Privacy
The short version: the citation tools work without an account, and nothing you paste into them is stored. An account is optional and exists only so your saved citations survive between sessions.
What is not stored
- Reference lists you paste into the checker. They are processed during the request and discarded. Reference lists routinely contain unpublished manuscripts and work under embargo, which is why this matters.
- DOIs, ISBNs, URLs and titles you paste into the generator.
- PDF files you upload. They are parsed in memory and never written to disk.
What is stored, and only with an account
Signing in is optional. If you do sign in with Google, we store your name, email address and profile image as supplied by Google, plus any citations you explicitly save. You can sign out at any time, and deleting your account removes all of it.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics to see which pages people find useful. It sets cookies and records page views, approximate location and device type. It does not receive anything you paste into the tools. Browser do-not-track and ad-blocking extensions both prevent it from loading.
Third parties
Looking up a citation sends the identifier or title you provided to the databases that hold the record: CrossRef, OpenAlex, OpenLibrary and Google Books. Only the identifier is sent, never your reference list. Signing in involves Google. The site is served by Cloudflare, which processes request metadata such as IP addresses to deliver pages and block abuse.
Contact
Questions, or a request to delete your account and data: support@citefetch.com