ResearchGate terms and policies

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Last updated: February 20, 2024.

Contents

1. Introduction

ResearchGate GmbH, Chausseestraße 20, 10115 Berlin, Germany ("ResearchGate", "we", "us", or "our") provides the services rendered to you through the ResearchGate website available at https://www.researchgate.net, and through any of its web pages and associated applications which may be available on multiple devices, including mobile applications ("Service").

This Privacy Policy sets forth the collection and use practices of ResearchGate for personal data we process in the course of providing the Service.

Our mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all. Connections can only be established when potential connections and commonalities are known and connecting lines can be drawn. Openness can only be achieved with comprehensive accessibility. Our Service takes your work and activities on the Service into account to help connect you with other individuals who are relevant to you and recommend relevant content. We also gather information from external sources, in order to disseminate as much relevant scientific content as possible to drive science forward. Any natural or legal person who, as a recipient of the Service, accesses or uses the Service for any purpose is a User ("User", "you"). Our registered Users ("Members") can share their professional identities and credentials, display their academic publications, engage and collaborate with their networks, exchange knowledge and professional insights, post and view relevant content, and discover business and career opportunities. Some content is also visible to unregistered or logged-out Users ("Visitors"). A User could be a Member or a Visitor. An Author ("Author") is a natural person who, for the purpose of our Service, is a member of the scientific community by, for example, being an author/editor of a publication, or being an advisor or recipient of scientific funding. An Author is not necessarily a User or Member of our Service.

ResearchGate reserves the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, in particular, to reflect changes in market conditions affecting ResearchGate’s activities, changes in technology, changes in relevant laws and regulatory requirements, and changes in ResearchGate’s system capabilities. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we may notify Members by email or other reasonable means, including through notifications on our Service. If you object to any new version, you should stop using our Service and/or close your account. If you continue to use our Service after having been provided with such notice you will be deemed to have acknowledged the Privacy Policy.

