Privacy and data use

What we collect

• Your name, university email, and faculty or discipline, from your profile.
• When you apply to a project: your CV, motivation letter, year of study, academic average, and any message you add.
• A profile picture, if you add one. It is shown beside your name to signed in members who can already see your name, and never on a page for someone who is signed out. It is stored as a small copy with the photo's embedded details, such as location, removed. Removing it deletes the file.
• If you are in touch with the people running the platform about its work, as a circle coordinator, a professor, a partner or someone at the university: your name, how to reach you, and a short note of each conversation. The platform's team reads mail sent to research@umfclujresearch.org and keeps the contacts it gathers in the same notes. Only administrators and the team's secretaries see these notes, and they are deleted when you ask.
• On the platform's library page, the accounts you mark as yours are visible only to you, and your internet address is compared with the university network's and never stored. Each resource you open from that page is counted with your faculty, your role and whether you were on the university network, never with your name or your account.
• What you type in the library page's search box goes to the provider you chose; the platform keeps only which provider you searched, never the words. A DOI typed there is looked up at OpenAlex (or Crossref, when OpenAlex has no record of it) from the platform's server, and is not kept.
• If you ask for a seat on a licence from the library page, your request is a personal record that only you and the administrators can see.
• If you sign up for a training session, only you can see your sign up; whoever posts the sessions sees how many signed up for each, never who.
• If you apply to join the team that helps run the platform: your CV, your letter, your WhatsApp number and contact email, the hours you can give and, for writing and promo, a link to your work, with the administrators' notes from your interview. Only administrators see them.

How it is used

• To connect students with research projects and let professors review applicants for their own projects.
• Professors only see applications submitted to their own projects. Administrators manage the platform and approvals.
• If you join a research circle, your name and year of study are visible to the other members of that circle, to its leads, and to the professor who supervises it. They are not visible to anyone else.
• If you are accepted onto a project, your name and year of study are visible to the other accepted students on it. Your email address is visible only to the professor running the project, to the student named project manager and to administrators, so the team can be organised. Your application, CV and letter stay with the professor.

Why we may process it

Your profile, your applications and your circle memberships are processed to provide the service you asked for when you created your account (article 6(1)(b) of the GDPR). Keeping the platform running safely and reviewing what is published on it rests on the platform's legitimate interest (article 6(1)(f)). Anything optional, such as joining a research circle or saving a CV for later, is processed because you asked for it.

Where it is stored

Data and uploaded files are stored with our hosting provider in the European Union, protected so that only the people described above can access them.

Four services process data on behalf of COAUCTOR SRL, bound by contract to these purposes only: Supabase (the database and files, Frankfurt), Vercel (the website itself, Frankfurt), Resend (email delivery) and Algolia (the search box, European Union). Algolia holds a copy of the circle pages with their meetings and outputs and of the open projects, all of which only signed in members see, and of the library's published lists of online books and journals; the search box answers only signed in sessions holding a short lived key. Algolia receives the words you type into the search box and nothing that identifies you. Signing in uses the university's Microsoft account; Microsoft confirms who you are and receives nothing about your applications.

How long we keep it

At the end of each academic year the platform deletes applications to projects that have closed, files included. An application you withdraw is deleted at once. Your profile, and a CV you saved for reuse, are kept while your account exists; ask, and both are deleted. An application to join the team is deleted six months after it is declined, CV included, and at once if you withdraw it.

Your rights

You can ask to see the data we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict how it is used, or object to it. Write to research@umfclujresearch.org and we answer within a month. If you think your data is handled unlawfully you can complain to the Romanian supervisory authority, ANSPDCP (dataprotection.ro).

Cookies and measurement

The site sets only the cookies it needs to work: your session after sign in, and your choice of language, theme and, for administrators, view. None of them follow you to other sites, which is why there is no cookie banner. Visits are counted with Vercel's analytics, which keeps no cookie and stores no identifier: we see how many people read a page or send a form, never who.

On the platform's library page, one more cookie remembers your answer to where you are, on the university network or off campus, so the page offers the right way in.

When you sign in with a university address, one more cookie keeps that address on your device, so the next sign in can fill it in for you on Microsoft's page. It is deleted when you sign out.

Your choices

• You can withdraw an application at any time, which deletes the files you uploaded for it.
• To remove your account or request deletion of your data, email research@umfclujresearch.org.

Who to write to

COAUCTOR SRL (in formation), UMF Cluj Research, research@umfclujresearch.org. This notice was last updated on 26 October 2026.