Research should begin
with clear terms.

Purpose of the Site

Research Idea Registry is a public registry of potential university-level research ideas. It helps contributors phrase, classify, preserve and connect research directions. It is not a research supervisor, ethics committee, publisher, peer-review service, funding platform, recruitment forum or project-execution service.

An idea’s qualification score, provenance level or related-research signal is an automated registry assessment. It is not proof that the idea is novel, correct, safe, feasible, lawful or suitable for a particular degree. Researchers must conduct their own literature review and obtain appropriate academic supervision, permissions and ethics approval.

Acceptance and eligibility

By selecting “Accept terms and continue”, creating or using an account, submitting material, claiming an idea, adding a scholarly note, connecting research, or otherwise using the Site, you accept the version of these Terms then displayed.

You must have the legal capacity to accept these Terms. AI-assisted contribution tools are available only to people aged 18 or older. If you act for an institution or organisation, you confirm that you are authorised to bind it.

Accounts and public attribution

Reading the registry is public. Contributing requires a supported authenticated account. You are responsible for activity performed through your account and for keeping access to it secure.

The Site momentarily uses the email supplied by the authentication provider to create a protected, site-specific contributor code. Registry records store and display that code rather than your account email or profile name. Do not put your identity or contact details in public content.

Your contributions

You remain responsible for ideas, limited source excerpts, scholarly notes, links, citations and other material you submit (“Contributions”). You confirm that your Contributions are accurate to the best of your knowledge, lawful, and do not infringe another person’s copyright, privacy, confidentiality or other rights.

Do not submit personal, confidential, proprietary, embargoed, restricted or sensitive information. For paper-derived ideas, submit only the limited passage reasonably necessary to identify the research direction, together with an accurate source and location. Do not bypass a paywall or provide material you are not entitled to use.

You retain any rights you hold in your Contributions. You grant the Operator a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, reproduce, format, classify, translate, academically rephrase, moderate, publicly display, distribute and preserve your Contributions, and to create and display the AI-assisted research brief and record history needed to operate and improve the registry. This licence continues while the Contribution remains in the registry and for reasonable backup, integrity and legal-retention periods.

Submitting an idea does not give you ownership of the underlying subject, prevent independent research by others, or create an exclusive reservation. Other people may study similar questions.

AI and automated decisions

The Site uses automated systems to improve natural-language search, edit wording, classify disciplines, assess registry readiness, verify source metadata, find related scholarly records and screen scholarly notes. There is no routine human moderation queue. Automated results can be incomplete, biased or wrong.

Natural-language searches and text submitted to the AI assistant are sent to Google Gemini. Under the unpaid-service terms currently used by the Site, Google may use submitted content and generated responses to improve its products, and human reviewers may process them. Academic search terms may also be sent to services such as Crossref, Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex. Do not submit personal, sensitive, confidential, embargoed or proprietary information.

The Site may automatically admit, request revision of, or reject a Contribution. A high-confidence scholarly note may correct narrow classification metadata or create a separate linked idea, but it may not overwrite the original contributor’s central research question or intent.

Research signals and connected outputs

Marking an idea as “being researched” is a public, non-exclusive signal. The Site does not collect a private study note. The signal creates no ownership, collaboration, supervision, funding or delivery obligation.

Completed research is connected through a lawful public DOI, repository or publication link. Research Idea Registry does not accept a new copy of the research file, peer review or endorse the output, and may remove unsafe, unlawful, misleading or infringing links.

Scholarly notes

Scholarly notes must stay within the registry’s purpose: a focused correction, supporting source, classification suggestion, researchability or ethics concern, duplicate notice, clarification, or distinct research direction. They are not comments for general debate, replies, project execution, recruitment or promotion.

You may not edit another contributor’s original idea. Accepted notes remain attributed, and automated screening may reject material that falls outside the Site’s purpose.

Prohibited use

You may not use the Site to submit or distribute unlawful, deceptive, defamatory, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, privacy-invasive or infringing content; personal accusations; spam or advertising disguised as research; malware; fabricated citations or evidence; instructions intended to manipulate the automated systems; or content that predetermines a conclusion while presenting itself as neutral research.

You may not impersonate another person, compromise accounts, probe security, disrupt the Site, evade limits, or make automated requests at a rate that degrades the service. Reasonable scholarly indexing and research use are welcome; high-volume or commercial reuse requires prior permission unless a published licence or API expressly permits it.

Copyright complaints and takedown

If you believe public material on the Site infringes your copyright or another legal right, use the process in the Copyright and Takedown Policy. A valid notice should identify the protected work, the specific Research Idea Registry URL, the rights holder, the basis of the complaint, and reliable contact details.

The Operator may restrict access while a good-faith complaint is assessed, ask for supporting information, notify the contributor, preserve necessary evidence, remove unlawful material, and act against repeated infringement. Knowingly false or abusive notices are prohibited.

Privacy and data handling

The Site is designed to minimise personal information. It stores a protected contributor code instead of the raw sign-in email, does not request profile names, and has no public user profiles, behavioural analytics or advertising cookies. Contributions, public citations, provider logs and automated services still involve some processing. Service providers may process information outside South Africa. Further details appear in the Privacy Notice.

Where the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (“POPIA”) applies, you may request access to, correction or deletion of eligible personal information, object to certain processing, or complain to South Africa’s Information Regulator. Public scholarly records may be retained where necessary for attribution, freedom of expression, research integrity, legal obligations or the rights of others.

If advertising or non-essential analytics are introduced, the Site will first reassess the data model and provide the additional disclosures and choices required at that time.

Intellectual property

The Site’s branding, design, software, editorial framework and compilation are owned by or licensed to the Operator. Third-party publications, metadata, names and links remain subject to their respective rights and terms. Except for the licence you grant above, these Terms do not transfer ownership between you and the Operator.

Availability, changes and enforcement

We may change, suspend or discontinue features; impose fair-use or AI limits; correct technical errors; reject or remove Contributions; restrict accounts; or preserve evidence of misuse where reasonably necessary to protect the registry, users or legal rights.

We may update these Terms. When a material change is made, the Site may require acceptance of a new version before further use. The effective date and version appear at the top of this page.

Disclaimers and liability

The Site is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Operator does not warrant uninterrupted availability, accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, publication, indexing, research novelty or any academic outcome.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Operator is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss arising from use of the Site, reliance on an idea or automated output, research undertaken, unavailable services, loss of data, or third-party content. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability or rights that cannot lawfully be excluded, including applicable consumer and data-protection rights.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, without excluding mandatory protections that apply where you live. The parties will first attempt to resolve a dispute in good faith before approaching a court or other competent forum.

Operator contact

The owner of Research Idea Registry is responsible for operating the Site. Legal, privacy, copyright and service enquiries may be sent to info@bdfpartners.co.za.