2. Information we process and how we process it

Basic data processed
Certain data will be processed when you access the Service, to resolve the technical request of your device, display the site and maintain the safety and security of our systems. This data is stored in so-called logs and comprise the following:
- IP addresses and your mobile device's Identifier for Advertising (IDFA);
- the type of computer or mobile device you are using including operating system and version;
- the types of browser you are using, the language, and your country;
- referring and exit pages and URLs;
- platform type;
- the number of clicks on a page or feature, pages viewed and the order of those pages, the amount of time spent on particular pages or parts of pages;
- domain names and;
- information collected for performance purposes (e.g. average load, render time of pages, etc.).
Even though IP addresses and mobile identifiers are generally considered personal data, we can not derive any direct conclusions about your identity from such data.
Our legal basis for processing this personal data is Article 6 (1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The data processed is very basic data, and does not contain directly identifiable information about you. We have a legitimate interest in being able to provide a functioning, reliable and accessible website and resolve your server-request in an appropriate manner.
All of our pages are secured using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology, which encrypts data transmitted between our servers and your end devices. We also apply other suitable technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data.
Personal data we process
In order to provide you with functionalities, we need to process certain data and/or information relating to you:
- Registration and maintenance of your Member account
  If you choose to create a Member account on our Service, you will be required, during the registration process, to provide your first and last name, an email address, and a password. You will receive a confirmation email. Your Member account will be confirmed after you have clicked on the respective link in the account activation email. You may also be invited to associate certain information we present to you with your account, such as articles, institutional affiliation, and biographical information.
- Other personal data
  During the registration process or when updating your profile, you can choose to provide other information that can be used to identify and/or contact you, including for example, a profile picture, your Twitter account handle or your city of residence. You may also be invited or required to provide information about you, including, for example, demographic information, such as occupation, and research vita, education, authorship of articles, academic or research expertise or interests, conferences you have attended, groups of which you are a member, information regarding your professional and academic career, academic degree, your previous roles and jobs, and current activities and interests.
- Third-party connectors
  You can choose to create an account using your Facebook, LinkedIn or Google account and subsequently use that third-party platform’s credentials to log in to your ResearchGate account. Using this option means that you are allowing ResearchGate to request and use certain data from the third-party account. For Google, this involves us processing your email address. For LinkedIn, we will process your email address, first and last name, and profile picture. For Facebook, we will process your email address and public profile information. The third-party platform might ask for your consent to share this data with ResearchGate. As the personal data we might process was originally collected by the third-party platform, the initial data processing and sharing of the data with ResearchGate are governed by the privacy policy of such third-party platform. Please refer to the relevant third-party platform and/or its settings, if you want to deactivate the connection between ResearchGate and the third-party platform.
- Communications with us
  When you communicate with us, you may provide us with your name, contact details, and other personal data as part of your communication, as well as the content of your message itself. Similarly, when we communicate with you, we will process your personal information, such as your email address. For some of our emails, we also process information indicating whether you have opened the email.
- Communications through the Service
  Many communications that you initiate through our Service (e.g. invitation sent to a non-Member) will list your name in the header of the message. Other communications that you initiate through the Service, like a request for a full-text, will list your name as the initiator but will not include your personal email address. Once you have mutually connected with an individual, contact information you choose to include in your researcher profile will be accessible by that individual.
- Recommendations
  In order to provide our recommendation features, we process contact and bibliographical data, information pertaining to your work, usage frequency, type of devices you use to use the Service, including browser, operating system and mobile device, research items you consulted, interaction with particular pages or parts of pages, and number of clicks on a page or feature, in order to provide the Service in a way that is tailored to your interests. Also, based on the personal data you provide, statistical evaluations, mathematical operations, and predictions, we may infer other information about you and support our recommendation features. For example, if you were to add several research items to the Service over the course of several years, we may infer that you are not a junior researcher anymore.
- Third-party providers
  When you choose to benefit from a service or offer presented by ResearchGate on behalf of a third party, you may share personal data with ResearchGate to enable us to pass it on to the third party. The nature of personal data will depend on the particular service or offer, but might include your name, email address and affiliation. We do not share any of this personal data with any third party unless you explicitly allow us to do so.
- Paid Products and payment data
  If you choose to purchase a product, service or subscription from ResearchGate that is subject to a fee (“Paid Product”), there are two alternatives regarding processing of personal data. Either we will process the personal data to complete your order, or our Merchant of Record (“MoR”) will. If, for a Paid Product, our MoR conducts the ordering flow and processes personal data, we will clearly indicate this prior to starting the ordering process and within the ordering process itself. In each case:
  1. If ResearchGate is conducting the order: we will process the personal data that you provide in order to complete your order, such as your billing address. ResearchGate does not process any credit card information, however we do retain your name and address so we may generate and send you an invoice. Credit card information is collected and processed by a third-party provider, namely Stripe. Stripe processes this data as an independent controller to process the payment. For details about the data processing undertaken by Stripe, please see its Privacy Policy.
  2. If our MoR is conducting the order: where we are using the services of a MoR, the ordering process is hosted and conducted by that third party, who is reselling the Paid Product to you, having it licensed it from us. The MoR will process any personal data required to complete the order. Payment data such as credit card information will not be processed by the MoR, as they will are use independent payment service providers. To be able to associate your Member account with the Paid Product purchased, provide support and ensure a frictionless user experience within the ordering flow, we will share your primary email address associated with your account (and subsequent updates to it) with our MoR. Our MoR will send us a signal after you have successfully purchased the Paid Product, so that we can associate your purchase with your account and grant access to the Paid Product. Our current MoR is “Paddle” (“Paddle” means, if you are purchasing a Subscription from the United States, Paddle.com Inc, whose office is at 3811 Ditmars Blvd #1071 Astoria NY 11105-1803; and otherwise, for the rest of the world, Paddle.com Market Limited, incorporated in England and Wales with Company number 8172165, whose office is at 15 Briery Close, Great Oakley, Corby, Northamptonshire, NN18 8JG, United Kingdom). Please refer to Paddle’s Privacy Policy for further information.
- Security
  We process the number of profile pages users view to detect and prevent data harvesting. We also process your IP address to filter out suspicious requests. If you are a Member, we store your full IP address in connection with your account registration request and your current last login. Otherwise, your login activities are only stored in connection with your truncated IP addresses. Also, we process information about your device, its operating system and the browser you are using for your current session.
- Statistics
  We use activity data, such as number of read publications, projects and number of citations, to generate statistics, which pertain to reading behavior or achievements. For example, we may use such activity data in order to calculate and display a read count on an individual publication page.

3. How we use data we collect about you

The following explanations will provide you with information about how we use the personal data that we collect about you, and our legal basis for doing so under the GDPR. Generally speaking, we may, pursuant to Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR use your data based on our legitimate interests.

to provide and improve our Service;
to perform internal quality checks;
to prevent, detect, process and investigate malfunctions, incidents, fraudulent or other illegal activities, or mitigate the risk of occurrence of the aforementioned events;
to ensure network and information security;
to create statistics on access channels and the use of our Service;
to contact you, if requested by you or if necessary to fulfil the contract or permitted by law;
to enforce obligations owed to us, and contractual terms and conditions; and
for accounting, risk management and record keeping purposes.

Also, pursuant to Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR we may use your data to comply with legal obligations, e.g. to observe retention periods required by trade or tax law or to comply with obligations to disclose data based on a legally binding court decision or official order.

More specifically, we may use your data for the following purposes.

