Privacy Policy

At RetractionRisk Scanner ("we", "us", or "our"), we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy. This policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you use our browser extension (the "Extension") or our website, and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.

1. Data Collection

We do not collect personal data. RetractionRisk Scanner does not collect, store, or share any personal user data, browsing history, cookies, IP addresses, or any other personally identifiable information. We do not require you to create an account to use our service.

2. How the Extension Works

The browser extension operates on an "on-demand" basis. It does not monitor your browsing activity in the background.

• Activation: The Extension only activates when you explicitly click the extension icon in your browser toolbar.
• Data Extraction: Upon activation, the Extension extracts the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) from the academic paper page you are currently viewing.
• Data Transmission: This DOI is sent to our server (https://www.retractionrisk.com/api/search) solely for the purpose of querying our database for risk data associated with that specific paper.

3. Data Usage

The information collected (the DOI) is used strictly for the following purposes:

• To query external academic databases (including Crossref, Retraction Watch, PubPeer, Altmetric, etc.) to retrieve the article's status and associated post-publication reviews.
• To return the calculated "Risk Level" and statistical data back to your browser for display.

We do not track who queried a specific DOI. The query logs are stateless and are not linked to any user identity.

4. Third-Party Services

Our service relies on public data from third-party academic platforms. While we do not share your personal data with them (as we do not collect it), the Extension may fetch data related to the DOI from:

• Retraction Watch (for retraction status)
• PubPeer (for comments)
• Altmetric, OpenAlex, Crossref (for metadata)

5. Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this page. If we make material changes to how we treat our users' data, we will notify you through a notice on the Extension or Website home page.

6. Contact Information

To ask questions or comment about this privacy policy and our privacy practices, please contact us at: ezheng1@sheffield.ac.uk.