Privacy Policy

The controller of your personal information is Sciense Corp, 447 Broadway, New York City, NY 10013, United States. Contact: hello@sciense.org.

Information you give us.

• Account and profile information: name, email address, handle, affiliations, location, academic degrees, professional details, biography, photo and links.
• Content you create or share: projects, files, manuscripts, reviews, comments, messages, highlights, authorship decisions and other contributions.
• Your interactions with AI features, including the questions you ask, the passages you select and the answers generated.
• Communications with us, and responses to surveys, studies or forms.

Information collected automatically.

• Technical and usage information: pages viewed, actions taken, dates and times, device and browser type, approximate location derived from IP address, and referring pages.
• IP addresses. Where we use them only for security or rate limiting, we may store them in hashed form.
• Cookies and similar technologies needed to sign you in and keep the Service secure. Our analytics is privacy-focused and does not use advertising cookies.

Information from others.

• Sign-in providers you choose (for example Google or GitHub): name, email address and profile picture.
• Collaborators who invite you or add you to a project.
• Public sources, such as institutional pages and public research profiles, used to suggest affiliations or create invitations.

We do not ask for sensitive information (such as health, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or sexual orientation) through the general Service. If you include such information in content you share, you do so voluntarily. Research studies that require sensitive information collect it only under their own explicit consent.

• To provide the Service: create and manage accounts, host projects and content, enable collaboration, run AI features and send service messages.
• To communicate with you: notifications, invitations, reminders, responses to requests and, where permitted, updates about Sciense.
• To keep the Service safe: authenticate users, prevent abuse and fraud, enforce limits and our Terms, and troubleshoot.
• To improve and develop the Service: understand how features are used, evaluate AI outputs and build new features.
• To conduct research, as described in section 4.
• To comply with law and protect our rights and those of others.

Sciense exists to study and advance how science is done. We may use any information provided through or generated by the Service for scientific research, including research on research collaboration and peer review, scientific communication and argumentation, human and artificial intelligence, and the design and effects of AI tools in science. This includes, for example, analysing AI chat conversations, contributions and usage patterns. We protect you when we do so:

• Minimisation and pseudonymisation: we use the least identifying form of information that serves the research question, and pseudonymise or de-identify data where possible, for example by replacing names with codes or hashing IP addresses.
• No identifying publication without permission: we publish research results in aggregate or de-identified form, and never publish information that identifies you without your consent, except content you have already made public under your name (such as a published manuscript or a public profile).
• Access controls: research data is accessible only to authorised researchers bound by confidentiality.
• Ethics review: where research requires ethics or institutional review, we obtain it before the research begins.
• Research partners: we may share pseudonymised or de-identified data with academic and research collaborators under written agreements that restrict use to the research, require appropriate security and prohibit re-identification.
• Sensitive data and studies: research involving sensitive information, or interventions with participants, is conducted only with study-specific information and consent.

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on:

• Contract (Article 6(1)(b)): to provide the Service you signed up for.
• Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): to secure, improve and develop the Service, and to conduct scientific research. We have weighed these interests against your rights, and they are protected by the safeguards in section 4. Under Article 5(1)(b), further processing for scientific research purposes with appropriate safeguards (Article 89(1)) is not considered incompatible with the purposes for which the data were first collected.
• Consent (Article 6(1)(a), and Article 9(2)(a) for special categories): where required, for example for optional communications or study participation. You may withdraw consent at any time; this does not affect processing that took place before withdrawal.
• Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)): where we must keep or disclose information by law.

Where research is carried out under Article 89 with appropriate safeguards, some of your rights (such as erasure or objection) may be limited to the extent that exercising them would render impossible or seriously impair the research, as permitted by Article 89(2) and applicable national law.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We share information with:

• Other users, as you choose: your public profile, contributions to public projects and content shared with collaborators.
• Service providers who process data on our behalf under contract: hosting and databases (Railway); email delivery (Resend); file storage and content delivery (Cloudflare and S3-compatible storage); AI model providers (currently DeepSeek), which receive the content of AI conversations to generate answers; privacy-focused analytics (Plausible); and the sign-in providers you choose (Google, GitHub).
• Research collaborators, as described in section 4.
• Authorities or others when required by law, or to protect rights, safety and the integrity of the Service.
• A successor in the event of a merger, acquisition or reorganisation, subject to this policy.

We and our providers operate in the United States and other countries, which may include countries outside the EU, EEA and UK that do not offer an equivalent level of protection. Where we transfer personal data from the EU, EEA or UK, we rely on an adequacy decision, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified, or the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (with the UK Addendum), together with supplementary measures where needed. You can request a copy of the relevant safeguards from hello@sciense.org.

• Account and profile information: while your account is active, and for a reasonable period afterwards to resolve disputes and comply with law.
• Content you contribute: while it remains part of a project or the scientific record. Contributions to collaborative work may be kept after you leave, attributed or de-identified as appropriate.
• Security and usage logs: for up to 24 months.
• Research data: for as long as needed for the research and to meet scientific integrity and reproducibility requirements, typically up to 10 years after publication. De-identified data may be kept indefinitely.

Everyone. You can view and update most profile information in your account settings, and contact us at hello@sciense.org with any request.

EU, EEA and UK residents have the right to access, rectify, erase and port their data, to restrict or object to processing (including processing based on legitimate interests), and to withdraw consent, subject to the research limitations in section 5. You may also lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

US residents. Depending on your state (including California under the CCPA/CPRA, and states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas and Oregon), you may have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, to access, correct and delete it, to obtain a portable copy, to opt out of sale, targeted advertising and profiling, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information. We do not sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. You may use an authorised agent, and you may appeal a decision by replying to our response.

We respond within the time required by law (generally one month under the GDPR and 45 days under US state laws), and may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

The Service is intended for people aged 18 and over, as set out in our Terms of Service, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided information to us, contact hello@sciense.org and we will delete it.

We use technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including encryption in transit, access controls, hashed credentials and tokens, and audit logs for access to sensitive content. No system is perfectly secure. We will notify you and the authorities of a personal data breach where the law requires it.

We may update this policy. We will post the new version with its date, and notify you of material changes by email or in the Service before they take effect. Where the law requires your consent to a change, we will ask for it.

Sciense Corp, 447 Broadway, New York City, NY 10013, United States. Email: hello@sciense.org.