ResearchGate account
The personal data you provide in connection with registering for your Member account will be used to create, maintain, and secure your account. By creating a Member account, you will benefit from functionalities and services that are not available to Visitors. Any personal data you provide in addition to the required data to register for an account, will facilitate your ability to get into contact with other Members, promote yourself and your research, and receive more relevant recommendations from our recommendation services. Your ResearchGate account is generally visible to every other Member, but you can determine the level of detail you want to share with other Members, e.g. in your Privacy settings and by choosing how much information you add to your profile. Your account can also be found by other Members using our search functionalities and may be recommended to them via our recommendation features. Your choices regarding the details you want to share with other Members will also be respected in such features. You can also determine whether your account is publicly visible to Visitors (and therefore subject to being indexed by search engines). In cases where you purchase a Paid Product and an account is required to make such purchase, we will associate your account with information about your purchase to be able to administrate your purchases, provide you with according support, and allow and revoke your access to the Paid Product.
- Our legal basis for this processing this data is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
Communications
Depending on the way you are communicating with us, we may use your name, email address, telephone number, and the content of your previous correspondence to respond to you and provide assistance.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) or (f) GDPR. As a public-facing company, we have a legitimate interest in being able to receive, process, and respond to enquiries.
Transactional emails
Provided you have not opted out from receiving transactional emails from us, we will use your email address to send you emails about relevant developments on the Service concerning for example, your network, new features, publications, projects, updates from the Q&A section, and emails regarding your professional career.
You can opt out from receiving transactional emails at any time by clicking the "unsubscribe" link within an email or by visiting your account settings.
- Legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
Sponsored emails
Where you have provided your prior consent to receiving sponsored emails, we will use your email address to send you such emails. Where legally allowed, we will also use your email address to send you sponsored emails without your prior consent.
In any case, you can opt out from receiving sponsored emails at any time by clicking the "unsubscribe" link within an email or visiting the " email settings" in your account.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(a) or (f) GDPR. Whenever we rely on our legitimate interest to process your email address for sending sponsored emails, we do so as it is in our best interest to make the Service as helpful and meaningful to you as possible, which may also mean that third-party content will be taken into consideration. In addition, these email campaigns help us in monetizing our Service, so we can keep offering it to you.
Offer Members internal activity insights
Your interaction with and interest in other Members’ work is as valuable to them as it is to you. Therefore, we process information about reads of your work and your interaction with other Members' work (e.g. publication information, full texts, questions, answers). We use this information to provide Members with insights about the consumption of their work. For example we might show read statistics on publication and author levels that might contain information about e.g. the number of reads in a given timeframe, the countries and institutions the readers were affiliated with, or, subject to both Members’ privacy settings, information about readers’ ResearchGate accounts. Where Members’ privacy settings allow more than anonymous statistics to be provided, the additional level of detail allows Members to get into contact with readers of their work.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) or (f) GDPR. Where we rely on our legitimate interest to offer these internal activity insights, we believe our aim to provide you and fellow ResearchGate Members with statistics, and, where applicable, additional details about interactions, does not conflict with your expectations, interest and rights. The described data processing, which is limited, is appropriate to achieve the desired objective of helping Members understand how their work is consumed.
Offer Members external activity insights
Where Members choose to benefit from receiving external activity insights, we might provide them with additional information such as consumption, mentions, news coverage etc. relating to their profile and work on the Service. To do so, we may associate aggregated and anonymous information we gather from outside ResearchGate with your work, to provide information about how Users found your publicly available work on ResearchGate, and what has referred them to it (e.g. which search engine). We might also offer features that provide information about instances where you and/or your publicly available work on the Service are mentioned on third-party websites, platforms, or services. For example, when your work is mentioned on social media or other external platforms/websites/blogs, we might gather these mentions, potentially including surrounding context, and enrich insights about your work with them. We might directly show this third-party content to you by displaying or embedding it in our Service, or providing references such as links to the content. We might use the help of external, third parties to achieve these purposes. Where such third parties are processing personal data, they are described in Section Third party services for analytics, measurement and ad delivery.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
Offer Members tailored content
Using our recommendation technology, we process your personal data or infer information in order to provide the Service in a way that is tailored to your interests. This enables us to customize the features and offerings ResearchGate provides to you through the Service. For example, we provide dynamic web pages that are individually adapted to you. We may present content recommendations such as research items that are suggested for you and/or recommendations regarding other individuals, such as researchers to follow or connect with, or related researchers. In the same way that you benefit from content and individuals recommended to you, you and your content might be recommended to other Members and therefore might appear in their experience, for example in their home feed. We derive learnings from Members’ interactions with tailored content and suggestions and subsequently take them into account to improve any further offerings of tailored content.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) or (f) GDPR. We have a legitimate interest in providing the best user experience based on the individual needs. This processing does not conflict with your interests as it corresponds with a person’s reasonable expectations when signing up for an account. The processing has no negative impact for our Members but is in their interests as it allows ResearchGate to provide them a tailored service.
Offer Members tailored advertising content and relevant jobs
As a Member, we aim to offer you advertising content that is most relevant to you. In this context, we use, whether separately or combined, the personal data you provide, we collect, or we infer from your use of the Service and the Internet and also contextual information of the site you are currently visiting. This enables us to display advertisements that best match your particular interests, and job suggestions that are relevant to your scientific field, experience and research. For further information about advertisements on the Service, please refer to Section 6 Advertisements on ResearchGate below.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR. Advertising is a ubiquitous part of the Internet, but we believe that advertising, when done well, is a good thing. We aim to display the most relevant and most helpful advertisements to you. To be able to do this, we must take your interests, your journey, and some of your personal data into account. Without this processing, the advertisements we would be able to disseminate would not be different from random advertisements you can see everywhere in the Internet. We take great care in choosing the right advertising partners and limiting the personal data we process. The personal data that we process for this purpose will not be shared with any third party except our technical service provider (see Section 7Third party services), and will only support our purposes. Given that we limit the data processed, do not share it with other third parties, and process your personal data to display only relevant advertisements to you, we believe that our legitimate interest to monetize our platform and therefore continue to provide you with the Service outweighs. We believe our Service is a service to researchers, research, and science as a whole. Among other things, we make worldwide collaboration possible, and facilitate the solving of important scientific questions. Our mission is an important one. But this mission must be financed.
Offer Visitors tailored advertising content and jobs
As a Visitor, we also aim to offer you advertising content that is most relevant to you. In the case of Visitors, this means that the third parties delivering advertisements may take into account the context of the current site you are visiting. For further information about advertisements on the Service, please refer to Section 6 Advertisements on ResearchGate below.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR and where applicable Art. 6 (1)(a) GDPR. Because some parts of our Service are available to everyone, even those who don’t have an account with us, we believe that wherever we haven’t asked you for your consent, the data processing conducted is of such limited effect on you, that our interest to monetize the platform and therefore continue to provide the Service also to non- Members, is legitimate.
Candidate search
A limited amount of your profile information (including only some information from the overview and research tabs) will be visible for recruiters with a Recruiter Account on the Service. If the information on your profile matches the search criteria entered by a recruiter in our candidate search feature, this limited version of your profile may show up in their search results. Recruiters may choose to contact you through the messaging functionality provided within the feature. Your inclusion in candidate search, including being contacted by recruiters, is fully under your control. You can choose to block specific recruiters, or opt out from being included in candidate search and contacted by any recruiters by changing your privacy settings at any time.
- Legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
Ensure the security of your personal data
We process your personal data in order to avoid its accidental or unlawful destruction, as well as its loss, alteration, or unauthorized disclosure. For example, we process the number of profile pages you and others view so as to detect and prevent data harvesting. Likewise, we truncate the last octet of your IP address to prevent you from being identified.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(c) and (f) GDPR. We are legally obliged to secure data from unauthorized loss and alteration and it is also in our mutual interest to ensure data security. As this primarily serves the purpose of protecting your data there are no overriding interests on your part.
Generate statistics
We use your personal data to generate statistics which pertain to reading/search behavior and achievements. We also generate statistics for internal purposes in order to constantly improve the Service and its features. We also conduct research and development to maintain quality and improve our Service and the User experience. We might also share research results with scientific bodies for science studies and related topics. In none of these cases, we will share any personal data of Users.
- Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR. We have a legitimate interest to assess and evaluate the traffic on our site to improve our Service. Such improvement is also in the interest of our Users as it allows them to always benefit from the best Service we can offer.

