Non-negotiables
What we will not do, at any price.
Four promises, made public so you can hold us accountable. Each one specifies what is prohibited rather than what is desired, and identifies the mechanism that ensures compliance — because a promise that cannot be verified is merely ornamental.
The four promises
Detailed explanations of each.
Human-Led Certification
Every strategic decision is reviewed and signed by a PhD expert — never solely by an automated system.
What this prohibits
- No diagnostic conclusion is delivered to you without a doctorate holder having reviewed the foundational work and endorsed the judgement.
- No readiness score, grade, or verdict is generated by a model and presented as ours.
- No engagement is conducted by someone whose credentials we have not verified against public records.
How it is enforced: Every report includes the name of the specialist who signed it. If you receive a report without a signature, it is a flaw, and we will inform you before you need to inquire.
Ethical AI Disclosure
We disclose every tool used in your diagnostic. No hidden automation.
What this prohibits
- No tool is employed on your work without being identified in your report.
- No model drafts any text that is issued under your name — not a paragraph, not an abstract, not a cover letter.
- No hidden automation: if a step involved machine assistance, the report specifies which step and which tool was used.
How it is enforced: Every report details the AI tools applied to that work and their specific functions, and the specialist who signs it is accountable for that list. A tool used but not named constitutes a broken promise, and the engagement is refunded.
Data Sovereignty
Your intellectual property remains yours. We never use your work to train a model.
What this prohibits
- Nothing you submit is used to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any model, whether ours or a third party’s.
- Nothing you submit is stored in any location accessible from the public web.
- Nothing you submit is retained beyond the retention schedule outlined below, and every deletion is documented.
How it is enforced: Uploads are stored privately, outside any web-accessible location, and a scheduled task deletes them according to the timelines published below, with an audit entry for each file that persists beyond the record it was part of.
No Ghostwriting, Ever
We nurture your voice. We never substitute your ideas with ours — and we will decline work that requests us to.
Ghostwriting involves providing intellectual content that is published under someone else’s name without disclosure. It differs from editing, and this distinction is already recognised by journals and universities. We edit the language, structure, and clarity of text you wrote, document the changes in the report, and advise you on acknowledgements. We do not write the argument, the abstract, or the response to reviewers. When COPE guidance conflicts with a client request, the guidance prevails, and we communicate this at the time.
What this prohibits
- We do not create the intellectual content that is published under your name, at any price.
- We do not sell authorship, arrange citations, or sell journal placements.
- We do not take on requests to “just fix it” that would shift our role from advising to authoring.
How it is enforced: If a request crosses this boundary, it is declined in writing with an explanation. This refusal is considered part of the service, not a failure.
Authorship
Where advising ends.
The boundary between advising and authoring is the only one on this site without exceptions, premium tiers, or special cases.
You are the author. We are readers with a method, similar to a supervisor, a writing centre, or a critical friend, and a category for which many journals have a disclosure field. Everything we produce is directed to you and describes your work; nothing we produce is issued under your name.
This is why you can declare us. A service that cannot be named in a disclosure is defined by the need to remain hidden, which distinguishes it from what it is often confused with.
What we will do
- Review the entire submission against the criteria that will determine its outcome and inform you of our findings.
- Prioritise findings based on their impact on the decision and indicate which ones we would leave unchanged.
- Identify where a reviewer might object and assist you in planning a response that you write yourself.
- Edit language, structure, and clarity in the text you have written, and document in the report exactly what was altered so you can declare it.
- Collaborate with you to plan your response to reviewers. You write and sign the letter.
- Inform you when the honest answer is that the work is not ready or that we are not the right fit for it.
What we will not do
- Provide intellectual content that is published under your name, such as the argument, abstract, literature review, grant narrative, or response to reviewers.
- Add, remove, or suggest citations to influence a metric.
- Contact an editor, reviewer, or panel member on your behalf.
- Guarantee acceptance or imply that any relationship with us affects a decision.
- Accept work where the requester is not the person who will be named as the author.
- Edit a thesis or coursework beyond what your institution permits in writing.
This aligns with the Committee on Publication Ethics’ stance on third-party support: assistance is acceptable when it is declarable and does not replace the author’s own work. When COPE guidance conflicts with a client request, the guidance prevails, and we communicate this at the time.
Data retention
How long we keep your files.
Two clocks, because one was insufficient. Both are enforced by a scheduled job rather than relying on memory, and every deletion records an audit entry.
30 days after delivery
The main clock. It begins when your work is delivered, not when you pay, so a project that overruns keeps its files accessible for as long as it is active.
90 days if nothing was ever bought
In cases where no purchase is made, the backstop applies. A brief that hasn’t been paid for has no delivery date to start a clock from, so it receives its own timeline; otherwise, those files would remain indefinitely, belonging to those least likely to expect us to retain them.
Deletion involves removing the file and creating an audit entry that records what was deleted and when. This entry persists beyond the original submission, ensuring that “we deleted it” can be verified even after the record is gone. The privacy policy addresses the rest, including how to request earlier erasure.
Quick answers
Questions people actually ask
How should I report this to my journal or institution?
Clearly state the situation: you engaged an academic consultancy for diagnostic and advisory support, the manuscript was solely authored by you, and mention the service if space allows. Many journals provide a disclosure section for this purpose. Our commitments are detailed on this page so you can reference them directly instead of paraphrasing.
What if a specialist disagrees with my supervisor?
Such disagreements occur, and we acknowledge them without taking sides. We provide our reasoning in writing, which you can present during discussions. Your supervisor understands your field and committee, while we know the submission criteria. If there’s a conflict, the choice is yours, and we will communicate this clearly without asserting ourselves as the higher authority.
Who can access my uploads?
The specialist assigned to your case and Dr Xu-Priour, who runs the desk, can view them. Other clients cannot. AI services mentioned in your report may process text from your work, with your name and contact details removed, and none are permitted to train a model on it. Files are stored privately, outside any web root, and deleted according to the schedule, with each deletion logged.
What if a commitment is breached?
Tell us, and we will provide a written explanation instead of a support macro. If a commitment is broken, the engagement is refunded without negotiation or the need for you to argue. These commitments are published for accountability; a commitment that cannot be enforced is merely decorative.
Hold us accountable
If we breach a commitment, notify us.
Write to contact@xp-consulting.org, and you will receive a written explanation of what occurred, not a support macro. If a commitment on this page is violated, the engagement is refunded without requiring you to argue.