Privacy, terms and attribution

Last reviewed 12 October 2026 · ISEF rules cycle 2026–2027

This is a plain account of how the system behaves, written from its own source code — not a legal opinion. Before ISEF Forms is used by schools outside a single pilot, the attribution question in the last section must be settled in writing with the Society for Science, and these terms reviewed by a lawyer in the jurisdiction where the operator is established.

Privacy

What is stored

Everything the system holds lives in twelve tables on one server. In plain terms:

About a person — name, email address, the roles granted to them and where those roles reach. A password is never stored; only a scrypt hash of it.
About a project — its title, the student's name, the answers to the scope questions, and the values typed into each form.
Files you attach — research plans, abstracts, letters, and whatever else a form requires.
Signatures — the signer's name, their email address, the time, any note they left, and the signature image if they drew or typed one.
A record of actions — who changed what, and when.
Sessions — the address and browser of each device signed in, so you can see them and sign them out.

Where it goes

Nowhere else. The system makes no outbound request except to send an email, and only when email has been configured by the operator. There is no analytics script, no advertising, no third-party font or stylesheet: every asset on every page is served from this server alone. Nothing is sold, shared or used to train anything.

What a signing link reveals

Someone sent a link to sign one form is a stranger to the project, and the link treats them as one. It carries the student's given name only, the form's official name, and what is being asked of them. It does not carry the project's title, the student's surname, the project's identifier, its other forms, or anyone else working on it. The link covers that one form, stops working on a date shown on the page, and cannot be used again once used.

Deletion

Nothing in this system is destroyed by an ordinary action. A project is archived and can be brought back exactly as it was; a withdrawn role and a declined signature are recorded rather than erased. That is deliberate — an official file must be able to show what happened to it. To have your personal data erased outright, ask the administrator who invited you; the operator of this installation, not the software, answers such requests.

Children

ISEF entrants are usually minors. A student account is created only by an administrator at a participating institution, never by public sign-up, and the forms themselves carry the parental consent the rules require. Parents and guardians sign through their own link.

Terms of use

Who may use it

Accounts exist by invitation from an administrator. There is no public sign-up. Your access is for you alone: do not share a password or pass on a signing link addressed to someone else.

What the system does and does not promise

It works out which forms your answers require, from the published ISEF rules, and shows you the rule behind every decision so you can check it. It is an aid to getting the paperwork right — it is not the authority on it.
The fair's own Scientific Review Committee decides what is accepted. An approval recorded here is this committee's, inside this system.
Typing or drawing your name records that you reviewed and agreed to a form. Where the printed form requires a handwritten signature, that is still required.
Forms are in English because the font embedded in the official files cannot draw Arabic — it would disappear from the page without warning, so the system refuses it rather than lose it silently.

Your content

What you write and attach stays yours. You grant the operator only what is needed to run the service for you: to store it, show it to the people your project's roles reach, put it into the official forms, and send it where you ask it sent.

The software

The application — its code, its interface, its wording and its mark — belongs to its authors. The official ISEF forms it fills do not; see below.

The official ISEF forms — attribution, and an open question

The sixteen forms this system fills are published by the Society for Science for the International Science and Engineering Fair. They are the Society's work. ISEF Forms is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Society for Science or Regeneron ISEF. “ISEF” and “Regeneron ISEF” are the marks of their owners.

The system fills the Society's own PDF files field by field. It does not redraw them, alter their wording, or present a substitute for them — which is the point: what you hand in is the form the fair expects, unmodified.

What has not been settled. This installation ships copies of the official PDFs so that it can fill them. Whether redistributing them this way is permitted, and on what terms, is a question for the Society for Science — and it has not been put to them in writing yet. Until it is, treat this as a pilot. The two honest routes are to obtain written permission, or to have each institution supply the forms it has downloaded itself.

If you are the Society for Science

Write to the operator and anything you object to will be changed or removed.

Who operates this

This installation is run by the administrator who invited you. Questions about your data, your account, or anything on this page go to them.