4. How we use relevant publicly available data

We also process personal data relating to Authors that is publicly available and relevant for our Service.

We may obtain a variety of information about Authors from publicly available sources, such as information regarding previous research published, the publication itself (including personal data too) and other functions or references of an Author related to a publication. We may also process information related to an Author, to create a record of their body of scientific contributions, or that might help understand professional connections between Authors and Members. Where an Author's scientific work was publicly or privately funded, we may also process this publicly available information.

When we collect publicly available materials we do not have a way to ensure that personal data in such materials has been processed in accordance with the applicable laws. However, if you notify us that your personal data contained in such materials is inaccurate or has been processed in violation of applicable data protection laws, we may delete it upon verification of your identity.

The public data processed may be associated with an account when an Author chooses to become a Member.

Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR. The data processed is publicly available data. Also, the data processed has to be processed to provide a correct and complete scientific picture. Our legitimate interest is to provide a comprehensive and accurate repository of scientific work, contributions and success. Without processing additional public data, we could not achieve these aims. Furthermore, since we offer the possibility to connect this data with an account, we provide Members a convenient way to establish an account that is as complete as possible, without the effort of manually adding the information themselves.

5. Information we process when using technologies like cookies and pixels

We and service providers acting on our behalf store log files and use tracking technologies such as cookies, web beacons, tracking pixels, and local shared objects, also known as flash cookies, to collect information relating to you and your use of the Service.

