Privacy policy

Last updated: 20 October 2026

Research Compass is built to collect as little as possible. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, we do not use third-party analytics, and we do not store the manuscripts, abstracts or search terms you enter.

1. Who is responsible

Moritz Schäfer
Schwalbacher Str. 46
60326 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
Email: info@research-compass.com

2. Visiting the website

When you open a page, your browser sends technical data such as your IP address, the time, the page requested, the referring page and your browser type. This is necessary to deliver the page and protect the service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Our web server is configured not to write access logs. To protect against abuse we keep a count of requests per IP address in the server's working memory for at most one hour.

The website is hosted by Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany, in data centres in the EU, under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR). Fonts and all other files are served from our own server; your browser does not contact Google or other third parties when you use this site.

Visitor statistics

To see how many people use the site and how they found it, we count events per day: page visits, searches, sign-ups and the source of a visit (the name of the referring website, such as "google", or a campaign tag in the link, such as ?ref=newsletter). To count distinct visitors per day without cookies, the server computes a one-way hash of your IP address, browser type and a random value that changes every day. This hash exists only in working memory and is discarded at the end of the day; only the daily totals are stored, together with a coarse device type per new visitor (operating system and browser family, such as "Windows · Chrome"). We also count per day, without any link to you: the research field an analysis was assigned to (such as "Communication", never the text itself), which features are used (such as opening the topic details or the shortlist), and, if you answer the optional question after rating the results, your role (such as "PhD student"). We cannot recognise you across days and do not build profiles (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our interest is understanding and improving the service).

3. Using the tools

When you search, the title, abstract, references, topic, variables or ORCID iD you enter are processed only in our server's working memory to compute the results and are discarded when the search ends. They are not written to a database, a file, a cache or a log, they are not used to train any model, and nobody reads them. The language model that compares your text with published articles runs on our own server; no text is sent to an AI provider.

To find matching literature, our server sends search requests to OpenAlex (operated by OurResearch, a non-profit organisation in the USA): for the journal finder these contain your title, key terms from your abstract and the beginning of your abstract (up to about 1,450 characters); for research gaps, the names of your variables. If you add a reference list, only the DOIs found in it are sent to OpenAlex, to look up in which journals the cited works appeared. For datasets, your topic is sent to DataCite (DataCite e.V., Hannover, Germany). These requests come from our server, so the services do not receive your name, email address, IP address or any cookie. Please do not enter personal data of other people in the search fields. If you enter your ORCID iD, or store it in your account, we load your public publication profile from OpenAlex to tailor the results and to show where you have published and which journals cite your work.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (providing the service you request); for the transfer of an ORCID iD to OpenAlex in the USA, Art. 49(1)(b) GDPR.

Submission check, shortlist and report

For the submission check your browser sends your title and abstract to our server once more. It is compared there, in working memory only, with recent articles of the chosen journal from our own index and then discarded. Nothing from your text is sent to OpenAlex for this; we only ask OpenAlex for the titles of the journal's articles we show you. For free accounts we count how many checks were used today, not what was checked. Your shortlist, the comparison and the report exist only in your browser tab: they are not sent to us and are gone when you close or reload the page.

Researchers shown under "Who works on this"

Below the journal list we show researchers who published the articles closest to the user's text: their name, institution and country, the titles of those articles and links to their ORCID and OpenAlex profiles. These data come from the public scholarly database OpenAlex and are fetched at the moment of the search; we do not store them, do not build profiles and never show email addresses. The purpose is to help users find relevant work and people in their field, and it makes published work more visible (legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). If you are listed and do not want to be, write to us at info@research-compass.com (or use "Feedback" on the website): we add your OpenAlex or ORCID identifier to an exclusion list and you are no longer shown. We keep this identifier only for as long as needed to respect your objection.

To save requests, our server keeps copies of general answers from OpenAlex (public data about journals and articles) for up to 30 days. Answers to searches made from your input are never kept.

4. Free searches without an account

Without an account you can run 3 free searches per day. To count them, we set a cookie rc_anon containing a random number when you start a search, and we store a salted one-way hash of your IP address together with the number of searches in the current day. The cookie expires after 40 days; the counters are deleted after two months. This is strictly necessary to provide the free quota you are using (§ 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

5. Your account

If you create an account, we store your email address, your password, the time you confirmed your address, your plan, whether you joined the Premium waitlist, whether you agreed to receive news (and when), and how many searches you used per day, your ORCID iD if you add it, and whether you have seen the short tips on the results page (so they are not shown again), when you last used your account (only the date matters, see below) and, if you came through a marked link, the name of that channel (such as "google" or "newsletter"). Only the operator sees these counters per account, to understand how the service is used; never what you searched. We never store your password itself, only a salted one-way hash (scrypt) from which it cannot be recovered. To activate the account we email you a confirmation link (valid for 24 hours) and, once you have confirmed, one short welcome email with tips on using the site; if you forget your password, we email you a link to choose a new one (valid for 60 minutes). Accounts that are never confirmed are deleted after 7 days. When you sign in, we set a cookie rc_session that keeps you signed in for 30 days. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. Account emails (confirmation, password reset) are sent through our email provider, ALL-INKL.COM - Neue Medien Münnich, Hauptstraße 68, 02742 Friedersdorf, Germany, which processes your email address on our behalf under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR).

To protect accounts against password guessing, we count failed sign-in attempts per email address and per IP address for 15 minutes; both are stored only as salted one-way hashes and deleted after one day (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

You can delete your account at any time under "Account" on the website. This removes your email address, password hash, sessions, counters, waitlist entry and any feedback you sent with this address immediately. Backups of the database are overwritten within 14 days. If you do not use your account for two years, we email you and delete it 30 days later unless you sign in again.

Protection against bots

When you create an account or reset a password (and after several failed sign-in attempts), your browser solves a small computing puzzle that our own server provides. This makes automated mass sign-ups expensive. It runs entirely between your browser and our server: no third-party service is involved, no cookie is set and no personal data is stored; a solved puzzle is remembered in working memory for at most 10 minutes so that it cannot be reused (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

News about new features

Only if you tick the box when creating your account, and confirm it by clicking the link we send to that address, we may email you about new features and Premium (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). You can withdraw this consent at any time under "Account" or by writing to us; we then stop immediately.

Feedback

If you rate results or send us feedback, we store the date, the tool, your rating, your text and, only if you enter it, an email address for our reply, plus whether you were signed in. We do not store your search with it. Feedback texts (and the optional email address) require the protection against bots described above. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (improving the service) and, for the optional email address, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. We delete feedback after one year.

6. How long we keep data

7. Your rights

You have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict its processing, to data portability, and to object to processing based on Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. You can withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future. Write to info@research-compass.com. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is: Der Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit, Wilhelmstraße 7, 65185 Wiesbaden, Germany.

We do not use automated decision-making that has legal or similarly significant effects on you.