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Terms of Use
Effective date: May 1, 2026
1. Who we are, and what these terms cover
The Valuation Engineer Journal (“VEJ”, “the journal”, “we”), ISSN 3143-5033, is published by Pacific Vista Net, a California corporation, of 242 Clifton Rd, Pacifica, CA 94044, USA. These terms govern your use of the journal’s website at journal.valuation-engineer.com and of everything published there: articles, digests of court decisions, reference entries, protocols, data, program code, translations, and the metadata that describes them. By using the site or the published material you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the site or the material.
Our Privacy Statement explains what personal data we collect and why. It forms part of these terms.
2. What the journal is, and is not
The journal publishes scholarship on the engineering of value: methods, comparative studies of valuation law and practice, and reports of court decisions and legislation. It is written for a professional and academic readership and is offered for information and study.
Nothing in the journal is a valuation, an appraisal, or professional advice. No article, figure, table, method, protocol or program constitutes an opinion of the value of any property, a legal opinion, tax advice, investment advice, or a recommendation to act. A reader who needs a valuation, a legal opinion or other professional advice must obtain it from a qualified professional who has examined the reader’s own facts.
Reports of court decisions and legislation are summaries. They are prepared from the sources each report names, which are sometimes the court’s own text and sometimes press or practitioner reports, and each report says which. A summary is not the judgment. Before relying on any decision or statute described in the journal, consult the official text. Where a report says that a matter is alleged, pending, under appeal or unverified, it means exactly that.
Editions other than English are translations. They are produced with machine assistance and editorial review. The English edition is the edition of record; where a translation and the English differ, the English governs.
Methods, data and code are offered as published. Data sets, statistical results, Prolog programs and other code are provided so that results can be examined and reproduced. They are not certified for any other purpose.
3. Accuracy, corrections and the right of reply
We take care to publish accurately and to state the source and standing of every reported decision. We do not warrant that anything published is complete, current or free of error, and a decision reported as current may since have been appealed, reversed or superseded.
If you believe that something the journal has published about you, your firm or your organization is inaccurate, write to the editor at wbcraytor@valuation-engineer.com, identifying the passage and stating what you say is wrong and why. We will consider the request promptly, correct what is shown to be wrong, and record the correction on the journal’s errata page. Where the journal has characterized a named person’s or organization’s published work, that person or organization may submit a reply of reasonable length, which the journal will publish alongside the piece.
4. License and copyright
Unless an item states otherwise, everything the journal publishes is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, redistribute, translate and build on it for any purpose, including commercially, provided you give appropriate credit, link to the license, and indicate any changes you made. Copyright in each article remains with its author; copyright in the compilation, the design and the journal’s name remains with Pacific Vista Net.
The license covers the journal’s own text, figures, data and code. It does not extend to material that belongs to others and is reproduced under quotation, citation or permission, such as excerpts from judgments, statutes, standards, images or third-party data, and it does not extend to the names, logos or trademarks of the journal, its publisher or any third party. Attribution under the license does not permit you to suggest that the journal or its authors endorse you or your use.
Program code is licensed separately. Program code published by the journal, including the Prolog programs and knowledge bases that accompany articles and their tests, is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or any later version, not under CC BY. Each program carries the notice and is accompanied by the license text. You may use, study, modify and redistribute it under that license, which also states, in its Sections 15 and 16, that it comes without warranty and without liability.
The journal assigns Digital Object Identifiers to published items and deposits copies for preservation. A citation of a published item should use its DOI.
5. Using the site
You may read, download and share what the journal publishes, subject to Section 4. You may register for an account to submit work, to review, or to receive notices, and you are responsible for what is done under your account and for keeping its password to yourself. When you register you must give accurate information and keep it accurate.
You may not use the site to submit material that is unlawful, infringing, defamatory or knowingly false; attempt to gain access to accounts, data or parts of the site that are not yours; interfere with the site’s operation or security; or misrepresent yourself, your affiliation, or your relationship to the journal. Automated access for indexing, text and data mining, and preservation is welcome at a rate that does not degrade the service; automated access that does degrade it, or that circumvents access controls, is not.
6. Submissions
Authors who submit work agree to the journal’s author guidelines, warrant that the work is their own and does not infringe the rights of others, that it contains nothing unlawful or defamatory, and that any material belonging to others is reproduced with permission or under a lawful exception, and agree to publication under the license in Section 4. The journal may decline, edit for style, correct, annotate, or, in accordance with its policies, retract a published item.
7. No warranty
The site and everything published on it are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of accuracy, completeness, currency, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement, and without any warranty that the site will be uninterrupted, secure or free of errors. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
8. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither Pacific Vista Net nor the journal’s editors, authors, reviewers or contributors will be liable to you or to anyone else for any loss or damage arising from the use of the site or of anything published on it, or from reliance on it, including indirect, incidental, consequential, special or punitive damages, loss of profit, loss of business, or loss of data, however arising and even if advised of the possibility. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the greater of the amount you paid the journal for the material in question, which for open-access material is nothing, and one hundred United States dollars. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, or any liability that cannot be excluded by law.
9. Indemnity
If you submit material to the journal, you agree to indemnify Pacific Vista Net and the journal’s editors against any claim, loss or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from a breach of the warranties in Section 6 with respect to that material.
10. Links to other sites
The journal links to courts, legislatures, regulators, publishers and other sources. Those sites are not ours; we do not control them and are not responsible for their content or their availability. A link is a citation, not an endorsement.
11. Governing law and disputes
These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from the use of the site or the published material, are governed by the laws of the State of California and the federal laws of the United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. The state and federal courts sitting in San Mateo County, California, have exclusive jurisdiction, and you consent to their jurisdiction and venue. If you use the site from elsewhere, you are responsible for compliance with the law where you are.
12. Changes to these terms
We may revise these terms. The current version is always at this address, with its effective date at the top. Changes apply from the effective date shown; they do not change the license under which anything already published was released.
13. General
If any part of these terms is held unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our not enforcing a term on one occasion does not waive it. These terms and the Privacy Statement are the whole agreement between you and Pacific Vista Net about the use of the site and the published material.
14. Contact
Pacific Vista Net, 242 Clifton Rd, Pacifica, CA 94044, USA. Editor: wbcraytor@valuation-engineer.com.