Basics
"Cookies" are small files that enable us to store and collect specific information related to you and your use of the Service on your computer or other end devices. They help us to analyze the number of people who use the Service, usage frequency, User behavior and advertising effectiveness, to increase security and to tailor our Service and advertisements to your needs and preferences.
- This website uses so-called "session cookies" which after your session on the website session ends, will automatically be deleted.
- This website also uses "persistent cookies" to record information about repeat Users of the Service. Persistent cookies are designed to help us continually improve the products and services we offer you and to ensure the quality of our services. "Persistent cookies" remain for a certain pre-defined period of time and are recognized by us when you return to the Service (or one of our partner sites).
- You can edit the settings of your browser to prevent cookies from being stored, to limit the storage of cookies to certain websites, or such that your browser informs you every time a cookie is sent. You can also delete cookies at any time. However, please note that if cookies are deactivated you will not be able to take advantage of some of ResearchGate’s features. For specific help on how to delete Cookies with the help of your browser, please consult respective help sections, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Safari.
Cookie table for ResearchGate
ResearchGate use cookies for various purposes, but cookies primarily help us provide, protect and improve our products and services, tailor advertising and content, and better understand the use of our services. The following table will provide you with information on cookies that ResearchGate is placing and using, their respective retention period and purpose.
Name
Party
Purpose
Lifetime
__cfduid
Cloudflare (see sec. Cloudflare)
This cookie helps Cloudflare detect malicious visitors to our website and minimizes blocking of legitimate Users. It may be placed on your device to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis.
30 days
__cfruid
Cloudflare
This cookie relates to rate limiting policies. It is used by a rate limiting feature with network address translation support enabled to distinguish individual users behind a single IP. Using this allows to control the rate of requests to our website.
30 minutes
cf_clearance
Cloudflare
When a Cloudflare captcha or Javascript challenge is solved such as for a Firewall Rule or IP Access Rule, a cf_clearance cookie is set in the client browser.
30 minutes
__cf_bm
Cloudflare
This cookie supports Cloudflare Bot Management by managing incoming traffic that matches criteria associated with bots. The cookie does not collect any personal data, and any information collected is subject to one-way encryption. This encrypted file contains Cloudflare’s proprietary bot score and helps manage incoming traffic that matches specific criteria.
30 minutes
did
ResearchGate
This is a random unique identifier.
One year
pl
ResearchGate
This is a random unique identifier.
One year
ptc
ResearchGate
Permanent Tracking
Two years
sid
ResearchGate
(Login) Session ID
One year
ciiir
ResearchGate
This cookie classifies whether you are interested in recruiting.
One year
cili
ResearchGate
This cookie marks the user as logged-in. It is created on every successful log in and refreshed on every subsequent successful log in.
One year
cirgu
ResearchGate
This cookie tells us, whether you are a ResearchGate User with an account at ResearchGate.
One year
SKpbjs-id5id
SKpbjs-id5id_last
SKpbjs_unifiedid
SKpbjs-unifiedid_last
Prebid
Where applicable, these cookies enable the technology Prebid to work, to assign an identifier to you and to participate in so- called header bidding for disseminating advertisements.
Three months
_gads
Google Ad Manager
This cookie is used to target advertising for users and publishers.
Two years
_ga
Google Analytics
Used to distinguish users.
Two years
_gid
Google Analytics
Used to distinguish users.
One day
_gat,
_gat_UA
Google Analytics
Used to throttle request rate.
One minute
_cmpBlockedVendorshash,
_cmpNoniabvendorshash,
_cmprepromptoptions,
euconsent,
eupubconsent,
googlepersonalisation,
noniabvendorconsent
Quantcast consent modal
These cookies will remember that you have maybe seen, interacted with, might have applied settings and store your consent for the purposes of the consent modal.
One year and 25 days
Other technology
In addition to cookies, this website uses so-called pixels, web beacons, clear GIFs, and other similar mechanisms ("Pixels"). A Pixel is an image file or link to an image file added to the website code but not sent to your end device. Pixels are largely used for the same reasons as cookies, i.e. to analyze the number of people who use our Service or, if the User's email program allows HTML, to determine whether and when an email was opened. Pixels help us to check and optimize the effectiveness of our Service and offers as well as advertising campaigns served on ResearchGate. Pixels do not provide us with personal data. Pixels are usually used in conjunction with cookies. If you have deactivated the use of cookies in your browser, then Pixels will only report an anonymous website visit.
We also use Pixel-based and cookie-based conversion tracking technologies to, for example, measure the success of advertising campaigns served on the Service. To this end we use technologies provided by Google (see below SectionGoogle Services).

6. Advertisements on ResearchGate

We display advertisements on our Service so we can continue to offer many of our features for free. We generate revenue by disseminating advertisements. We allow selected partners to advertise their products, content, jobs and more, on our Service.

