Purpose

This Data Privacy Policy lets you know how we collect, use, disclose, and protect the use of Personal Information and other information that you entrust to us.

When we refer to ‘Personal Information’ we mean information about an identifiable natural person. In other words, information about someone we can identify, directly or indirectly, using an identifier like a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier, or someone we can identify using one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of that natural person.

Our Services are not meant to capture any Sensitive Personal Information, or the information of children.

What Personal Information Do We Collect?

When you use our software or opt-in to receive marketing or sales communications from us, we collect the following personal information about you, and/or your organization:

Account Information, such as your name, email address, employment information, and business contact information. This information is required to create an account and use the ScholarlySync service. We may also use this information to notify you of any software releases or other information related to your use of our Services, such as revisions to this Privacy Statement or our Terms of Service.
Payment Information, such as your name and contact information, purchase history, method of payment and other similar information required for auditing and tax compliance. This information is required so that we may process and receive payment.
Usage Data. We track your usage data, including your IP address, performance and use metrics on your use of our Services, such as project size, project complexity, system response times and other similar information. This information helps us continually improve our software and your user experience. For example, if we see through usage data that users are struggling with a certain function, we will be able to improve the service or provide better training for our users.
Information During Troubleshooting or Correspondence. This includes any information we need to assist you through our subprocessor, calendar scheduling software, and submission forms. This also includes any other Personal Information you submit to us in a form, email, phone call or live chat. You may provide this information to us, so we can assist in resolving any technical issues you have with the service, or connect you with an account executive to give you more information about ScholarlySync. By providing this information to us, you have consented to our processing and use of it.
Audit Trail Data. This information includes what pages you visit on our site, what links you click on, and what changes you make to your studies (including reports generated). We require this information to maintain the audit trail and provide software functionality.
Marketing Data. This includes your name, email address, phone number, summaries of any conversations we have had with you, your usage data, any information you have requested from us. This information is required to provide you with anything you have requested from us, such as blog posts or white papers that you have requested. We may also send you promotional messages if you have opted-in to receive them.
Uploaded File Data. When you upload CSV, PDF, or other file data for our software to analyze, we inherently save that data to complete the task.

Licensed Articles and/or Publications

Articles or publications that are licensed, patented, copyrighted, and/or trademarked may be uploaded to the ScholarlySync platform because we do not sell, share, or otherwise distribute the data to third parties except for with approved LLM models. Approved LLM models may be used to analyze the content of the articles in order to help make decisions about the articles. However, these models are not used and are not permitted to be used to re-write and/or re-create a new version of the article for the user. Each external LLM model’s terms and privacy policy are annually reviewed to ensure that approved models do not use the data to train their models and that they do not sell, share, or otherwise distribute the data.

Use of Website, Cookies, and Tracking Technology

When you visit our website (https://www.scholarlysync.ai), we collect Personal Information from you through various cookies.

A cookie is a small text file that the website sends to your browser, which then stores the cookie on your hard drive to save you time, provide you with a more meaningful visit, and measure website activity. We use a pop-up window on our site to ask that you opt-in to our use of cookies in this way.

You can set up your browser to disable cookies at any time, but doing so may limit the functionality of our Website. For instructions on how to disable cookies, please visit the links below:

Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Microsoft Edge
Google Chrome

We use cookies for the following purposes:

For functionality. These cookies and other technologies are essential in order to use the Services to provide the feature you have requested, such as remembering if you have logged in or your language or search parameters. We use these cookies to make your use of the Services more tailored.
For performance and analytics. These cookies collect information on how you interact with our Services and help us improve how the Services operate. For example, we use Google Analytics cookies to help us understand how you browse our website. We use this information to identify areas for improvement such as navigation, user experience, and marketing campaigns.
Targeting Cookies or Advertising Cookies. These cookies collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests.
Social media cookies. We use these cookies to track key metrics such as conversions when you engage with our content on the social media platform and later visit our site. This information may be also used for advertising activities.

Do Not Track

As there is not yet a common understanding of how to interpret Do Not Track (“DNT”) signals, ScholarlySync does not currently respond to browser DNT signals.

Sale of Information

ScholarlySync does not sell any personal information we collect.

Third Party Service Providers

From time to time we need to disclose your Personal Information to another company to provide you with our Services (“Third-Party Service Providers”). For example, Zendesk may process some Personal Information if you require any assistance in using our Services. Third-Party Service Providers may be used for the following functions: sending communications, processing payments, assessing compliance risks (such as our lawyers, accountants and auditors), analyzing data, providing marketing and sales assistance (including advertising and event management), conducting customer relationship management, and providing training. These Third-Party Service Providers have access to the minimum Personal Information needed to perform their functions, and may not use it for any other purposes. We ensure that international data transfers are compliant with applicable law.

