Effective August 15, 2026
These terms protect authors and Leone Connect Publishing by defining what happens when an account is created, a manuscript is uploaded or a protected submission workflow is used.
Purpose and eligibility
These terms govern verified author accounts, manuscript uploads and related protected workflows provided by Leone Connect Publishing. They apply in addition to the Website Terms and Privacy Policy.
You must provide accurate and current account information, protect your password and promptly report suspected unauthorized access. You may use an account only for yourself or for a person or organization that has expressly authorized you to act.
The Author Portal is not directed to children. If you are under 18, lack legal capacity to agree to these terms, or need to act through a guardian or other representative, do not create an account or upload material until Leone Connect confirms an authorized route.
Relationship to other documents
The Website Terms govern the public website, these terms govern protected author intake, and the Privacy Policy governs personal information and manuscript records. If Leone Connect and an authorized rights holder later execute a publishing agreement, that agreement governs the accepted project and prevails over these terms where it expressly conflicts with them.
No portal term establishes royalties, fees, advances, production obligations, distribution commitments, publication dates or rights reversion. Any such provision must appear in a separate executed agreement.
In practice: Submitting starts an editorial review process, not a publishing contract or paid service.
Your submission warranties
Leone Connect may request reasonable evidence of authorship, authority, attribution or permission before proceeding. The submitter remains responsible for the accuracy of these warranties unless a later executed agreement expressly reallocates a particular responsibility.
- You own the work or have clear authority from the relevant rights holder to submit it.
- Your account details, authorship information, declarations and material facts are accurate and not misleading.
- You have identified and, where necessary, obtained permission for third-party text, images, illustrations, quotations, data or other protected material.
- To the best of your knowledge, the submission does not unlawfully infringe copyright, privacy, confidentiality or other rights; contain unlawful defamatory material; breach an existing agreement; or misuse another person’s personal information.
- You will promptly tell Leone Connect if ownership, permission, authorship or another material rights issue changes or becomes disputed.
Copyright and limited intake permission
You retain copyright in your manuscript and submission materials. Uploading does not transfer ownership or grant Leone Connect a right to publish, sell, adapt, translate or distribute the work.
You grant Leone Connect a limited, non-exclusive permission to securely receive, store, copy, scan, validate, review and internally process the submitted material only as reasonably necessary for security screening, editorial evaluation, communication, recordkeeping, agreement preparation and, after an express stage approval, agreed pre-contract production assessment.
This limited permission ends when it is no longer needed for those purposes, subject to the Privacy Policy, the approved retention schedule, security records and any legal, contractual or dispute-related hold. Any publication licence, copyright transfer or broader use must be established in a separate publishing agreement executed by authorized parties.
In practice: The author keeps copyright; Leone Connect receives only the narrow permission needed to evaluate and securely administer the submission.
Confidential handling and access
Unpublished manuscripts are treated as private submission material. Access is limited to authorized Leone Connect personnel and service providers who need the material for an approved editorial, security, technical, professional-advisory or contractual purpose.
Leone Connect will not knowingly publish or disclose an unpublished manuscript to the public without authorization. Disclosure may nevertheless be required by law, legal process or a competent authority, or reasonably necessary to investigate fraud, security incidents, rights disputes or threats to safety.
No internet or storage system can guarantee absolute security or secrecy. Do not include unnecessary sensitive personal information, passwords, financial credentials or third-party confidential records, and keep your own complete backup of every submitted file and important message.
Responsible technology and artificial intelligence
Leone Connect will not use an unpublished manuscript or submission material to train a public, shared or third-party generative artificial-intelligence model unless the rights holder first gives separate, informed and specific consent. We will not sell or license submission material for unrelated data mining, model development or advertising.
Security scanning, checksum verification, file-format validation, private search or indexing within protected operational systems, and assistive tools controlled by authorized personnel may be used only where reasonably necessary for the permitted intake purposes and subject to appropriate safeguards.
