Effective 28 October 2026 · Developer: KStats Lab (kapilstatslab@gmail.com)
ScholarGauge has no server and collects nothing about you. It is a browser extension that adds journal quartiles, citation facts and study-design tags to Google Scholar™ pages.
After installation, ScholarGauge shows what it reads and sends, and looks nothing up until you choose Agree and turn on. You can switch look-ups off at any time in its Options.
Only Google Scholar pages (search results and profile pages): paper titles, authors, journal names, years and citation counts as shown on the page.
| Information | Sent to | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Paper titles and first-author surnames from the Scholar page | Crossref (api.crossref.org) | Find each paper's DOI |
| DOIs of those papers | OpenAlex (api.openalex.org) | Citations, field percentile, retraction status, authors, abstract |
| Words you type into the Research lab (Topic map, Has it been done?) | OpenAlex (api.openalex.org) | Search papers on a topic |
| Your e-mail address, only if you enter one | Crossref (api.crossref.org) | Faster service ("polite pool") |
| Your OpenAlex API key, only if you enter one | OpenAlex (api.openalex.org) | Larger daily allowance |
| DOIs of a profile's papers and your Web of Science key — only if you add that key in Options | Clarivate (api.clarivate.com) | Count the papers in the Web of Science Core Collection |
All requests use HTTPS. Nothing is sent to the developer or to anyone else. There is no analytics, advertising, tracking, profiling, or sale or transfer of data.
Your settings (consent, OpenAlex key, Crossref e-mail, Web of Science key, switches), any SCImago files you import, cached look-ups (title → DOI for 4 months, OpenAlex records for 2 weeks, Web of Science answers for 30 days, searches for 1 day) and a count of today's requests are stored only in your browser's extension storage. Remove them with Options → Clear cache, or by removing the extension.
Crossref and OpenAlex are public scholarly databases with their own terms and privacy policies. Clarivate's Web of Science API is used only with a key you obtain from Clarivate yourself, under Clarivate's terms; ScholarGauge asks Chrome for access to api.clarivate.com only when you save such a key, and you can withdraw it with Options → Remove key. The journal data (SCImago Journal & Country Rank) is bundled in the extension; no request is made to SCImago. ScholarGauge is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, SCImago, Elsevier, Clarivate, Crossref or OpenAlex. Google Scholar is a trademark of Google LLC.
The use of information received from these services follows the Chrome Web Store User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements: data is used only to show the facts described above, inside your browser.
Any change to these practices will be described here with a new date, and shown in the extension, before it takes effect.
KStats Lab · kapilstatslab@gmail.com