Fellowship terms

1. The short version

Fellowship is open to anyone who holds an honorary doctorate from a recognised University, anywhere in the world.

You apply, we confirm the award with the University that gave it, and we admit you.

Fellowship is free while the Society is being established. If we ever introduce a fee, we will tell you well before it starts and you will decide whether to pay it. Nothing will be taken from you automatically.

Once admitted you may use the post-nominal FSHD, you appear in the member directory, and you can contact other Fellows through the platform.

We ask you to take part in good faith, to use your real name, and to deal with other members as you would in a room with them.

You can leave whenever you like.

This document is the full version. If anything in it seems unfair, tell us, because we would rather change it than argue about it.

2. Who we are

The Society of Honorary Doctors is a new initiative, developed and operated by Space Network Ltd, a company registered in Scotland with company number SC656651, whose registered office is Clyde Offices, 48 West George Street, Suite 2/3, Glasgow G2 1BP.

In these terms, "the Society", "we" and "us" mean Space Network Ltd, operating as the Society of Honorary Doctors, and "you" means a Fellow or an applicant for Fellowship.

Contact us at info@societyofhonorarydoctors.org.

3. What Fellowship is

The Society brings together the people who hold honorary doctorates and the Universities that awarded them, in one place. Fellowship gives you access to that network and to the platform that carries it. Who you approach, and who you take up, is yours to decide.

Fellowship is personal to you. It is not a qualification, it is not an academic award, and it confers no academic standing of its own. It is membership of a society.

Fellowship is not transferable and cannot be held by an organisation.

4. Who can be a Fellow

You can apply if you hold an honorary doctorate, in any form and under any title, awarded by a University or other higher education institution that is officially recognised in the country where it is established.

Recognised means that the country's education ministry, or the authority it designates, has granted or confirmed the institution's power to award degrees or has accredited it as a higher education institution. Where a country relies on accrediting bodies approved by the state, as the United States does, the institution must be accredited by one of those bodies.

Registration as a company or charity does not meet this test. Nor do quality certification, or accreditation by a body without that standing.

Where it is unclear whether an institution is recognised, we decide, and we tell you how we reached the decision. How we check an institution is set out on our website.

How we check an institution

University staff take part in the Society in their own right, through the chapter at their institution, under separate terms. They are not Fellows and they do not use FSHD.

5. Applying

You complete the application form on the platform. Every field is required apart from those marked optional.

You are telling us that the information you give is accurate and that the award is yours. We ask you to keep it up to date once you are admitted.

An account is created for you when you apply, so that you can sign in and see where your application stands. Until you are admitted, that is all the account shows you.

6. Confirming your award

We contact the University that awarded your honorary doctorate and ask it to confirm the award. We tell them your name, the award and the year. We do not send them anything else from your application.

Verification is what gives a connection between Fellows its weight. A Fellow who contacts another Fellow knows who they are speaking to.

Where the University's answer does not settle the question, we look at its published list of honorary graduates and at other public records. There are ordinary reasons an award is hard to confirm: records are often not held centrally, names change, departments move and institutions merge. Where it stays unsettled we tell you exactly where it stands, and what would help us get further.

7. Our decision

We decide every application ourselves, and a person reads each one. We will tell you the outcome by email.

We may decline an application. Where we do, we will say why in terms you can act on.

If your application is declined and you think we have it wrong, reply to that email and ask us to look again. We will.

An application we cannot settle stays open for 90 days. After that we send one final email and close it. You are welcome to apply again at any time with anything new that would help.

The privacy notice explains what happens to the information in an application that does not lead to Fellowship.

8. What Fellowship gives you

As a Fellow you may:

• use the post-nominal FSHD
• appear in the member directory and be found by other members
• view the profile of every other admitted member
• send and accept connection requests, which exchange contact details
• take part in the Common Room
• submit articles to The Honorand, the Society's e-zine, which is published openly on the website
• take part in the chapter at your awarding University, where one is established
• attend Society events, on the terms published for each one

The Society is being built in stages. Chapters, challenges and events come into their own as chapters are established at individual Universities. We will tell you what is available and when.

