Privacy Policy: WPScholar

WPScholar is built with a “Privacy-First” architecture. Our technical goal is to facilitate the display of public research data while storing the absolute minimum amount of metadata on our servers.

1. Minimal Metadata Collection

To provide our service and manage your license, we collect only the technical identifiers necessary for the system to function:

  • Domain Name: We store your site’s domain to register your installation and validate license requests.
  • Site ID (GUID): Upon activation, our service generates a unique identifier for your site to handle future sync requests securely.
  • No Personal Data: We do not store your email address, your site title, or any other personal identifiers on our SaaS backend.

2. Publication Data Sovereignty

We do not build a “shadow database” of your research on our servers.

  • The Only Storage: Your publication data (titles, links, citations, etc.) is stored only on your local WordPress server.
  • Scholar IDs: Our backend stores only the Google Scholar IDs necessary to facilitate the connection between the third-party scraping service and your site.
  • Relay Service: Our SaaS infrastructure acts as a technical relay; once the public data is delivered to your WordPress plugin, it is not retained on our servers.

3. Third-Party Data Processors

We delegate sensitive data management to industry-standard specialists:

  • Freemius (Account & Payment): All user-entered account details (including names, emails, and billing information) and payment processing are managed exclusively by Freemius. We do not have access to your financial data.
  • Scraping Services: We use third-party APIs to fetch public data from Google Scholar. These providers only receive the Scholar ID required to fulfill your specific sync request.

4. User Autonomy and Rights

Because the data resides on your own server, you maintain full control:

  • Local Editing: You have the absolute right to manually edit, hide, or delete any data retrieved from Google Scholar within your own WordPress dashboard.
  • Account Deletion: If you choose to discontinue the service, deleting the plugin removes the local data. You may also contact us to request the removal of your domain and site ID from our registry.

5. Legal Jurisdiction

WPScholar is developed and managed in Israel. We adhere to strict data protection standards and apply these privacy principles to all users globally.

Last Updated: April 2026