Basics
When advertisers or ad networks place advertisements on our Service, they may collect or we may share the following types of information from within our Service:
- performance data (such as the number of clicks on an advertisement);
- aggregated and/or de-identified information about you and other Users collectively that is not intended to specifically identify you (such as Users who are located in Berlin);
- certain technical information (for example, IP addresses, cookieIDs, non-persistent device identifiers such as Identifiers for Advertising (IDFAs); and
- other contextual data about our dissemination and your potential perception of advertisements.
Advertisers or ad networks may collect this information through the use of tracking technologies like browser cookies and web beacons (see explanations above), and they may use a single tracking technology or multiple tracking technologies at the same time.
The information collected may be used to:
- measure how effective advertisements are;
- offer you targeted advertising in order to personalize your experience by showing you advertisements that are more relevant to you; and/or
- undertake web analytics to analyze traffic and other User activity to improve your experience.
After clicking on a third-party advertisement, you may no longer be on a site hosted by ResearchGate. ResearchGate is not responsible for any third party, or its affiliates or agents, failing to use your personal data in accordance with such third party's privacy policy, or any contractual or other legal obligations to which such third party, its affiliates or agents, may be subject.
Logged-in experience
The advertising content shown to logged-in Members is served by ResearchGate itself using the help of third party technology providers, such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and GoogleDV 360. Information on those service providers can be found at Section 7 Third-party services.
In the case of these advertisements, ResearchGate has a direct relationship with the advertiser. We take great care when choosing such advertising partners. We allow them to target you based on pre-defined segments of which you may be a part. These segments are created by ResearchGate and may take into consideration your profile information and/or contextual information. For example, a segment might take into account your skills, disciplines, career level, current location, or what page on the Service you are currently visiting. We may also infer data such as gender or age group (for example 20-35 male) to assign you to a segment. An example of a segment that an advertising partner could target is: "Scientist, Biotechnology, EU, on a publication page containing a publication about a virus." Targeting this segment would mean that only Members who are part of this segment will see that advertiser’s advertisement on the Service.
By using this information and these segments, we and our advertising partners are able to present relevant advertisements to you. We will take your previous interactions with advertisements into account when determining whether to present you with subsequent advertisements and in subsequent segmentation efforts. This is another way that we try to avoid providing you with advertisements that are not of interest to you.
ResearchGate might also re-target you with advertisements of our advertising partners on third-party platforms. For this re-targeting, we don’t share any of your personal data with our advertising partners. Rather, we provide Google DV 360 (see below) with an anonymized (i.e. hashed) value of your ResearchGate cookie ID. Google DV 360 might have the same hash value already in its systems, received from a third-party platform. Whenever this is the case, we could present you with an advertisement from one of our advertising partners on a third-party platform.
You can opt out from receiving cookie-based tailored advertisements on the Service and retargeting at any time, by clicking . Note that this opt out will place a cookie on your device so we can remember your choice, which means if you delete your cookies at any point in time, you would have to opt out again.
Please also note that opting out from ResearchGate cookie-based tailored advertising will not have the effect of disabling advertisements completely. For the delivery of advertisements, we will still take into account the context of the page you are currently visiting and personalize advertisements based on information other than cookie-based information.
Information about the respective cookies we are using for ResearchGate served advertisements can be found in the cookie table above.
Logged-out experience
A great amount of information, particularly publication pages and the Q&A section of our Service, are available also for Visitors. These parts of our Service are also free for everyone. As a result, logged-out Visitors will find advertisements there.
Primarily, ResearchGate enables third-party networks and platforms with which we have a business relationship to disseminate advertisements on the Service.
For each of those third parties, their technology, data processing and purposes, we may ask you for your explicit consent. We do so with the help of our consent modal. Here’s how to navigate it:
- Clicking "Agree" has the effect of providing consent for all data processing and according partners.
- Under "More options", you will find a list of data processing purpose-stacks. By clicking on these, you can find out what each stack specifically consists of, according legal descriptions and a corresponding list of partners that process data under this purpose stack. You can choose to allow the stack or just parts of the stack. If you prefer to not allow a stack or specific purposes, you don't have to do anything.
- If you don’t want to provide any consent, you just have to click "Agree to selected", since data processing that requires prior consent is default "OFF".
- Any settings you made will be stored when you click "Agree to selected".
- Clicking "Agree to all" has the effect of explaining consent for all data processing and according partners.
- "Additional links" will refer you to this Privacy Policy.
- Under "More options" – "Partners" you will find a list of partners, their purposes and respective descriptions, as well as links pointing to their privacy policies. Here you can make specific choices regarding each partner. Some personal data is processed without your prior consent, but you have the right to object.
- Under "More options" – "Legitimate interest" you will find a list of "Legitimate interest purposes" and "Legitimate interest vendors". When you unfold the legitimate interest purposes, the legal description and the partner relying on legitimate interest for this purpose is provided. When you unfold the description of a specific partner, you can also find out for which purposes, the specific partner relies on Legitimate interest. Where processing of personal data is being executed without your prior approval but with the legal basis "Legitimate Interest", you have the right to object. Under "More options" – "Legitimate interest", you can explain your objection for each purpose and each partner, but you can also click "Object all".
- Most important for you: unless you granted consent by clicking "Agree" in our consent modal, our partners will only be able to process very limited personal data and only if they can claim legitimate interest to do so.
- At any time, you can withdraw any consent given or modify your consent. You can do so by re-prompting the consent modal by clicking .
- Please note: even if you have not provided your consent, you will still be presented with advertisements, but such advertisements will not be tailored to you.
In addition to opting out from personalized ads delivered to you with the help of Google (see below in sec. 7), you can also opt-out from being presented with any ads served to you using Amazon’s or OpenWrap’s header-bidding technology for your logged-out visit of our Service, by clicking .