9. Using FSHD and the Founding Fellow badge

You may use FSHD after your name for as long as you are a Fellow. You may say that you are a Fellow of the Society of Honorary Doctors. We would be glad if you added it to your LinkedIn profile, because the Society is new and awareness helps it.

If your Fellowship ends, please stop using FSHD.

Fellows holding one of the first fifty places may also use the Founding Fellow badge, under the Founding Fellow terms.

You may not use the Society's name, logo or tagline to endorse a product, a service or an organisation, or in a way that suggests the Society has a view it has not expressed. If you want to use them for something, ask, and the answer will usually be yes.

10. What we ask of you

This is a society of people who were each recognised for a contribution. Fellowship asks for a light commitment, made in good faith:

• use your real name, and keep your profile accurate
• reply to people who reach out, even if the answer is no
• offer what you said you would offer
• deal with other members as you would in a room with them
• keep confidential anything a member or a University shares in confidence, particularly within a chapter

The community guidelines set out how this works in the Common Room, and what happens if something goes wrong.

11. Your profile and what other people see

Your name, headline, country, expertise, biography and photograph are visible to every admitted member. That is what makes the directory work.

Your email address and mobile number stay hidden until you accept a connection request, or somebody accepts yours. Only that person then sees them.

Nothing about you appears on the public website unless you switch that on. You can switch it off again at any time, and the copy of your photograph held for the public site is deleted with it.

Society administration can see the records needed to run the Society. Society administration does not make connections with members and does not collect members' contact details through that route.

12. Connections

You may send up to 20 connection requests a day. The limit exists so that the network is used for approaches people welcome.

Accepting a request exchanges contact details both ways. Use them for the purpose the Society exists for. Do not use them for unsolicited selling, recruitment advertising, political campaigning or bulk mailing, and do not add another member to a mailing list without asking.

A member who receives an approach they did not want can flag it. Repeated complaints will end a Fellowship.

13. The Common Room

The Common Room is one room for the whole Society. You post under your real name. The community guidelines describe what works there and what does not.

You keep ownership of what you post. By posting you give the Society permission to display it to other members, to include it in the weekly digest, and to keep it as part of the record of the conversation. That permission lasts for as long as the post is on the platform.

You can remove your own post. Removing a post removes the replies to it, which is worth knowing before you do it.

If you close your account, your posts stay in the room under "A former Fellow". If you would rather they went with you, tell us before you close the account and we will remove them.

14. The Honorand

Fellows and University staff may submit articles. The Honorand contributor terms cover credit, editing, licence and withdrawal. You keep the copyright in what you write.

15. Chapters

A chapter is the working relationship between the Society and a University. If a chapter exists at the University that awarded your doctorate, you belong to it. If you hold awards from more than one University, you belong to each of those chapters.

Where a chapter raises a challenge, what is said inside it is for that chapter. Some challenges are shared with the wider network with the institution's name removed. Do not name the institution behind an anonymised challenge, on or off the platform.

A chapter has no authority over your Fellowship. The Society admits Fellows and the Society ends Fellowships.

16. Fees

What you pay depends on how you join. No Fellowship fee has been set and none is published yet, so nothing is owed by you today. We will publish the fee, and the reduced rate, before any Fellow is asked to pay.

16.1 If your University has covered your first year

Where the University that awarded your doctorate takes part in the Society, its participation covers the first year of Fellowship for its honorary doctors. There is nothing for you to pay in that year and no payment details to give us.

• the covered year runs for twelve months from the day you are admitted
• we will tell you before it ends, and what continuing will cost
• after it, Fellowship is yours to continue in your own name, on the terms and at the fee in force then
• if you have already paid for a year of your own when your University joins, we do not refund it and we do not stack it. Your covered year is added to the end of the year you paid for
• if your University stops taking part, a covered year already running still runs to its end

16.2 If we introduce a fee

• we will tell you at least 60 days before it applies to you
• we will tell you what it is, what it covers and what it pays for. Any Fellowship fee we quote includes VAT, so the price you are shown is the price you pay
• you will choose whether to pay it. We will not take money from you automatically and we hold no payment details until you give them
• if you choose not to pay, your Fellowship ends on the date the fee would have started, and you can download your information before then

Fellows holding one of the first fifty places are free for life. The Founding Fellow terms say so in their own right, and this section does not change that.