Before any project-specific AI-assisted editorial or production use materially affects a manuscript, Leone Connect will disclose the proposed use and obtain agreement through the relevant editorial or contractual process. Declining an optional AI-assisted use does not, by itself, transfer rights or authorize a substitute use.
In practice: No public or third-party AI model training without a separate informed opt-in.
Security screening and quarantine
Every new or revised manuscript file remains quarantined until its required security screening is completed. Where host-level scanning is unavailable, an authorized operator may download an audited quarantine copy to a secured workstation, verify the recorded SHA-256 checksum and scan the file with updated Microsoft Defender without opening the document.
The screening result and matching checksum are recorded before a file is released for editorial review. The file is not knowingly submitted to a public or third-party scanning service. A file reported as infected, unsafe or uncertain may be rejected and deleted immediately.
You must not upload malicious code, attempt to bypass file restrictions or integrity checks, interfere with another account, probe protected storage, or use the portal for unlawful, deceptive or abusive activity.
Editorial discretion and no offer
Leone Connect may accept, decline, defer or request revision of a submission in its editorial discretion and is not required to publish, contract for or provide a detailed explanation concerning any submission.
Portal labels—including “Accepted in principle,” review stages, production stages and protected-test results—are informational workflow records. They are not a publishing offer, publishing contract, guarantee of publication, guarantee of payment or promise that a book or other product will be released.
Communications, approvals and records
Author-visible confirmations, the accepted policy version, messages, file events and stage approvals form part of the manuscript’s operational history. Internal editorial notes remain restricted to authorized Leone Connect personnel.
A checkbox, portal message or stage approval can record a specific consent or editorial decision. It does not create a publishing agreement, publication licence or payment obligation unless a separately executed agreement expressly says that the relevant action has that effect.
Notices may be delivered through the portal or the current account email address. You are responsible for keeping that address current and should retain copies of your work and important correspondence; the portal is not intended to be your only archive.
Changes and renewed acknowledgement
We may revise these terms when the submission workflow, security controls, services or applicable requirements change. The current version and effective or revision date will be displayed on the policy page.
Where reasonably practicable, a material change will be communicated through the portal or the account email address. We may require renewed acknowledgement before a user creates a new submission, uploads another file or continues a materially changed workflow.
A revised term applies from its stated date and does not retroactively transfer publication rights or alter an executed publishing agreement. If you do not accept a required revision, you may stop using the portal and request withdrawal or account closure, subject to the existing retention rules.
Withdrawal, account closure and retention
Before a publishing agreement is executed, you may request withdrawal through the Leone Connect contact form. The request becomes effective when Leone Connect records the manuscript as withdrawn and confirms the update through the secure portal or email.
After a publishing agreement is executed, withdrawal, termination and rights reversion are governed by that agreement. Withdrawal or account closure does not require immediate deletion of every record; the Privacy Policy, approved retention schedule and any legal, contractual, security or dispute-related hold continue to apply.
Leone Connect may restrict or suspend an account when reasonably necessary to protect a manuscript, user, service or legal interest, or when these terms are materially breached. Provisions that must reasonably continue—including copyright ownership, confidentiality, records, responsibility, governing law and dispute provisions—survive withdrawal or account closure.
Availability and responsibility
We may maintain, change, suspend or withdraw the portal for security, technical, editorial or operational reasons. We do not guarantee uninterrupted access, compatibility with every file format or device, or recovery of a file that the author has not separately backed up.
To the extent permitted by law, Leone Connect is not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising solely from portal interruption or reliance on a workflow label. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, or any mandatory statutory right.
Governing law and questions
These Author Portal & Submission Terms are governed by the laws of Sierra Leone, subject to any mandatory law that applies. The courts of Sierra Leone have non-exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising from these terms.
A separate publishing agreement may contain its own governing-law, forum and dispute provisions. Submit account, submission or terms questions through the Author Portal & submissions route in the professional Contact form, or write to Leone Connect Publishing, Bottom Mangro Drive, Black Johnson, Sierra Leone.