Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 2026
This policy explains what ScholarBook ("ScholarBook", "we", "us") collects when a university or research institution ("Institution") and its authorized staff and faculty use our service, why we collect it, and what rights you have over it.
ScholarBook is a business-to-business service. An Institution is our customer and the data controller for its own faculty and roster information; ScholarBook acts as a data processor on the Institution's behalf for that data. If you are faculty or staff at an Institution using ScholarBook and have a question about your own data, please start with your Institution's research or IQAC office, who can also reach us directly.
1. What we collect
| Category | What it includes | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Account & login | Username, email address, hashed password, role (e.g. institution admin, department admin, faculty) | Created by your Institution's admin, or by you when you sign up |
| Roster & designation | Faculty/staff name, department, designation (e.g. Professor, PhD Scholar), course affiliation | Entered by your Institution's own admin staff |
| Research submissions | Publication title, journal, year, authors, DOI, licence, open-access status, and (optionally) links to the paper and journal | Submitted by faculty through their own portal, or on their behalf by a department admin |
| Verification data | Confirmation (or contradiction) of a submission against public bibliographic records | Fetched from open registries — ORCID, CrossRef, PubMed, ROR — using only the DOI/ORCID/identifier already in the submission |
| Inquiries | Name, email, institution name, and message, if you contact us via the "Get started" form | Submitted by you |
| Technical logs | IP address, browser type, pages visited, session and CSRF cookies necessary to keep you signed in and your submissions secure | Generated automatically by our servers |
We do not collect personal contact details (personal email/phone) for individual faculty beyond what's listed above, and we never scrape institution websites or any source outside the open registries named on this page.
2. How we use it
- To let your Institution's admins and faculty sign in and use their own portal
- To let faculty submit their own research and let your research office review and approve it
- To check a submission against ORCID/CrossRef/PubMed/ROR before it counts as verified institutional output
- To generate reports, public research profiles, and award evaluations your Institution requests
- To respond to inquiries submitted through our "Get started" form
- To keep the service secure and diagnose problems (technical logs)
We do not use your data to train AI models, and we do not sell personal data to third parties.
3. Who can see your data
Every Institution's data is isolated from every other Institution's, enforced at the database and application layer, not just the interface. Within one Institution, access is scoped by role: a department admin sees their own department; an individual faculty login sees only what their designation grants them.
We share data with the following categories of third parties, and no others:
- Open bibliographic registries (ORCID, CrossRef, PubMed, ROR) — we send only the identifier (a DOI, an ORCID iD) needed to look up a public record; we do not send your roster or account data to them.
- Our hosting provider, who stores the servers this service runs on, under contractual confidentiality obligations.
- Law enforcement or regulators, only if legally required to.
4. Where data is stored
Data is stored on servers located in India. If your Institution requires data to stay in a specific jurisdiction, contact us before signing up.
5. How long we keep it
We retain an Institution's data for as long as the Institution has an active account with us. If an Institution's subscription ends, we retain the data for a reasonable transition period (to allow export or renewal) and then delete it, unless the Institution asks us to delete it sooner or the law requires us to keep it longer. Verification-check history and evidence trails are kept alongside the record they support, for the same period, since they exist to justify that record.
6. Your rights
Depending on where you and your Institution are located, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or request deletion of your personal data. Because ScholarBook processes faculty and roster data on behalf of the Institution (the data controller), the fastest way to exercise these rights is usually through your Institution's own admin, who can correct or remove a roster entry directly in the portal. You can also write to us directly at the address below and we will coordinate with your Institution.
7. Security
- All traffic to ScholarBook is encrypted (HTTPS/TLS)
- Passwords are stored hashed, never in plain text
- Access to each Institution's data is restricted by role and enforced server-side, not just hidden in the interface
- Every accepted publication carries an evidence trail, so both we and your Institution can audit how a record was verified
No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a data breach affecting your Institution's data, we will notify the Institution without undue delay.
8. Cookies
We use only the cookies necessary to keep you signed in (session cookie) and to protect submitted forms from forgery (CSRF cookie). We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
9. Children's privacy
ScholarBook is intended for use by university staff, faculty, and research scholars, not by children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
10. Changes to this policy
If we make a material change to this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify Institutions directly.
11. Contact us
For any privacy question or request, write to info@researchedgeandpublication.com.