Acceptable use
Scholiad is intended for individual scholarly research and personal academic job/fellowship/funding searching within the humanities and social science scope. You agree not to:
- Use Scholiad for commercial scraping or competitive aggregation - Operate automated bulk-download or crawler workflows against Scholiad APIs or web surfaces - Resell, sublicense, or redistribute opportunity data - Use Scholiad to harass, defraud, or impersonate other users - Reverse-engineer or extract Scholiad's matching models
Account terms
- One account per natural person. Scholiad does not currently offer shared or institutional accounts; to discuss institutional access, contact [email protected]. - You are responsible for credential confidentiality and account activity - Accounts may be terminated for Terms violation, fraudulent payment, or prolonged inactivity (24+ months without sign-in, 30-day notice) - Account transfer requires prior written approval from Scholiad
Pricing tier mechanics
Scholiad offers a tiered pricing model documented on the public pricing page: free tier with limited scan cadence/match volume, paid tiers (Plus and Premium) with expanded capacity + AI advisor + priority recomputation, and an alumni transition discount window per the alumni-transition policy. Tier changes take effect immediately for upgrades; next billing cycle for downgrades.
Subscription lifecycle
- Billing: monthly or annual (selectable at signup); auto-renew unless cancelled - Cancellation: anytime via account settings; access continues through end of current billing period - Refund (plan-type structured): - Monthly (Plus / Premium) and Alumni: cancel anytime; access continues through the end of the already-paid period, which is not refunded (partial periods are not prorated). A first-time subscriber who cancels within 48 hours of the first-ever charge AND has not used any AI-assisted feature receives a full refund of that charge. - Annual (Plus / Premium): a first-time subscriber may request a full refund within 30 days of the first charge, provided the AI-assisted features have not been substantially used; after 30 days the annual term is non-refundable, and cancellation stops the next auto-renewal. - Substantial AI use (which ends full-refund eligibility) means submitting at least one AI-powered request or consuming any AI credit — a fit appraisal or match analysis; a CV, cover-letter, or research-statement review; a portfolio coherence audit; or a venue recommendation. Browsing, viewing Prime listings, Posting at a Glance, and email alerts never affect eligibility. EU/EEA/UK consumers keep the statutory 14-day right of withdrawal (proportionate to the unused portion where the service was used). Full policy: /refund - Failed payment: 3-attempt retry over 7 days; downgrade to free tier after 14 days unpaid
Substantive disclaimers
Scholiad is an aggregation tool. We do not guarantee that every opportunity is currently open or available, that deadlines match the source's most recent update (deadlines are best-effort, refreshed on scan cadence), that source URLs remain valid, or that match recommendations result in employment/funding/fellowship offers.
Scholiad is not an employment agency or recruiter. Application decisions rest entirely with the issuing institution.
Match scoring and AI advisor outputs
The Profile Match Score provided by Scholiad reflects a comparison of the user's professional profile against the stated requirements of the academic posting. This score measures profile-requirement alignment only. It does not represent, predict, or imply any probability of the user being selected, shortlisted, invited to interview, or receiving an offer. Hiring outcomes depend on the full applicant pool, selection committee preferences, institutional factors, and other variables outside Scholiad's knowledge or control. No score or assessment provided by Scholiad constitutes a representation that the user will obtain academic employment.
Scholiad's AI advisor features — CV gap analysis, CV tailoring suggestions, cover-letter feedback, research-statement review, dual-source CV gap analysis, and portfolio coherence audit — provide structural feedback on drafts you have written. Scholiad does not generate application materials from scratch; each of these features requires you to submit your own draft as input. Venue recommendation is a separate, opt-in "where to publish and present" feature that suggests relevant calls for papers and venues for the research you describe, grounded in a vetted catalog; it is advisory and never a prediction of acceptance. All of this feedback is grounded in a curated handbook of academic-search advice with documented source citations. Suggestions are advisory; you keep full editorial control of your final materials.