7. Third-party services

Google Services
Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to evaluate the usage behavior on our Service. Google Analytics is a web analysis service provided by Google Ireland Ltd, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. For this web analysis service, Google uses cookies on our website to systematically evaluate the interactions of Users on our Service. The information generated by the cookie about the use of our Service by the user (e.g. truncated IP address, website currently visited, referrer, duration of stay, and frequency of the call of the website) is transferred to a Google server in Ireland. In addition, a transfer of the data to another Google server in the USA is possible. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the Service, compiling reports on website activity for us, and providing other services relating to website activity and Internet usage. The processed data can be used to create pseudonymous user profiles of Users. The data is deleted after 26 months. By activating IP anonymization on our website, your IP address is truncated before it is forwarded within the member states of the European Union or other states party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases will your full IP address be forwarded to a Google server in Ireland and possibly the USA and shortened there. Google will not combine your IP address collected via Google Analytics with other data that Google holds.
To opt out from Google Analytics, please click . If you delete your cookies, you have to click this link again.
Our use of Google Analytics is also administered by the consent modal as described at Section 6 Advertisements on ResearchGate.
In addition, each of the following services is provided by Google Ireland Ltd, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.
You can opt out from the following Google services using this link:
- Google Tag Manager is a solution that allows us to manage website tags through one interface. The Tag Manager itself is a cookie-less domain and does not collect personal data. The tool triggers other tags that may collect personal data. Google Tag Manager does not access this data.
- We use Google DV 360, including the tool "Display & Video" to be able to recognize you on third-party websites. For this purpose, the Google Display & Video 360 will place cookies on your device which will enable recognition of you in the Google advertising network. We are subsequently able to present you advertisements on the basis of your surfing behavior on third-party platforms. This service also enables us to evaluate delivered advertisements and optimize them.
- Google Ad Manager enables the control and optimization of advertisements on our Service. It also helps to create campaign performance reports and prevents advertisements being displayed to you multiple times. Google Ad Manager also uses cookies for this purpose.
To opt-out from receiving personalized ads delivered to you by Google on our Service, please click .
Cloudflare
We also use the services of Cloudflare, Inc. (101 Townsend St., San Francisco, CA 94107, USA). Cloudflare helps us to provide our Service to our Users in the fastest way by "copying" our Service and putting it on servers that are geographically as close as possible to your current location. Cloudflare distributes the server load to those servers that make the most sense for your request. Additionally, Cloudflare blocks threats and abusive bots and crawlers that have a negative impact on our bandwidth and server resources. Cloudflare also provides an "I am under attack"- mode that requests Users to solve a task before they can visit the site. Through Cloudflare, our Service is more powerful and less vulnerable. For these purposes Cloudflare uses cookies (see Cookie table for ResearchGate) and processes data of which your IP address could be considered personal. Cloudflare might store this data in the US. More information about Cloudflare can be found here.
Twitter for Websites
In accordance with what we described in Section 3, subsection “Offer members external activity insights”, we may embed Tweets in our Service. We do this with the help of “Twitter for Websites”, a tool offered by Twitter (Twitter Inc., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA). As a default, the external Twitter content in our Service will not be loaded unless you explicitly allow it to be loaded. You can change your mind about whether to allow this at any time. When you allow “Tweets” to be loaded, Twitter will process data about you and may process this data outside of the EU. For example, Twitter will process information about what page you are currently on, your IP- address, browser type and operating system. Generally, Twitter will use this information to offer personalized suggestions and show personalized advertisements to you. We implement “Twitter for Websites” in such a manner that information from our Services shall not be used by Twitter for personalization. For more information about Twitter’s data processing, please refer to Twitter’s privacy policy or more specifically to Twitter’s privacy policy regarding “Twitter for Websites” where you will also find information about Twitter-specific privacy controls. For the purposes described and only if you allow Tweets to be loaded, Twitter will place cookies on your device. For more information, please see their Cookie Policy.
Zendesk
For email addresses intended to receive general, external inquiries (such as press inquires, support inquiries), we may use the services of “Zendesk”. We also use Zendesk to process incoming inquiries that have been sent to us by using our contact forms. Zendesk is a platform that helps organizations understand,structure and prioritize incoming inquiries of users, customers or otherwise interested parties. Zendesk is operated by Zendesk Inc., a Delaware corporation, with its address at 1019 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA. Zendesk aggregates data already known to us, data about earlier communications with you and data supporting your current inquiry. This data may also be allocated to your Member account if you have one.
We have contractually agreed with Zendesk that personal data will be hosted in the EU. Still, Zendesk is a US corporation and reserves the right to process personal data in the US where this is required for support or service purposes required by us. Where personal data is processed outside of the EU, we concluded Standard Contractual Clauses in accordance with Art. 46 GDPR with Zendesk. Furthermore, Zendesk is one of the few companies that have Binding Corporate Rules rolled out to their corporation which were approved by the European Commission in accordance with Art. 47 GDPR. You can find these here. For further information on Zendesk’s data processing, please also refer to their Privacy Policy.

