Terms of Service

DoctorateScout is a tool that ranks open PhD positions against your background. By using it, you agree to the terms on this page. They are written in plain language so you can actually read them.

DoctorateScout aggregates publicly listed PhD positions from university job boards and uses a large language model to rank them against the profile and preferences you give us. We are not the employer for any listing. We are not the university. We do not handle your application.

You must be at least 18 years old to use the service. You must use your real identity when signing in. You are responsible for keeping your account secure; if you think someone else has access to it, contact us and delete it from Settings.

Our Privacy Policy covers what we collect, how we use it, and how to delete it. By using the service, you authorise us to process your profile and preferences for the purpose of matching you against PhD positions.

You retain ownership of the content you provide (resume, preferences, notes on saved positions). You grant us a limited license to process that content solely to run the service for you.

The PhD positions we show are aggregated from publicly available university job boards and feeds. We display them for informational purposes only. We are not the employer and we are not your recruiter. Application processes, deadlines, funding terms, eligibility, and any decisions about you are entirely up to the university hosting the position.

We do our best to keep listings fresh, but they can change or be withdrawn between updates. Always verify the details on the university’s own page before applying.

Match rankings, profile summaries, gap analysis, and any other AI-generated text on DoctorateScout are suggestions produced by a large language model. They are not academic advice, career counselling, or guarantees of admission or funding. Use them as a starting point and apply your own judgement.

You agree not to:

• Use the service for anyone other than yourself, or with falsified credentials.
• Automate access to our application or data feeds without permission, or attempt to circumvent rate limits.
• Reverse-engineer our prompts, prompts injection, or intentionally trigger unsafe model output.
• Resell, republish, or commercially redistribute the position rankings or any aggregated data shown to you.
• Attack, abuse, or interfere with the service or other users.

DoctorateScout is an evolving project. We may add, change, or remove features. We may change which sources we aggregate. If we make a change that materially reduces the service you signed up for, we will say so on this page.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings. That deletes every row of yours from our database.

We can suspend or close accounts that violate these terms, that we believe are being used to abuse the service, or that we are required to act on by law. Where reasonable we will tell you why.

The service is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. We do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any specific position, ranking, or insight will be accurate or current.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, DoctorateScout and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any direct damages will not exceed the amount you paid us in the prior twelve months, which is zero unless you are on a paid plan.

We may update these terms over time. Material changes will be announced by updating the date at the top of this page. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept the new terms; if you do not, please delete your account.

Questions about these terms? Email hello@doctoratescout.com.