Scholiad preserves an audit trail of each AI advisor interaction: your original draft and the AI's structural feedback — and, when you submit a revised draft, that revision alongside them. You may export this trail at any time and share it with advisors, dissertation committees, or institutional review bodies. The trail is tamper-evident and permanent: once an interaction is recorded it cannot be retroactively deleted, which protects the integrity of your revision history. (Where a deletion right applies, the trail is purged together with your other data — see the Privacy Policy.)
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Scholiad's total liability arising from or related to these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amount paid by you in the twelve months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred Canadian dollars (CAD 100). Scholiad is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, including loss of opportunity, lost employment, or lost funding awards. This limitation does not apply to liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law.
Dispute resolution
- Governing law: the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of
Canada applicable therein.
- Informal resolution first: please contact [email protected]
to attempt informal resolution before initiating formal proceedings
- Formal arbitration: disputes not resolved informally within 60
days will be resolved by binding arbitration seated in Toronto, Ontario,
under the Arbitration Rules of the ADR Institute of Canada (ADRIC).
- Class action waiver: arbitration is conducted on an individual
basis; no class arbitration. Nothing in this section prevents you from
filing a complaint with a data-protection authority or any other
regulator with jurisdiction over you.
Automated processing and transparency
Scholiad uses automated processing — including AI-assisted feedback on application materials, automated job-posting matching, and automated relevance scoring — to provide its services. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (Article 22) and equivalent jurisdictional protections, users are entitled to meaningful information about the logic involved in this automated processing.
The logic of Scholiad's match scoring: each job posting is parsed into structured requirement signals (degree level, discipline, keywords, deadline, institution type, geographic location). The user's CV is parsed into a parallel structure. A score is computed by comparing requirement signals to CV signals across multiple dimensions. The score is not a probability of selection; it is a similarity measurement between two structured representations.
The logic of Scholiad's AI advisor features: each user-authored draft is sent to a large-language-model AI provider (the specific provider is a configurable setting) along with the target posting's text and relevant entries from Scholiad's curated handbook of academic-search advice. The AI returns structured feedback citing specific posting text and handbook entries. The AI is instructed to decline rather than fabricate when grounding evidence is insufficient.
The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, phased into application through 2026–2027) sets requirements for AI systems used in employment contexts. Scholiad operates as a job-seeker tool that gives structural feedback to applicants — not as a system that filters or ranks candidates for employers. To the extent any such classification applies, Scholiad meets Article 13 transparency standards regardless: this document, the AI-integrity onboarding step, and per-feature audit-trail export together give you enough information to understand how the system works and what it produces. To ask about any automated output, contact [email protected].
Users may opt out of automated processing under jurisdictional rights frameworks. To request manual review of a Scholiad output or to exercise GDPR Article 22 rights, contact [email protected].
Modifications
We may modify these Terms from time to time. For material changes (e.g., new fees, changes to liability, changes to dispute resolution), we will provide 30 days' advance notice via email and in-app notification. You may cancel your subscription before changes take effect if you do not agree. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
Termination
- By you: at any time via account deletion (which initiates the Privacy Policy 30-day soft-delete window) - By Scholiad with cause: immediate termination for material Terms violation, fraudulent payment, or legal compulsion - By Scholiad for convenience: 90 days' advance notice; pro-rata refund of any prepaid subscription fees
Upon termination, your access ends and your data enters the soft- delete window per the Privacy Policy. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (Limitation of Liability, Dispute Resolution, Definitions) survive.
Definitions
- User: any natural person who has created a Scholiad account - Subscriber: a User on a paid pricing tier - Platform infrastructure: the underlying opportunity database, data sources, and matching technology that Scholiad maintains to deliver the service - Aggregation: Scholiad's process of collecting, consolidating, and presenting opportunity data from multiple sources, including removing duplicate listings - Match: an opportunity surfaced to a User via Scholiad's matching process, with relevance score and rationale - Tier: a level of paid access with defined limits and features (see the public pricing page)
## Cross-references
- Privacy Policy (/privacy)
- Cookie Policy (/cookies)
- Pricing (the public pricing page)
Version 1.0 · 2026