Large Language Models (LLMs)

To analyze data effectively, ScholarlySync may employ approved external LLM models such OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini. Whenever possible, we do not share personally identifiable data with the models. That said, models may be employed to analyze and/or categorize uploaded data for users. We evaluate whether each model is approved for use by ScholarlySync based on whether the model has a written policy stating that it will not use data shared for training its own models, and whether it has a written policy stating that it will not sell, share, or otherwise distribute the shared data. Below is a list of approved models and their associated policies on using shared data:

OpenAI’s GPT: OpenAI states that it does not retain the data and/or use the data to train models when using the API (our methodology of use). Please see their policy here.
Mistral AI: We have disallowed or “opted-out” Mistral to retain or use data we feed it for their training data. See their terms here.
Google Vertex AI: Google states that it “will not use Customer Data to train or fine-tune any AI/ML models without Customer's prior permission or instruction". We have denied permission. See details here.

Sales and Marketing

We like to send you information about our products and services that we think might interest you. We may send you this information if we have a business relationship with you, you have offered your contact information to us (i.e. business card), your contact information is publically available, or as permitted under applicable anti-spam legislation. Otherwise, we will always ask for your consent to receive sales and marketing information before sending you any communications.

You can always opt-out of our sales and marketing communications. If you wish to opt-out of receiving sales and marketing communications, please contact help@scholarlysync.ai or select the unsubscribe link in an email you receive.

We will provide you with our response to that request in a timely fashion, and can make appropriate modifications to our information, up to and including deletion.

How Do We Store and Retain Data?

Data is stored into a PostgreSQL database hosted in an isolated virtual private cloud and in an encrypted AWS S3 bucket. Data is both encrypted in transit and at-rest. All database data and file data are encrypted.

We retain information throughout the relationship between you and ScholarlySync and as necessary for us to comply with our legal obligations. Once we no longer need the information for the purpose for which it was collected, we securely dispose of the Personal Information unless otherwise required by law or requested by you in writing under your rights (See: What Rights Do You Have?). You can delete personally identifiable data as well as uploaded data at any time.

What Rights Do You Have?

You have the right to withdraw your consent for us to collect or process your Personal Information. We will endeavor to comply with the request and adjust our practices regarding your Personal Information within a reasonable time. If you do not want us to continue contacting you, we will add your contact information to a ‘do not send’ list to comply with your no-contact request. If you request to be placed on a ‘do not send’ list, your name and limited contact information will be kept on that list.

Depending on your jurisdictions, you may have certain rights, such as:

Right to be Informed: You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your Personal Information.
Right to Access: You have the right to view and request copies of your Personal Information.
Right to Rectification: You have the right to request inaccurate or outdated Personal Information be updated or corrected.
Right to be Forgotten: You have the right to request that your Personal Information be deleted, subject to our legal obligations and restrictions.
Right to Data Portability: You have the right to ask for your Personal Information to be transferred to a Controller.
Right to Restrict Processing: You have the right to request the restriction or suppression of your Personal Information.
Right to Withdraw Consent: You have the right to withdraw previously given consent to process your Personal Information.
Right to Object: You have the right to object to the processing of your Personal Information.
Right to Object to Automated Processing: You have the right to object to decisions being made using your Personal Information solely based on automated decision making or profiling.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at help@scholarlysync.ai.

Your activities in the software are tracked only to ensure that the audit logging features of our software are complete. This is required for ScholarlySync to maintain 21 CFR Part 11 regulatory compliance (Code of Federal Regulations), as our customers use that information to support regulatory submissions based on the output from our systems. The specific Personal Information tracked through software use is minimal and project-related only. We are unable to adjust the audit trail in any project, and therefore cannot honor deletion requests related to software use.

Protecting Personal Information

ScholarlySync protects personal information using technical, physical, and administrative methods.

We ensure that all interactions between your computer and our servers for use of our software are encrypted, and we use a number of advanced security features built into our software and associated with our hosting infrastructure to ensure that your personal information remains protected at all times. The technical security features include:

Firewall
Multi-factor authentication
Data encryption in transit and at rest
Secure password protection
Checksums/hash totals

The security provisions of Amazon Web Services (AWS) are described in security and compliance whitepapers published by AWS; they can be found by visiting https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/#security.

You acknowledge that no security system is impenetrable. By sharing personal information with us, the Personal Information may be at risk should an external party breach our systems. We will comply with our legal obligations to notify you where we are required to do so.

Changes To Our Privacy Statement

We keep our Privacy Statement and privacy practices under regular review and will change this Privacy Statement from time to time. If we make any significant changes, we will notify you of the changes by posting them on our website or sending you an email, and we will change the last updated date at the bottom of this Privacy Statement.

Contact Information

If you have questions or concerns regarding data protection and privacy at ScholarlySync, we encourage you to contact our Privacy Officer, Legal Contracts Manager, or General Counsel at:

PD4 Solutions, LLC
788 West Marietta St NW, Unit 1003, Atlanta, GA 30318
E: help@scholarlysync.ai

Appropriate Authority

Should you wish to report a complaint, or if you feel that ScholarlySync has not addressed your concerns in a satisfactory manner, you can contact the appropriate governmental authority in your jurisdiction. This would be a data protection authority, information commissioner’s office, or other supervisory authority.

Privacy Policy