Scholar — Privacy Policy

Effective 23 September 2026. Unify Dynamics LLC ("we", "us"), Menlo Park, California.

What Scholar is. Scholar is a connector (an MCP server and REST API) that AI assistants and personal agents call on your behalf to search research literature and retrieve metadata, citations, abstracts and open-access links. You interact with your assistant; the assistant sends us only the query, DOI, identifier or author name needed for the lookup.

What we receive. The arguments of each tool call (a search phrase, a DOI, an arXiv id, a PMID, an author or journal name), the technical headers needed to serve the request (an IP address or a client identifier supplied by the assistant, and a Pro API key if you have one), and standard server logs.

Lookups are forwarded, not stored. Queries and identifiers are passed to the sources below and the answer is returned to your assistant. Our requests to Crossref, Unpaywall and PubMed identify our service with our own contact address (the "polite pool" convention), never yours. Nothing you send is stored, logged in request bodies, profiled or used to train anything. Successful upstream answers are cached in memory for 30 minutes to 24 hours, keyed by the query, to reduce load on the sources.

What we do not receive or store. We do not receive your conversation with the assistant, your name, contacts, institution, accounts or credentials for any service. Rate-limit counters (a client identifier and timestamps) are held in memory for at most 24 hours. Hosting-provider access logs, which contain IP addresses and request paths but not request bodies, are retained for up to 30 days for security and abuse prevention.

Sub-processors. Crossref and doi.org (metadata, journals, formatted citations), arXiv, NCBI/PubMed E-utilities, Europe PMC, Unpaywall (OurResearch), ORCID, and best-effort Semantic Scholar (Allen Institute for AI). Each receives the query and our server's IP address, never yours. Hosting: Vercel (United States regions).

Legal bases and your rights. For users in California, the EU/UK and elsewhere, our processing is necessary to provide the service you request through your assistant. Because we store no personal data beyond short-lived logs, requests to access, correct or delete personal data are usually satisfied automatically; you can still contact agent@connectorbay.com and we will respond within 30 days. We do not sell or share personal information and do not use your data to train models.

Children. Scholar is a general-audience service operated by the adult using the assistant.

Changes. We will post changes here with a new effective date.