Docs / Accounts

Accounts

Reading PubPhys needs no account. An account is for writing (problems, results, topics, comments, decisions) and for following what happens on the site. Writing needs an ORCID iD: every record you sign names it.

Ways in

• ORCID: you sign in with your ORCID iD and the first sign-in makes your account. For now only a physicist the admin invited by iD can; registration without an invitation is not open yet. Before the first sign-in you tick ORCID's consent and the terms of use on the sign-in page. The account has no password and, at first, no email address: ORCID gives PubPhys none. An invitation names one ORCID iD, not a link: only a sign-in as that iD uses it, and it expires after 14 days. The iD pinned for the admin account is refused for any other account, and an invitation does not override a suspension (below).
• Email: registration with an email address is not open yet. The form asks for the address only and always answers "Check your mail". The link mailed to the address works for 24 hours, and only the latest one works. It opens a page where you choose your password and accept the terms; the account is made only then, so nobody can set the password of an address they cannot read. An email account reads and uses the personal features (below); to write it links an ORCID iD.
• By the admin: the admin can make an account with an email address and a password.

A password account links its ORCID iD from the account page, with its password and ORCID's consent. For now linking needs an invitation for the iD. The sign-in address gets a notice with a "This was not me" link (below). An iD can belong to one live account only.

Registration has limits: at most 5 registration requests a day from one network address (each request at the email form that passes its checks counts, even one that never ends in an account, and so does each account made by ORCID without an invitation), and a daily limit for the whole site (now 50, counting accounts made and email registrations waiting for their link). Past either, registration pauses until the next day (UTC): the email form still answers "Check your mail" but sends nothing, and an ORCID sign-in that would make an account says "Registration is paused for today, please try again tomorrow". Invited accounts are never refused or counted. The email form also checks that it was filled in by a person, without a captcha: a form sent back in under 3 seconds or after more than 1 hour does nothing (the answer is the same), and one connection may send it at most 5 times an hour.

What each account may do

A new account, invited or not, writes through exactly the same screening and review as every other; there is no probation.

An iD that comes back

If the account of an ORCID iD was deleted, the iD can make an account again (by ORCID registration or an invitation). It is a new account: none of the old account's drafts, seals, tokens, follows or addresses come back. But authorship follows the iD in the signed records, so the new account is the author of the records the old one signed under that iD: it gets their notices as a party and has an author's rights on them, as the old account had. The one exception is a suspended account: its iD stays refused after deletion until the admin lifts the suspension (below).

Addresses

Every address in use on PubPhys belongs to one account only. An address is never shown to anyone else, and no form or mail tells anyone whether an address is in use: every request answers "Check your mail", and what happens next is told only to the address itself.

• Sign-in address (password accounts): you change it on the account page with your current password. The new address works once you open the link mailed to it; until then the old one stays.
• Contact address (ORCID accounts, optional): PubPhys mails it notices about your account (and email digests, if you turn them on); it is never used to sign in. To add, change or remove it you sign in to ORCID again first; that sign-in is good for ten minutes and for one try at a change, so a refused try (a mistyped address, say) needs a new one.

A confirmation link works once, for 24 hours, and only the latest link of a request works. Opening it shows a page with a button; nothing changes until you press it, so a mail scanner that opens links changes nothing. If the address is already used by another account, it gets a short neutral notice instead of a link.

Mail to an address is limited: at most one requested mail per ten minutes and three a day, per address and per account. Password resets are counted on their own, with the same limits, so a confirmation link mailed just before never holds back a reset (for example right after "This was not me"). Past that nothing is sent and the answer on screen is the same. Security notices are always sent; their changes are limited instead (five a day, below). PubPhys also has a daily and a monthly cap on all the mail it sends; a part of it is kept for security notices (password resets and "This was not me" notices), so those still go out when the cap is near; a password reset still has its own limits per address and per account above. When the day's mail is used up, other account mail may not arrive, and the answer on screen is the same. Email digests stop well before the cap, never use the part kept for security notices, and leave at least 20 mails of each day and month to other account mail, such as confirmation links (Limits). No mail at all goes to an address whose mail is paused, except the one link that lifts the pause (Notifications).

Password

A new password has at least 12 characters, at most 72 bytes, and is not the account's address. The rules apply whenever a password is set; a password set before them keeps working.