8. Recipients and safeguards

Recipients
ResearchGate does not sell any of your personal data.
The personal data that ResearchGate collects from you and that you provide to ResearchGate is processed in Canada and stored on servers in Canada. Canada is one of the few countries for which the EU has adopted an adequacy decision in which it decided that Canada ensures an adequate level of protection according to EU standards. You can review the Commission Decision here.
Some of your personal data is accessible to other Users of our platform who may, for example, visit your publication pages or profile.
Your personal data may also be transferred to third parties as described in this Privacy Policy and where applicable to those third parties listed in our consent modal. These parties might be advertisers or companies that help us disseminate advertisements, measure the performance of our advertisements and/or analyze your use of the Service. These third parties will not receive data that directly personally identifies you. The data shared is limited to identifiers such as IP addresses and cookie IDs. Your name, email address, and other directly identifying data will only be shared with third parties if you explicitly allow us to share this data.
We may also disclose personal data in response to legal process or when the law requires it (for example, in response to a court order) or, to the extent permitted by applicable law, to protect the rights, property, or safety of ResearchGate, the Service, Users of the Service (including you), and others.
We may use third party service providers, in particular for technical and business services, tax advisors and legal counsel. These service providers receive personal data solely for the performance of their services for us on our behalf. They are contractually obliged not to use personal data for other purposes.
Safeguards
Some of the third parties with whom your personal data will be shared are located outside of the European Economic Area, in countries whose data protection laws may not be as extensive as those which apply to us.
If we transfer your personal data to countries outside of the European Economic Area or which do not offer adequate and similar protection, we will ensure that we do this in accordance with applicable data protection regulations (for example, by putting in place an appropriate data transfer instrument such as the European Standard Contractual Clauses).

We will do this with a view to ensuring that the level of protection applied to the processing of your personal data in these countries is similar to that applied within the European Economic Area.

9. Closing your account and retention of personal data

For Members, we generally store their personal data as long as their account is active.

If you have created an account, you can close it yourself in your ‘Account Settings’. If you request that we close your account for you, we might ask for proof of identity before doing so.

We may also close inactive accounts or accounts that are used in violation of our Terms of Service or any applicable law.

Immediately after closing an account, it will not be accessible/visible anymore. Please note that closing an account is irreversible.

For Members, we will retain personal data from closed or inactive accounts to the extent and as long as it is necessary and relevant for our operations and/or to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Terms of Service, and/or take other actions otherwise permitted by law.

In general, personal data from closed or inactive accounts will be deleted or anonymized from our system backups one year after the account is closed or deactivated.

We only keep personal data for the time strictly necessary in order to enable the use of our Service and/or to fulfil the purposes identified above, and/or to comply with any legal or regulatory obligations. In all other cases, we delete your personal data with the exception of such data that we are required to retain for the purpose of contractual or statutory (e.g., taxation or commercial law) retention periods. In particular, we keep payment and invoice related information or support inquiries to the extent required by trade and tax law for the statutory retention periods (ten, respectively six years).

10. Automated decision-making

We do not engage in automated individual decision-making, including profiling (according to Art. 22 (1) and (4) GDPR).

11. Data subject rights

In addition to your rights to withdraw any consent you may have granted or exercise any opt out option we provide, you may be entitled to exercise some or all of the following rights:

Right of access by the data subject in accordance with Art. 15 GDPR. In particular, you can obtain information about the purposes of processing, categories of personal data, categories of recipients to whom your data has been or will be disclosed, planned storage period, and origin of your data if it was not collected directly from you.
Right to correct inaccurate personal data or complete incomplete data according to Art. 16 GDPR.
Right to obtain deletion of your personal data stored with us in accordance with Art. 17 GDPR, subject to legal or contractual retention periods or other legal obligations or rights which must be observed.
Right to restrict the processing of your personal data in accordance with Art. 18 GDPR in the event that: you contest the accuracy of the data; the processing is unlawful but you oppose its deletion; we no longer need the personal data for the purposes of the processing but you need it for your assertion; it may be relevant to the exercise or defense of legal claims; or you have lodged an objection to the processing in accordance with Art. 21 GDPR.
Right to data portability in accordance with Art. 20 GDPR, to receive the stored personal data concerning you in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format or request the transfer of this data to another responsible party.
Right to lodge a complaint with your competent supervisory authority. Your competent authority is the authority at your usual place of residence or the authority competent for us (see below at section 12).

You have the right to object to all types of processing that are based on Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interests), based on grounds relating to your particular situation, Art. 21(1) GDPR. To the extent we process your personal data pursuant to Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR for direct marketing purposes, you can object to such processing at any time without giving a particular reason.

You may (i) exercise the rights referred to above or (ii) pose any questions or (iii) make any complaints regarding data processing by contacting us here.

12. Contact information

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please email our Data Protection Officer at [email protected], contact us here, or send a letter to:

Data Protection Officer

ResearchGate GmbH

Chausseestr. 20

10115 Berlin, Germany

You can find additional information about security and privacy in our Help Center here.

Representation for data subjects in the UK:

We value your privacy and your rights as a data subject and have therefore appointed our UK subsidiary as our privacy representative and your point of contact. If you want to contact us via our representative or make use of your data subject rights, please contact:

RESEARCHGATE LIMITED

1 The Green, Richmond,

Kemp House 160 City Road

TW9 1PL

UNITED KINGDOM

[email protected]

In the event you still have requests or complaints, please contact the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom.

https://www.datenschutz-berlin.de/
Tel.: +49 30 13889-0
Fax: +49 30 2155050
Further contact details can be found here.