At SciCo-Search, we are committed to safeguarding your privacy while providing a high-performance search environment for scientific research. This Privacy Policy details how we handle, process, and protect your information when you use our application.
1. Information Collected
We collect only the essential details provided via Google Sign-In to establish and secure your research workspace:
- Email Address: Serves as your unique identifier to load your workspace, restore search history, and apply query rate limits.
- Profile Name: Used to personalize your workspace interface and user dashboard.
- Avatar Image URL: Used to display your profile picture within the application sidebar.
2. Purpose of Processing
Your data is processed strictly for functional and security purposes:
- Workspace Authentication: Restricts search history access exclusively to you.
- Session Persistence: Ensures your literature lists, PI profiles, and custom API keys are saved and restored upon page reload.
- Fair-Use Rate Limiting: Allocates search credits equitably across all researchers.
3. Data Sharing & Collaborative Search
We do not sell, rent, trade, or distribute your personal information.
- Collaborative Indexing: To optimize query speeds and reduce API load, the system shares community search queries and indexes by default.
- Privacy Controls: You can opt-out of public visibility and toggle off search index sharing at any time via the Settings menu.
4. Operational Inactivity & Data Retention Policy
SciCo-Search is hosted as a community-supported tool.
- Application Sleep Mode: To conserve system resources, the application automatically enters a sleep state after 12 consecutive hours of inactivity.
- Automatic Session Cleanses: Once the app enters sleep mode, all active search histories, sessions, and temporary state files are permanently deleted.
- Precautionary Measures: To prevent data loss, we strongly recommend exporting your research findings as a CSV file before leaving the workspace. Lost sessions due to sleep mode are non-recoverable.
5. Contact Information
For inquiries regarding this policy or data management practices, please contact the developer at pallab9997@gmail.com.