Privacy Policy

1. Who this policy applies to

This policy describes how FormatMyManuscript.com (“FormatMyManuscript,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) handles information in connection with FormatMyManuscript.com and the manuscript formatting service (the“Service”). It applies to visitors to our website and to registered users.

2. The categories of information we handle

We deliberately separate manuscript content from operational data. They are collected differently, used differently, and kept for different lengths of time.

2.1 Manuscript content

This is the material you enter into the formatting form: manuscript title, author names and credentials, institutional affiliations, corresponding-author details, abstract, keywords, section text, references, tables, and any other manuscript field the form offers.

Where it lives while you work. As you complete the form, your in-progress manuscript is saved in your own web browser, using your browser’s local storage. It is stored on your device, under your control, and is not transmitted to us merely by being saved there.

When it reaches our servers. When you ask the Service to validate your manuscript or to generate a formatted document, the manuscript data you have entered is transmitted over an encrypted connection to our application programming interface at api.formatmymanuscript.com, where our formatting rules are applied and the document is produced. This transmission is necessary for the Service to work.

What happens to it there. Our document-generation requests are designed to be stateless: the manuscript is processed to produce your document and the resulting file is returned to you, without being written to our database as a stored manuscript record. We do not operate a searchable manuscript repository, we do not browse manuscripts, and no employee reviews your manuscript in the ordinary course of providing the Service

What we cannot promise. Data that passes through a web service can appear transiently in server memory, in temporary files created during document generation, in encrypted transport buffers, and — if something goes wrong — in error diagnostics. We configure our systems to avoid recording manuscript content in logs and error reports, and we describe our log practices in Section 2.6. We cannot guarantee that no fragment of manuscript content will ever appear in a diagnostic record, and we do not make that promise.

2.2 Data stored in your browser

The Service stores information in your browser’s local storage so you can leave and come back to a draft. This currently includes your in-progress manuscript and your position in the form. Your browser also stores the session token that keeps you signed in.

Information stored in your browser stays on your device until you delete it, you clear your browser’s site data, the application removes or replaces it, or your browser expires it. It is not a copy we hold. Clearing your browser data for formatmymanuscript.com will remove an in-progress draft, and we will not be able to restore it.

2.3 Account information

To use the formatting tools you create an account. We collect and store your email address, a securely hashed password (we never see or store your password in readable form), your email-verification status, and account timestamps. Our authentication and database provider is Supabase.

2.4 Subscription, payment information, and Refund Policy

If you purchase a subscription, payment is processed by Stripe. Stripe collects and processes your payment card or bank details directly; we do not receive or store your full card number. We receive and store subscription and transaction records — plan, price, status, dates, and a payment reference — so that we can provide access, handle billing questions, and meet tax and accounting obligations. Stripe processes your payment data as an independent controller under its own privacy policy.

2.5 Generated documents

The Service produces a document file and returns it to you for download. Temporary files may be created during generation and are deleted afterward. We do not maintain a library of documents generated for you, and we generally cannot re-send a document you have lost.

2.6 Server logs, diagnostics, and security information

Like every internet service, our hosting and application layers record technical information about requests. This may include IP address, request time, the URL or endpoint requested, HTTP method and status code, response time, user-agent string, and error information. Logs are used to operate the Service, investigate outages and bugs, detect abuse and attacks, and meet legal obligations.

We configure our logging to record request metadata rather than request bodies, so that manuscript content is not written into logs.

2.7 Product analytics

We measure how the Service is used so we can improve it. We use Vercel Web Analytics, which is designed to work without cookies and without cross-site tracking. According to Vercel’s documentation, each data point may include: the timestamp, the page URL and route pattern, the referring site, filtered query parameters, approximate geolocation (country, region, city), browser and version, operating system and version, and device type. Visitors are counted using a hash derived from the incoming request rather than a persistent identifier, and Vercel discards that value after 24 hours. We may choose to employ cookies, upon which the user will be notified.

Analytics tell us things like which pages are visited, which journals and article types are chosen, how far people get in the form, whether a document generation succeeds or fails, and how fast pages load.

Analytics are not manuscript content. We do not send manuscript body text, abstracts, references, author names, manuscript titles, tables, or any other manuscript field to our analytics provider, and we do not design analytics events to capture them. Because analytics records the page URL, we do not put manuscript information into URLs.

If we add another analytics or product-telemetry provider, we will name it here before or when it goes live.

2.8 Support, contact, and feedback

If you email us or use a contact or feedback form, we receive your email address, your message, and anything else you choose to include — which may include manuscript details if you send them to help us reproduce a problem. We use this to respond to you, fix bugs, and improve journal templates. Support email is delivered through info@formatmymanuscript.com.

If you submit in-product feedback after generating a document, we record the feedback along with the journal and article type it relates to.

3. Why we process each category

We do not use your manuscript content for advertising, for profiling you, or for any purpose other than providing the Service and, where you have asked us to, resolving a support issue.

4. Artificial intelligence

The formatting engine applies explicitly programmed rules for each journal and article type. It is not a large language model, and it does not read, interpret, summarize, rewrite, or evaluate the substance of your manuscript. We do not use your manuscript content to train, fine-tune, evaluate, or develop artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models, and we do not provide your manuscript content to any third party for those purposes.

