Jurisdictional restrictions

Last updated 2026-05-19. Plain English.

OpenXiv is hosted on EU infrastructure and operates under EU law (GDPR for personal data, CC-BY-4.0 default licensing for content, academic freedom for editorial scope). We do not pre-filter submissions based on political or social topic; see the submission policy for what we do filter on (methodology and academic scope).

When we may restrict

If a national authority issues a binding legal demand requiring us to restrict access to a specific item for viewers in that jurisdiction, we may implement a geographic restriction for that item in that jurisdiction only.

We do not restrict content at the request of private parties, governments outside the affected jurisdiction, or in anticipation of demands that have not been made. We do not delete content; we restrict access.

How a restriction works

The restriction applies only to viewers identified as connecting from the affected jurisdiction. The item remains fully accessible from every other location.
We do not detect or block circumvention (VPNs, anonymisers, mirrors). That is the affected jurisdiction's enforcement problem, not ours.
The author is notified by email with the specific legal demand cited.
The restriction is logged on the public transparency report with the item id, the jurisdiction, the date, and a citation of the legal demand.
The restriction is reversible. If the underlying legal situation changes, we lift the restriction and record the reversal on the transparency report.

What stays untouched

The author retains all rights to the work and may publish it on any other platform.
The DOI continues to resolve. Citation, indexing, and metadata harvesting are unaffected.
The full content remains in our archive and may be accessed by anyone outside the restricted jurisdiction or through standard academic interlibrary channels.
We never silently rewrite, redact, or modify the work. Restrictions are about access, not content.

Standards we benchmark against

The reactive-geo-restriction-with-transparency model is the standard practice of academic publishers, journalistic outlets (BBC, NYT, Reuters), and global knowledge platforms (Wikimedia). We adopt it because it satisfies legal obligations without compromising academic integrity, and because it keeps the moderation question separate from the editorial question.