Privacy

Last updated 24 October 2026

Who runs this site

This site is run by Gaeun Kim. For questions and requests about your data, email litbeacon.feedback@gmail.com.

When you search

Your search term is sent to OpenAlex to find papers, and to Semantic Scholar and arXiv only if OpenAlex does not answer. While you type, what you have typed so far, once it is three letters or longer, is sent to OpenAlex through the site's server to suggest wordings. The papers' identifiers, such as DOIs, are sent to Semantic Scholar, Crossref, OpenCitations and Europe PMC for abstracts, citations and references. When AI screening is on, your search term is sent to Anthropic, whose Claude model checks its spelling before the search runs, and then your search term and each candidate paper's title and abstract (up to 12,000 characters of it) are sent so that the model can judge which papers belong. None of these services is sent your account or email address.

The site keeps those relevance judgments in its database, Google Cloud Firestore in Frankfurt, Germany, so that the same search later does not need them made again. They are filed under a scrambled (hashed) form of the search term, hold only the papers' text and the model's reasons, and are not linked to you or to any account.

When you open a saved guide built with older reading rules, its search term, its papers' identifiers and their saved relevance judgments are sent to the site's server, which looks the papers up again with the services above to update the guide. Nothing new is sent to Anthropic.

To limit automated use, the server counts new relevance checks, and updates of saved guides, from each network (IP) address in its memory for up to an hour. The address is not written anywhere.

As a guest

• Firebase Authentication, run by Google, gives your browser a random guest ID.
• The site sets one cookie, litbeacon_browser: a random ID, kept for a year, used only to count free maps. It holds nothing about you.
• The site stores how many maps that guest ID and that browser have built, and how many times papers were added to a map. For a guest these counts are kept, not reset each day, because a guest gets a fixed number of free maps.

With an account

• Your email address. With email sign-up, your password goes straight from your browser to Firebase; this site's server never receives it.
• With Google or GitHub: the name and email address they share, and your account ID there.
• Your Recent searches, including the search terms, maps and the sections you put papers in, so they follow you to other devices. Searches saved before 21 October 2026 also hold the read and shortlist choices made in them. They are stored in Google Cloud Firestore in Frankfurt, Germany.
• Your reading list: the papers you shortlisted or marked read, from any search, with each paper's title, authors, year, journal, DOI and link, and the search it came from, so it follows you to other devices. It is stored in Google Cloud Firestore in Frankfurt, Germany.
• How many maps you built today, and how many times you added papers, with the date, for the daily allowance.
• Sign-in details are handled by Google's Firebase Authentication, which may process them outside the EU.
• Google and GitHub sign-in pages pass through Vercel, this site's host, on their way to and from Firebase, so they show this site's address.

In your browser

A guest's Recent searches, the sections they put papers in, their reading list (the papers shortlisted or marked read), your layout settings, and whether you have seen the hint on the layout button and the Quick tour stay in your browser's own storage and are not sent anywhere. Firebase keeps your sign-in there too, so you stay signed in.

Paper correction notes stay in this browser, including when you are signed in. They are not sent to the account, a provider, or a model, and do not change the algorithm. Exporting a report or citation downloads a file without submitting it. Removing a saved search or clearing browser storage removes its local notes; logging out also clears notes associated with the account's local history.

If you help review papers

The review forms linked from Want to help? keep your answers, and the name and expertise you type in, in your browser's own storage, so you can close a form and come back to it. They stay there until you press Clear the answers kept here or clear this site's storage. Nothing is sent. If you email the file you download, it reaches the developer like any other email, and is used to check how LitBeacon sorts papers.

If you send feedback

Feedback, at the foot of the start page, and Give feedback, on the Want to help? page, open a Google Form in a new tab. This site sends nothing to it. What you type there is sent to Google when you submit the form, and the developer reads it there to improve LitBeacon. Like any web request, opening the form shows Google your IP address. The envelope beside Feedback starts an email to litbeacon.feedback@gmail.com, which reaches the developer like any other email.

Loaded from elsewhere

The site is hosted on Vercel, which counts visits with Vercel Web Analytics. The sign-in code comes from Google (gstatic.com), and the badge at the foot of the How it works page from philomathlearning.com. Like any web request, each of these sees your IP address.

What this site does not do

No advertising, no selling data, no Google Analytics.

Why the site may use your data

The GDPR allows personal data to be used only for a reason it lists (Article 6). This site relies on two of them:

• To provide what you asked for (Article 6(1)(b)): sending your search to the services that find papers, your account, your Recent searches and reading list, and the daily allowance that comes with an account.
• Legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)), meaning a reasonable need of the site that does not outweigh your rights: counting network addresses for the hourly limit and counting a guest's free maps, both to keep the site usable and its costs bounded; Vercel Web Analytics, to see how much the site is used; and reading feedback and emails, to answer them and improve LitBeacon.

The litbeacon_browser cookie and what the site keeps in your browser's storage are stored on your device without asking, because they are needed for the service you are using (German TDDDG, section 25(2)).

Transfers outside the EU

• The site's server runs on Vercel in Frankfurt, Germany. Vercel is a US company, certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which the European Commission recognizes as protecting data to EU standards.
• Firebase Authentication, run by Google, may process your sign-in details in the USA. Google is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Your stored data, in Google Cloud Firestore, stays in Frankfurt, Germany.
• Anthropic, in the USA, receives your search term and the papers' text from the site's server, never your address, account or email. Anthropic's data processing terms include the EU's standard contractual clauses, contracts the European Commission approved for such transfers.
• The services that find papers (OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, arXiv, Crossref, OpenCitations and Europe PMC) are asked by the site's server, not your browser, so they receive the search term and paper identifiers but not your address or account.

How long it is kept

• An account's map and addition counts start again each day. A guest's are kept, since a guest gets a fixed number of free maps.
• Stored relevance judgments are linked to no one and kept for reuse; each search term keeps at most its newest 400.
• Network addresses counted for the hourly limit are forgotten within an hour, or sooner when the server restarts.
• The litbeacon_browser cookie expires after a year.
• An account, its Recent searches and its reading list are kept until you delete the account.

Your choices

• Delete your account, its Recent searches and its reading list from the account window (your name, top right). This cannot be undone.
• Logging out removes your Recent searches and reading list from that browser.
• Clearing this site's cookies and storage removes the browser ID and everything kept in your browser.

Your rights

Under the GDPR (Articles 15 to 21) you can ask:

• for a copy of the data held about you (access);
• for wrong data to be corrected (rectification);
• for your data to be deleted (erasure);
• for its use to be paused, for example while a correction is checked (restriction);
• for your data in a common file format, to take elsewhere (portability);
• for the site to stop a use that rests on legitimate interest (objection).

Write to litbeacon.feedback@gmail.com. You will get an answer within one month.

You can also complain to a data protection authority, either the one where you live or work, or the one responsible for this site: the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (BayLDA), www.lda.bayern.de.