16.3 If you join directly

Once the fifty founding places are taken, an honorary doctor who joins directly, at a point when their awarding University does not take part in the Society, is charged the Fellowship fee from the point their application is approved. We will tell you what the fee is before you apply, and nothing is taken from you automatically.

16.4 The reduced rate

A reduced rate is available to Fellows aged 70 or over, and to Fellows living in a country on the World Bank list of low and lower-middle income economies. One reduced rate applies. A Fellow who qualifies on both grounds pays the reduced rate once, not twice over.

We check the World Bank list once a year. If your country moves off it, the reduced rate holds until your next renewal after the change.

17. Flags and moderation

Any member can flag a post, a reply or a person. A flag about anyone holding an office or a staff appointment in a chapter goes to the Society alone. Nobody sees or decides a flag about themselves.

Where something needs action we may remove a post, ask a member to change something, suspend an account while we look into it, or end a Fellowship. We will tell you what has been flagged and give you a chance to answer, unless the matter is serious enough that we have to act first.

18. Leaving

You can ask to close your account at any time, from your account settings. The account closes seven days after you ask. Until then everything stays as it is, and you can cancel the request yourself. Somebody from the Society may be in touch during those seven days, in case there is something we can put right.

When the account closes:

• your profile is removed from the directory and from the public website at once
• your connections end
• your Founding Fellow number, if you held one, is retired and never given to anyone else
• you stop using FSHD
• your posts and replies in the Common Room stay, with your name replaced by "A former Fellow", so that conversations other members relied on are still readable. Nothing in them links back to you. They can still be flagged, and the Society can remove any of them

You can download your information before you close the account, and we will help if the download does not give you what you need.

You are welcome to come back. A new application is treated on its merits, and we will not make you prove the award twice. A Founding Fellow place does not return with you. You would rejoin as a Fellow, on the terms in force at the time.

19. When we may end a Fellowship

We may suspend or end a Fellowship if:

• the award turns out not to be held, or the application was materially inaccurate
• a member acts in a way that damages the Society or another member, including harassment, discrimination, dishonesty or misuse of contact details
• a member persistently ignores the community guidelines after being asked to stop
• a member uses the Society's name or their Fellowship to mislead
• the law requires it

We will tell you why, in writing. You can ask us to look again, and a different person will consider it where we have anyone else to ask. We will answer within 14 days.

Ending a Fellowship does not by itself entitle you to a refund, and while Fellowship is free the question does not arise. Once a fee applies, we will refund the unused part of any period you have paid for, unless the Fellowship ended because of serious misconduct.

20. The platform

We aim to keep the platform available and working. We do not promise it will be available without interruption, and we will change it as the Society grows. Where a change removes something you rely on, we will give notice.

The Society is new. If something does not work, tell us and we will fix it.

21. Our responsibility to you

The Society provides the place where honorary doctors find one another and decide for themselves whether to connect. It does not make introductions, and it takes no part in what two members agree between themselves. We confirm the honorary doctorate and nothing beyond it: we do not check what anyone says about their expertise or their employer, and we are not party to anything you agree with another member.

Nothing here limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything the law does not allow us to limit.

Subject to that, we are not responsible for loss of profit, business, contracts, goodwill or anticipated savings, for loss or corruption of data, or for any loss that was not a foreseeable consequence of our breaking these terms.

If you are a consumer, you keep every right the law gives you and nothing here takes those away.

22. Changes to these terms

We will update these terms as the Society develops. The version and date are at the top.

If a change affects you materially, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you do not want to accept it, close your account before that date and nothing further is owed either way.

23. Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and the courts of Scotland have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere in the United Kingdom, you may bring proceedings in the courts where you live.

Fellowship is open worldwide. Wherever you live, this is the law under which the Society is run, and your own consumer rights at home are unaffected.

24. Talking to us

Write to info@societyofhonorarydoctors.org. The Society is small and you will get a person.