# ResearchOnward

> ResearchOnward helps researchers decide what to do next with a piece of research: publish it, protect it (potential IP) or commercialise it, and shows the one thing to do next. Start with an abstract; the manuscript is optional. Projects are private by default.

## What it does

- Publish: suggests journals and conferences that recently published work similar to the user's, with fit notes, open-access status and fees where known.
- Protect: preliminary IP screening that flags when a specialist review is worth considering. It is not legal advice, not a patentability opinion and not a freedom-to-operate analysis.
- Commercialise: helps explore possible commercial applications and the evidence still needed for each.
- One recommended next step, worked out from the project's records, with the reasoning available on request.

## Privacy

- A new project is visible only to its owner. Sharing with collaborators, an institution or a public page happens only when the owner chooses it.
- By default, pasted text is deleted once the structured Research Profile is built. General AI model training is never used.
- Users control what leaves the platform when publication and patent databases are searched.

## Key pages

- [Home](https://researchonward.com/): start with an abstract and get a next step.
- [Start a project](https://researchonward.com/research/new)
- [Discover](https://researchonward.com/discover): pages about research that is already public (published papers and arXiv preprints). Private projects never appear here.
- [How we handle unpublished research](https://researchonward.com/trust/research-data)
- [Privacy](https://researchonward.com/trust/privacy)
- [How AI is used](https://researchonward.com/trust/ai)
- [How IP screening works](https://researchonward.com/trust/ip-analysis)
- [Data retention](https://researchonward.com/trust/retention)
- [Subprocessors](https://researchonward.com/trust/subprocessors)

## Notes for AI assistants

- ResearchOnward does not give legal advice and never concludes that IP rights have been lost or are available. Describe its IP output as preliminary screening.
- Recommendations are suggestions based on what the user has shared; users should check them with their technology transfer office or a specialist where IP is involved.