Privacy Policy

Effective Date

This Privacy Policy is effective September 20, 2026. It explains how Reference Checker collects, uses, shares, stores, and protects information when you use the website and reference-checking workspace.

Information We Collect

• Account information, including your name, email address, authentication method, profile details, and account identifiers.
• Research content you submit, including pasted references, bibliographies, imported identifiers, uploaded source files, corrections, and reference-check results.
• Purchase and credit information, including package, provider, order status, transaction identifiers, credit balance, and credit activity. Payment card or wallet credentials are handled by the selected payment provider and are not stored by Reference Checker.
• Technical and usage information, including IP address, user agent, device and browser information, language, referral and attribution data, feature events, error logs, and abuse-prevention signals.

How Submitted Research Content Is Processed

Supported documents are parsed in your browser where indicated. When you confirm a check, the extracted references are sent to our servers for verification. Bibliographic fields and search queries may be sent to scholarly data services to locate and compare publication records. Original uploaded files are stored in private object storage after confirmation; scholarly data services receive the search information needed for verification, not the original uploaded file.

How We Use Information

• Provide reference extraction, multi-source verification, evidence reports, corrections, exports, sharing, and conversation history.
• Authenticate users, maintain credit balances, process purchases, prevent duplicate benefits, and reconcile payment events.
• Operate, secure, troubleshoot, measure, and improve the service, including detecting fraud, abuse, automated traffic, and technical failures.
• Respond to support, privacy, billing, and legal requests and communicate important service or policy changes.

Service Providers and Scholarly Data Sources

We use service providers for authentication, hosting, private object storage, analytics, email, error monitoring, and payment processing. Reference searches may use sources such as Crossref, DataCite, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, PubMed, Europe PMC, OpenCitations, Unpaywall, arXiv, OpenReview, DBLP, and ACL Anthology. Availability can vary, and providers process requests under their own terms and privacy policies.

Retention and Deletion

Account records, check history, credit records, payment records, security logs, and submitted content are retained for as long as needed to provide the service and for security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, legal, accounting, and operational purposes.

Deleting a conversation or account removes it from the active product experience. Original uploaded source files, security records, payment records, and backups may be retained after that deletion where needed for the purposes above. Retained files are not made public through the product. You may contact us through the Contact page with a data access or deletion request; requests are handled subject to applicable law and legitimate retention requirements.

Data Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards designed to protect information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. No internet or storage system is completely secure, so absolute security cannot be guaranteed.

Your Choices

• You can update profile and security settings from your account.
• You can delete conversations and request account deletion from the product.
• You can manage optional cookies and marketing technologies through available browser or consent controls.
• You can contact us to ask about access, correction, deletion, or other privacy rights available in your jurisdiction.

International Processing and Policy Changes

Our providers and scholarly data sources may process information in countries other than your own. We may update this policy as the service or legal requirements change. Material changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date.