Terms of Service

By creating an account or using Axiom Symposium you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

Axiom Symposium is intended for enrolled middle and high school students, and for the judges and administrators invited by the conference office. Each student may register one project per conference and must be the primary author of the submitted research.

Keep your account details accurate and your password private; you are responsible for activity under your account. Only students may register themselves. Judge and administrator accounts are provisioned by the conference office, and no sign-up path grants judge or administrator access.

Because many participants are minors, a parent or guardian should review these terms with the student and is responsible for the student's participation, including any authorisation the conference requires before recording a presentation, completing an oral defense, or publishing work. A guardian may withdraw authorisation, which removes the project from judging and from any public display.

Submissions include project details, an abstract, a research paper and presentation slides, plus an optional supplementary file. Mentors and coauthors must be disclosed at registration. Once you submit finally, your submission is locked; only an administrator may reopen it, and only with a recorded reason.

All submitted work must be your own, with sources cited. The following are prohibited:

• plagiarism or copying another person's work or words without attribution
• falsified, fabricated or misrepresented data or results
• impersonating another person or letting another person present or defend for you
• submitting someone else's work as your own, or undisclosed authorship
• intentionally misleading judges or administrators

Serious violations may lead to disqualification, removal of an award, correction of a result, or revocation of a credential. These outcomes are decided by conference administrators after review; they are never automatic.

Do not upload unlawful, harassing, hateful, sexually explicit or privacy-violating material, malware, or content you do not have the right to share. Do not attempt to access other participants' projects, recordings, scores or accounts, to interfere with the service, or to circumvent attempt limits or access controls.

You keep ownership of your research and of all intellectual property in your paper, slides, data, figures, presentation and defense answers. Axiom Symposium does not claim ownership of student research.

You grant Axiom Symposium a limited, non-exclusive licence to do only what is reasonably necessary to operate the conference: host and store your materials; display them privately to the judges assigned to your project and to administrators; transcribe and process your presentation and defense; generate defense questions and evaluation reports; calculate and record results; and issue credentials. This licence does not permit public display, publication or promotional use. Any public showcase or publication requires the applicable consent from you and, where relevant, your parent or guardian, plus an administrator's decision to publish.

The presentation is recorded in your browser with your camera and microphone, within the duration and attempt limits set by the conference. The oral defense may be completed once per cycle and is recorded. Recordings are stored privately and used for judging, award decisions and integrity review. An administrator may reset an attempt or a defense only where a genuine technical failure occurred, and the reason is recorded.

Defense questions are generated by an AI system from your own submitted materials, and recordings are transcribed automatically. The system can make mistakes, ask imperfect or awkward questions, or produce transcription errors. AI-generated questions and transcripts are not academic judgments about your work. Receiving more or fewer follow-up questions is not a penalty. The AI does not score your work and does not determine awards.

Each eligible project is reviewed independently by multiple human judges using the published 100-point rubric. Judges declare conflicts of interest before reviewing. Submitted reviews are immutable; an administrator may reopen a review only with a recorded reason, and the original is preserved in revision history. Scores and feedback are shared with you only after an administrator releases your results, and judge identities are not disclosed. Judging is a matter of expert academic judgment and its outcomes are final as determined by the conference.

Awards depend on the conference's judging process and are decided by administrators. They are not automated and are not guaranteed to any participant. Administrators may correct an award or a result where an error or integrity issue is found.

Released results may come with a certificate and a Research Defense Report carrying a unique verification code. Anyone with the exact code can confirm limited credential details on the public verification page. Credentials may be corrected, reissued, made inactive or revoked — for administrative corrections, retracted results, or integrity violations. Altering a certificate or misrepresenting an award voids the credential.

Participation, awards and credentials do not promise or imply admission to any institution, scholarships, academic credit, publication, peer review, or endorsement or recognition by any university or professional organisation.

Where the conference charges a fee, payments are processed by Stripe and are subject to Stripe's terms. Fees and the amounts due are those shown at the time of registration. A separate refund and cancellation policy has not yet been published for this conference; until it is, email admin@axiomsymposium.org with any billing question.

We aim to keep the service available throughout the conference, but access may be interrupted by maintenance, provider outages or problems with your own device, camera, microphone or connection. Deadlines and attempt limits are administered by the conference office, which may make allowances for verified technical failures.

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that compromises the integrity of the conference, or that is used to attempt unauthorised access. You may stop using the service at any time and ask the conference office to close your account.

The Axiom Symposium name, site, rubric, report and certificate designs and software belong to Axiom Symposium and may not be copied or reused without permission. This does not affect your ownership of your own research.

The service is provided as-is. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, that transcriptions or AI-generated questions will be accurate, or that participation will produce any particular result or opportunity.

To the extent permitted by law, Axiom Symposium is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses, including lost opportunities, arising from your use of the service. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

We may change the service and update these terms. Updates appear on this page, and material changes affecting participants will be communicated to affected accounts. Continuing to use the service after an update means you accept it.

Questions about these terms go to the Axiom Symposium conference office at admin@axiomsymposium.org. See also our Privacy Policy and the Axiom Symposium home page.