Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

ScholarXIV ("we", "us") provides an AI-assisted research platform, including paper search, research chat, and a health assistant. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what control you have. It applies to scholarxiv.com and our desktop application.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

• Account details — name and email address, provided directly or through a sign-in provider such as Google.
• Content you create — chat messages, prompts, saved papers, bookmarks, collections, and notes.
• Files you upload — documents and images you attach to a conversation or store in your library, including any PDFs you choose to upload.
• Health information — only what you voluntarily enter. See section 5.
• Billing details — handled by our payment processor. We never see or store your full card number.

Information collected automatically

• Usage data — pages visited, features used, and approximate request volume.
• Device and connection data — IP address, browser type, and approximate country derived from your IP.
• Session data — cookies required to keep you signed in.

3. How we use your information

• To provide the service — running searches, generating answers, and storing your work.
• To personalize results, including using your health profile to tailor health answers.
• To operate accounts, subscriptions and billing.
• To maintain security, prevent abuse, and enforce our Terms.
• To diagnose problems and improve the product.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use the contents of your conversations to advertise to you.

4. AI providers and how your content is processed

This is the most important thing to understand about an AI product. When you send a message, the contents of that conversation — including any text extracted from files you attached and, on the health assistant, your health profile — are transmitted to third-party AI model providers so that a response can be generated. Those providers process the content on our behalf and return a result.

Which provider receives your content depends on the model you select. Each provider has its own retention and processing terms. If you would prefer that particular content never leaves our systems, do not enter it into a conversation.

5. Health information

The health assistant is optional. If you use it, we process the health information you choose to provide — for example symptoms you describe, medications and conditions in your health profile, and any lab reports or medical documents you upload.

• Health profile data is used to personalize the answers you receive, and is included in the prompt sent to the AI provider handling your request (see section 4).
• Health conversations are stored separately from your research chats.
• Uploaded medical documents are stored in a private bucket and are only retrievable through an authenticated request tied to your account.
• You can edit or clear your health profile at any time in Settings, delete individual conversations and files, or delete your account entirely.

We are not a healthcare provider, and ScholarXIV is not a covered entity under HIPAA. Information you enter here is not protected health information held by a clinician, and the service does not provide medical care. It is a research tool that offers information — not diagnosis or treatment.

6. Where your data is stored

Purpose	Processor
Application database (account, chats, profile)	MongoDB Atlas
Uploaded files and documents	Cloudflare R2 (EU region)
Hosting and delivery	Vercel
AI model inference	Model providers reached through our AI gateway
Payments and subscriptions	Our payment processor

Data is encrypted in transit, and our database and file storage encrypt data at rest. Uploaded files are stored in a private bucket and served only through short-lived, access-checked links.

7. Retention

We keep your content for as long as your account is active. When you request deletion, your account is deactivated immediately and your data is queued for permanent removal following a short review period, after which chats, files, health information and profile data are permanently deleted. We may retain limited records where we are legally required to, such as billing history.

8. Your rights

• Access — see the data associated with your account.
• Correction — edit your profile and health information at any time.
• Deletion — delete individual chats and files, or your entire account from Settings → Account.
• Objection and restriction — stop using a feature, or contact us to limit specific processing.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA/CPRA, or state health-privacy laws. Contact us to exercise them.

9. Cookies

We use cookies that are necessary to keep you signed in and to maintain your session, and limited analytics to understand aggregate usage. We do not use advertising cookies.

10. Children

ScholarXIV is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will remove it.

11. Security incidents

If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and any relevant regulator as required by applicable law.

12. Changes

We may update this policy as the product evolves. Material changes will be signalled by updating the date at the top of this page, and where appropriate we will notify you in the app.

13. Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints: hello@scholarxiv.com.