding general use of this website. By using this website, you are agreeing to these terms and conditions. From time to time we may change these terms and conditions, and will post revisions on our website. We recommend that you read these terms and conditions regularly.


Privacy. Use of the data that you provide us, or which is collected by us on this website, is governed by our Privacy Policy.


Access to ACCESSSS. We try to ensure that website availability is uninterrupted and that transmissions will be error-free. However, we cannot, due to the nature of the internet, guarantee that your access will not be suspended or restricted from time to time including to allow for repairs, maintenance, or the introduction of new facilities or services. We of course try to limit the frequency and duration of any suspension or restriction. At the moment access to ACCESSSS is free and such access is at our discretion and may be changed without notice.


Accounts and Passwords. As a registered user of ACCESSSS, you and only you will be allowed to use ACCESSSS by the details which are registered with us for as long as we allow access. Personal accounts therefore may not be shared.


Intellectual property rights. The content, layout, design, data, and graphics on this website are protected by Canadian and other international copyright laws. Other than downloading a small proportion of content, strictly for your personal, non-commercial use, or where this amounts to "fair dealing", no part of the website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without our prior written consent. Any authorised uses of content must include the customary bibliographic citation, including author attribution, date, article, article title, and (if applicable) the copyright notices.

The McMaster University trademarks and logos are strictly protected. Any use including framing, metatags, or other text using the McMaster University trademarks (or other trademarks displayed) is strictly prohibited without the owners’ express written consent.


Links. This website contains links including hyperlinks which may take you outside ACCESSSS. Links are provided for your convenience, and an inclusion of any link does not imply our endorsement or approval of the linked website, its operator, or its content. We are not responsible for any website other than this one.


Disclaimer.

The information contained on ACCESSSS is intended for health care professionals and is provided on an "as is" basis without warranty of any kind, express or implied.

ACCESSSS provides an educational service designed to alert you to important new research; however, we cannot warrant its accuracy. It is intended to support evidence-based decision making, by providing links to published research reports about the diagnosis, treatment, prediction and prognosis, etiology, and economics. However, "evidence does not make decisions"**. Readers making decisions about the care of their patients must take into account the limitations of evidence from research as well as the unique nature of their patients' circumstances and wishes. Readers should also be aware that professionals in the field may have different opinions. Because of this fact and also because of regular advances in health care research, we strongly recommend that readers independently verify any information they chose to rely on. Ultimately it is the reader's responsibility to make their own professional judgements.

ACCESSSS attempts to provide access to the best new research of relevance for a wide range of disciplines. It does not report all research but uses explicit criteria to define a subset of published research that is likely to be valid and ready for clinical attention. Practising raters then provide their assessments of the relevance and newsworthiness of the reports through an online review process, the McMaster Online Rating of Evidence (MORE). Individual users who receive these reviews must then apply their own judgement concerning the strength and applicability of this evidence to their own patients.

Description or reference to a product or publication does not imply endorsement of that product or publication.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, McMaster University is not responsible for any losses, injury or damage caused to any person or property (including under contract, by negligence, products liability or otherwise) whether they be direct or indirect, special, incidental or consequential, resulting from the application of the information on ACCESSSS.


**Haynes RB, Devereaux PJ, Guyatt GH. Physicians and patients' choices in evidence-based practice. Evidence does not make decisions, people do [Editorial]. BMJ 2002;324:1350.


Browsers. Please note: If you are using one of the popular "offline browsers" that allow you to download content from a site and read it later, please be aware that subject to ensuring that this amounts to only a small proportion of content, strictly for your personal non-commercial use, or where this amounts to "fair dealing" we impose one restriction on their use.


Your conduct. You must not use the website in any way that causes or is likely to cause the website or access to it to be interrupted, damaged, or impaired in any way. You understand that you are solely responsible for all electronic communications and contents sent from your computer to us. You must use the website for lawful purposes only. You must not use the website for any of the following:


Governing law. These terms and conditions shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of Canada, whose courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction.