Privacy Policy for Overleaf Citation Assistant

Effective Date: 8/4/2025 

This privacy policy describes how the Overleaf Citation Assistant Chrome Extension ("the Extension") handles user data. The Extension is designed to help users manage and insert BibTeX citations while working in the Overleaf online editor.

1. Data Collection

The Overleaf Citation Assistant is built with user privacy as a top priority. It does not collect any personally identifiable information (PII) from its users. The Extension operates on a principle of local-first data processing, meaning that sensitive user data is handled and stored directly within your browser and is not transmitted to any external servers operated by us.

• Information You Provide: When you upload a .bib file, the Extension parses and stores its contents (citation keys, titles, authors, etc.) directly on your local machine. This data is essential for the Extension's core functionality and is never sent to our servers.

• Search Queries: To provide citation suggestions, the Extension sends search queries to a third-party service (SerpAPI). This data consists of the text you highlight in your Overleaf document. These queries are not linked to any personal identity and are handled by the third-party service as described in section 3.

• No Analytics: We do not use any third-party analytics services (e.g., Google Analytics) to track your usage of the Extension.

2. Data Storage

All data processed by the Overleaf Citation Assistant is stored locally within your Chrome browser's storage (chrome.storage.local). This includes:

• The contents of your .bib file.

• The name of the currently active .bib file.

• A flag indicating whether the welcome message has been shown.

• Cached search results from the third-party API.

This data is never transmitted to our servers or any other servers we control. Its security is therefore managed by your browser's security settings.

3. Third-Party Services

To provide comprehensive citation search functionality, the Extension relies on a third-party service:

• SerpAPI (Google Scholar API): Your search queries (based on the text you highlight) are sent to SerpAPI to fetch Google Scholar results. We have no control over the data handling practices of SerpAPI. We recommend you review SerpAPI's privacy policy for more information on how they handle your data.

4. Your Control Over Data

You have complete control over the data stored by the Extension on your local machine. You can clear all of the data at any time by uninstalling the extension from your browser.

5. Children's Privacy

This Extension is not intended for use by children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect any information from children under 13. If we become aware that we have collected information from a child under 13, we will take steps to delete that information.

6. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the "Effective Date" at the top of the document. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes.

7. Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:

• Email: academicresearchtool@gmail.com

• Select the library you wish to export to BibTex in Zotero

• From Zotero toolbar dropdown menu, select Export Library

• On the next screen, choose format BibTex, and click OK

• Navigate to the directory where you want to save your file, save it as filename.bib

• use the Upload button in the left-hand file panel to drag and drop or select your .bib file from your computer, or use the Add Files icon and choose From Another Project to import it from a shared

• Open: your EndNote library. 

• Select: the references you want to export. You can select multiple references by holding down the Ctrl key (or Cmd on Mac) while clicking. 

• Go to the File menu and select Export. 

• In the export dialog box, choose a location and give your file a name, adding the .bib extension (e.g., myreferences.bib). 

• Set the Save as type to Text File (.txt)*. 

• Under Output style, select BibTeX Export. 

• If BibTeX Export is not in your list, you may need to select Select Another Style…, search for "BibTeX", and add it to your styles. 

• Click Save to generate your BibTeX file.