Affiliate Disclosure

This disclosure is made in accordance with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. Short version: some links on this site earn us money, we mark them, and they never buy a verdict.

What an affiliate link is

Some links from Noted Scholar to the tools we review are affiliate links. If you click one and later subscribe to that tool, the vendor pays this site a commission — either a percentage of your subscription or a one-time fee. You pay exactly the same price either way; the commission comes out of the vendor's marketing budget, not your pocket.

How you'll know

• Every article that contains affiliate links carries a disclosure notice at the top of the article, before any affiliate link appears — not buried at the bottom.
• A short disclosure also appears in the footer of every page on the site.
• Articles with no affiliate relationship carry no notice, because there is nothing to disclose.

Which programs

The site participates (or has applied to participate) in affiliate programs run by academic-tool vendors, including programs operated through networks such as Rewardful and standard CPA networks. As programs are joined or left, this page stays current. Notably, many of the tools we recommend most — Zotero, Obsidian, NotebookLM, Semantic Scholar, Connected Papers' free tier — have no affiliate program at all and earn us nothing. We recommend them anyway, which is the point.

What commissions never do

• They never set a verdict. Reviews are drafted from testing notes before affiliate status is even considered; more than once the higher-commission tool has lost a head-to-head on this site.
• They never select coverage. Articles are chosen from what researchers actually search for and struggle with, not from which vendors pay.
• They never buy access. No sponsored posts, no paid reviews, no early drafts shared with vendors. Vendors find out what we wrote when you do.

Material connection statement

You should assume that any link from this site to a commercial tool may be an affiliate link, and that Noted Scholar has a material connection to the vendors whose programs it participates in, in the form of the commission structure described above. We hold no equity in, and receive no salary or retainer from, any tool we review.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you believe a link is inadequately disclosed, email hello@notedscholar.com — that would be a correction, and corrections get fixed.