Privacy
Last updated 30 September 2026
- We store something about you only when you save a profile or join an event page, and tick the box. Signing in alone stores nothing.
- People on the same event guest list see your name, institution, research interests and ORCID iD, and your photo only if you chose to show it there. Nobody else sees anything.
- You can change or delete any of it whenever you like. We keep it until you do, or until your account has gone unused for three years.
- If you are on a conference programme, your name, institution, role and talk appear as the organiser published them. Ask us and we will take them off.
- One cookie to keep you signed in, and nothing that follows you around. No analytics, no ads. Nothing is sold.
Who is responsible
Zekun Ling, for Not et al., a not-for-profit initiative that is being set up. For the purposes of the GDPR, Zekun Ling is the data controller. Contact: contact@notetal.com.
Signing in
You sign in with ORCID. ORCID tells us your ORCID iD and your name, and nothing else; we ask for the narrowest permission ORCID offers (“authenticate”) and do not keep the access token. One ORCID iD is one account, so nobody else can sign in as you. Signing in on its own stores nothing on our side.
Your profile
Your profile is the card every event starts from: your name, institution and research interests. The first time, we fill it in from your public ORCID record (your name, current employer and keywords, or else the main topics of the works you list); you can change every field before saving. Only you see your profile page. You can also add a photo. It is resized on your device before upload, stored with your profile, and shown only on guest lists where you tick “Show my photo”.
What we store when you join an event
- Your card for that event: name, institution, research interests, and whether to show your photo. It starts from your profile, and you can change it for that event alone.
- For suggesting people to meet: the research topics of the works listed on your ORCID record, taken from OpenAlex, an open index of research. They are never shown to anyone.
- When you joined. If this is your first card, it also becomes your profile.
We store this to show your card to others on the same guest list, to let you look the list up again later, and to suggest people to meet. The legal basis is your consent (GDPR Article 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time by leaving the event or deleting your account.
Who can see it
Only people who have also joined the same event page, and only your card and your ORCID iD. The number of people who have joined is public; who they are is not.
Where it is kept
The site and its database run on Cloudflare. The database is restricted to Cloudflare’s EU jurisdiction. We keep no access logs and use no analytics. When you sign in or join, our server, not your browser, asks ORCID for your public record and OpenAlex for the topics of your listed works; only your iD and those DOIs are sent. To stop abuse, join attempts and photo uploads are limited per network address for one minute; addresses are not stored.
How long
Guest lists stay after the event, so you can come back and look up who was there. Your card stays on a guest list until you leave it or delete your account. If your account goes unused (no sign-in) for three years, we delete it together with your profile, photo and every card.
In your browser
When you sign in, we set one cookie. It holds your ORCID iD and name, signed so it can’t be forged, and it keeps you signed in for up to 30 days or until you sign out. For the few minutes of the sign-in itself, a second cookie guards against forged sign-ins. Neither is used to track you, and there are no other cookies. If sign-in with ORCID is ever unavailable and you join by pasting your iD instead, two small keys are kept in your browser’s local storage: one lets you see the list again, the other lets you delete your entry. If you clear them, email us and we will delete your entry.
People on a conference programme
Event pages list names, institutions, roles and talk titles from the organiser’s published programme. To suggest speakers to participants, we also use public data from OpenAlex about speakers’ published work. That data is never shown. The legal basis is legitimate interest (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): helping participants find talks relevant to their work, using only information that is already public. If you are on a programme and would like to be left out of suggestions, or removed, email us and we will do it.
Your rights
You can see and correct everything we hold about you on your profile page and your event cards, and delete it all with “Delete my account”. You can also ask us by email to see, correct or delete it, object to its use, or withdraw consent, and you can complain to the data protection authority in your country.