• Change: on the account page, the current password, then the new one twice. Every other session of the account ends, and the sign-in address gets a notice.
• Reset: a forgotten password is reset from the sign-in page by a link mailed to the sign-in address. The link works for 15 minutes. Every session of the account ends, and the address gets a notice.

Where a signed-in account confirms something with its password (changing an address or the password, deleting the account, linking an ORCID iD), wrong passwords are counted for the account, from any network address: after 10 wrong ones within 1 hour, these password checks are paused for 1 hour, even with the right password; the account page says until when. A password reset ends the account's pause, and so does a "This was not me" link that replaces the password; neither ends a limit of the connection (30 tries an hour on each of these forms: Limits). Signing in is not paused by this; it is limited per connection (Limits).

"This was not me"

When the sign-in or contact address changes, the old address gets a notice; when the password changes or is reset, or an ORCID iD is linked, the sign-in address gets one. Each notice has a "This was not me" link, valid for 7 days. Pressing its button ends every session of the account and, if the account has a password, replaces it, so you choose a new one with a reset link. Then:

• a changed address comes back;
• if another account took the old address meanwhile, or the address was changed again since, the link cannot bring it back: the admin is told and puts it right by hand;
• a linked iD that has signed nothing for the account is unlinked;
• if the linked iD already signed records, they cannot be unsigned: the account is suspended ("disputed iD link") and the admin decides whether to unlink the iD or reinstate the account (an admin's own account is not suspended; it is left to the admin);
• after a password change or reset, the sessions end and the password is replaced, as above.

Each link works once. An expired or used link changes nothing, and a password notice's link stops working once the password is changed or reset again.

While mail to an address is paused after a bounce or a spam report, no notice reaches it, so no "This was not me" link either, until the pause is lifted (Notifications).

At most five address or password changes, removals of a contact address, and links of an iD are allowed per account in 24 hours, all counted together.

Terms of use

When PubPhys publishes terms of use, each account accepts the current version once, on its account page, before it writes anything. Until then it can only read, use its account page, accept the terms, sign out, and delete itself or ask for deletion; sessions already open are held to this too. A new version asks again. The acceptance records the version, a hash of the terms as published and the time. See also the privacy notice.

Suspension

The admin can suspend an account, with a reason; the account is told by mail where it has an address. While suspended, every session ends and the account cannot sign in, link an iD, renew a seal or sign anything. Records it had prepared but not signed, and an ORCID sign-in in progress, are discarded. Its appointments as editor or referee are paused: it is not counted, offered or notified. No email digest goes to it, and digests not yet sent are dropped. Follows of it as a person stay but tell nobody anything, here or in a digest, until it is reinstated (Notifications). Its records stay as they are, and nothing on the site shows the suspension. When the admin reinstates the account, nothing that expired comes back, and its digests start again from then, without what happened during the suspension.

A suspension outlives deletion: if a suspended account is deleted, its ORCID iD cannot register, sign in or be linked, and its addresses cannot register or be added to an account, until the admin lifts it. An invitation does not override this.

Deletion

Signed records stay in the public log with the ORCID iD in them; that is the point of the log (What a record shows). Deleting an account:

• removes the profile, the addresses and the password, and ends every session; the addresses can then be used again;
• deletes bookmarks, follows, notifications, open reports, drafts (a sealed draft stays, empty, with its seal) and records prepared but not signed;
• turns your comments into "deleted" placeholders without their text;
• abandons problems and revisions not yet published (still being prepared, screened or held): they are never published, and their unpublished uploads and unused source files are deleted;
• purges the content of seals not yet revealed (the sealed record stays in the log) and abandons a revealed result still being screened or held; other results and contests you signed go on through review;
• stops serving the ORCID tokens of your records (copies already downloaded cannot be recalled).

• At once, by yourself: an account that has signed, staged, sealed or been appointed to nothing (no record with its iD or by the account, no seal, no record waiting to be signed, no appointment past or present, no submission past its upload, no result, contest or appeal) deletes itself from the account page, after its password or, for an ORCID account, a fresh ORCID sign-in. An email account that has only read, saved and followed can always do this.
• By the admin: any other account asks for deletion on the account page, and can withdraw the request until the admin acts. The admin carries it out once any appointment as editor or referee has been revoked. An admin account is deleted only after another admin removes its admin role.