Information governance summary

Purpose and scope

Ref-Check is designed for use in education, research, and professional contexts where clarity, transparency, and predictable system behaviour are essential. Information governance considerations have informed system design from the outset.

Nature of processing

Ref-Check processes submitted documents to identify citations, reference-list entries and associated source information. It provides structured checking, source-verification indicators and supported in-text citation-formatting guidance. Processing for these checks is deterministic and rule-based. Where a user chooses to share a document for feedback, the service also handles the related access and review information.

Data minimisation

The system is designed to minimise unnecessary processing and reuse. Uploaded documents, document previews and reports are held to support checking and ongoing review within the platform. Where Share for Feedback is used, information needed for invitations, access and reviewer contributions is also processed. Uploaded work is not used as a reusable training dataset or to train AI or machine-learning models.

Share for Feedback and document access

Uploaded documents are not made available to other users by default; access is granted when an account holder deliberately uses the platform’s sharing features. With Share for Feedback, a document owner can invite selected people, such as tutors, supervisors, colleagues, editors or peer reviewers, to examine a document and its relevant Ref-Check findings. Sharing is optional and does not make a document publicly available.

An invited reviewer can use the shared review to highlight passages and leave annotations or comments for the document owner. These contributions support human feedback and do not alter the original uploaded document. Access to a shared review is governed by the invitation and the controls available within Ref-Check; owners should check those controls before sharing sensitive material.

Reviewer information and feedback records

To support sharing, Ref-Check may process invitation and recipient details, access-related information, and annotations or comments associated with a review. Review material may be retained alongside the document and its report while the review is available through the service. Users should consider that comments can themselves contain personal or confidential information.

Confidentiality and permission to share

Users must have appropriate authority not only to upload a document but also to share it with a proposed reviewer. This is particularly important for student submissions, unpublished research, confidential reports and manuscripts under journal review. Any applicable institutional, publisher or journal confidentiality and peer-review policies continue to apply; Ref-Check is not a substitute for formal journal review-management or institutional approval processes.

External scholarly verification

Where required to verify references and publication details, Ref-Check may submit limited bibliographic information, such as titles, author names, publication details or DOIs, to external scholarly metadata services. Uploaded documents are not provided to these services.

Use of automated technologies

Ref-Check does not use generative AI or machine-learning models to analyse uploaded work. Its citation and reference checks use structured, explainable rules; uploaded documents are not used to train AI models. Human academic, editorial and professional judgement remains responsible for interpreting findings and shared feedback.

Data storage and hosting

Ref-Check is hosted within a controlled cloud environment. Stored material supports access to documents, saved reports and, where enabled by users, shared reviews and associated feedback. Further information on hosting region, infrastructure controls, retention arrangements and operational safeguards can be requested to support local institutional review.

Logging and monitoring

Limited technical logs may be generated to support system reliability, security, and performance monitoring. These logs are designed to avoid capturing document content and are retained only for operational purposes.

User roles and responsibility

Users are responsible for ensuring they have appropriate rights and authority to upload content and, where applicable, invite other people to review it. Institutions and editorial organisations should consider who is permitted to access material, what personal or confidential information it contains, and how invitations, feedback and document retention fit their policies and applicable data protection requirements.

Change management

Ref-Check documents meaningful system changes through its Updates and release notes. Where changes have potential governance or assessment implications, these are explicitly identified.

Institutional engagement

Ref-Check can provide additional technical and governance information on request to support GDPR reviews, information asset registers and local approval processes. Organisations should separately consider the applicable controller and processor roles, lawful bases, retention requirements, confidentiality arrangements and whether a data protection impact assessment is needed for their intended use. See also our Privacy & data handling information.

Contact

For governance-related queries or requests for additional documentation, please contact us.

Contact: info@ref-check.co.uk