We do not use your manuscript content to train, fine-tune, evaluate, or develop artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models, and we do not provide your manuscript content to any third party for those purposes.

If this ever changes, we will change this section first. Introducing any feature that uses an AI model to process manuscript content would require us to update this policy, describe the feature and any vendor involved, and — for content you have already provided — obtain your consent before using it in a new way.

5. How we share information

We do not sell personal information or manuscript content, we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not disclose it to third parties for their own marketing or model-training purposes.

We share information only with:

• Service providers who operate the Service on our behalf, limited to what they need: our website hosting and analytics provider, our authentication and database provider, our payment processor, our backend hosting provider, and our email provider. These providers are bound by contract to process information only to provide their services to us.
• Legal and safety recipients, where we reasonably believe disclosure is required by law or valid legal process, or is necessary to investigate fraud or abuse, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of FormatMyManuscript, our users, or others. We will limit any such disclosure to what is reasonably necessary and, where we are legally permitted and it is practical to do so, we will notify the affected user.
• A successor, if we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets. We will give notice in this policy before your information becomes subject to a materially different policy.

6. How long we keep information

Where we are required to keep information longer to comply with a legal obligation, resolve a dispute, or enforce our agreements, we will do so.

7. Cookies, local storage, and similar technologies

These are different things, and we treat them differently.

Strictly necessary storage. We use browser storage and, where applicable, a session cookie to keep you signed in and to keep the application working. This is required for the Service to function and cannot be turned off while you are using an account.

Application local storage. As described in Section 2.2, we store your in-progress manuscript and form position in your browser’s local storage. This is a convenience feature so you do not lose work. It is on your device; it is not transmitted to us by virtue of being stored.

Analytics. Our analytics provider is configured to operate without cookies and without cross-site identifiers (Section 2.7).

Because we do not yet use advertising or cross-context tracking technologies, no consent banner is required under the U.S. laws that currently apply to us. You can clear or block browser storage at any time through your browser settings; blocking it will prevent you from staying signed in and will cause in-progress drafts to be lost.

8. Security

We use industry-standard measures appropriate to a service of our size, including encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS), hashed password storage, authenticated access to the formatting API, access controls on our administrative tools, and reputable infrastructure providers.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security. Please do not enter information into the Service that requires security or contractual controls beyond those described here — see Section 7 of our Terms and Conditions for the categories we ask you not to submit, including protected health information and other individually identifiable patient data.

If we experience a security incident affecting personal information, we will notify affected users and any required authorities as and when required by applicable law, including Minn. Stat. § 325E.61.

9. Your choices and your privacy rights

Whatever your location, you may:

• Access and correct your account information from your account settings, or by contacting us;
• Delete your account and the account information associated with it, by using the procedure present on the website. We will delete or de-identify it within 30 days, except where we must keep records for legal, tax, security, or fraud-prevention purposes;
• Delete your locally stored draft yourself at any time, by clearing site data in your browser;
• Ask what we hold about you and receive a copy in a portable format;
• Opt out of non-essential email using the unsubscribe link in any marketing message (we will still send transactional messages about your account, purchases, and renewals);
• Raise a concern with us at info@formatmymanuscript.com.

We honor these requests for all users voluntarily, regardless of whether a specific privacy statute currently applies to us. We may need to verify your identity — normally by asking you to make the request from the email address on your account — before acting on a request, and we will respond within 45 days. If we decline a request, we will tell you why, and you may ask us to reconsider by replying to our response.

Sale, targeted advertising, and profiling.We do not sell personal information, we do not process it for targeted or cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not use it for profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. There is accordingly nothing for you to opt out of in those categories, and we will honor a browser opt-out signal such as Global Privacy Control as a request not to sell or share, consistent with that position.

State-specific rights.Some U.S. state privacy laws give residents specific rights and require companies to describe them. Based on our current size and practices, those laws do not presently impose obligations on us, so this policy describes the rights we provide voluntarily rather than claiming a statutory framework we are not subject to. If a state law becomes applicable to us, we will update this policy and describe the applicable rights, including any appeal process, before or when that happens.

10. Children

The Service is a professional research tool intended for adults. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, contact info@formatmymanuscript.com and we will delete it. See our Terms for the minimum age to hold an account.

11. Users outside the United States

We operate the Service from the United States, and our providers process information in the United States and, depending on the provider, in other countries. If you use the Service from outside the United States, you understand that your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy laws may differ from those in your country.

We currently direct the Service to users in the United States. We do not currently offer the Service in local languages or currencies for other regions, and this policy is written to U.S. standards. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Canada, or another region with a comprehensive privacy law and you have a question or request about your information, contact us at info@formatmymanuscript.com and we will handle it in good faith.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If a change is material — for example, a new category of information, a new purpose, a new type of provider, or any use of manuscript content beyond what is described here — we will update the “Last Updated” date, post a notice in the Service, and notify registered users by email before the change takes effect. Where a material change would apply to information you have already given us, we will ask for your consent rather than applying it retroactively.

13. Contact us

Trilok Technologies, Inc
3739 William Way, Independence, MN 55359
General Contact: info@formatmymanuscript.com
Website: https://formatmymanuscript.com