A radar for your idea.
What a sweep tells you, and what happens when the radar blips.
1 · The sweep
Paste your idea and press sweep. In seconds you get a map of the work closest to yours, and a single score for how exposed your idea is right now. Your idea is checked privately on your own device — the text you paste is never sent to us. (More on that.)
2 · When the radar blips
Arm the radar and you can forget about it. Scooped keeps watch over new research as it appears, and the moment something lands too close to your idea, you get one calm email — the paper, how close it is, and exactly what to do next. When nothing's close, you hear nothing.
Every alert ships the same checklist: read it today · map your delta · timestamp your own preprint · check the venue's scoop-protection window · consider emailing the authors — convergence starts more collaborations than feuds. A near-miss handled in 48 hours is an anecdote; discovered at review time, it's a rejection.
What we store if you arm alerts
Your email, a label you chose, your threshold, and the idea's fingerprint. Delete any of it, anytime, from the manage page.
More than scoop protection
A sweep is a map of the work nearest to yours — useful well before any collision:
The nearest-papers list is an instant related-work scan — the neighbors you should be reading and citing, ranked by closeness, not keywords.
Armed alerts surface papers that belong in your bibliography as they appear, so the reference you'd have kicked yourself for missing arrives in your inbox.
See how crowded your idea's neighborhood is before you commit months — a quiet area or a stampede, told in one score.
A near-twin is often a future co-author, not a rival. Convergent work is how some of the best collaborations start.
Same radar, more reasons to keep it armed. More sources and views are on the way — tell us what you'd use.
FAQ
- Is a 70% similarity score "I've been scooped"?
- No. It means "read this today." The radar surfaces the closest work; only you can judge idea-identity. Most blips end with you adding one related-work citation and sleeping better.
- What exactly do you store?
- Email, a label you chose, a threshold, and your idea's anonymous fingerprint. Not your text. Delete anytime from the manage page.
- Which fields are covered?
- All of arXiv, every category. More sources (bioRxiv first) are on the roadmap; Pro subscribers vote on what's next.
- Could the fingerprint be reversed into my idea?
- No — it's deliberately lossy. At most it hints at broad territory ("something about protein folding"), never your method, results, or words.
- Why don't you explain the machinery in more detail?
- The radar's internals are the part of the product we keep to ourselves. Everything that affects you — what runs where, what's stored, what an alert means — is documented on this page and the privacy page.
- What should I do if a real overlap appears?
- Don't panic-quit. Read it; map the delta; post your own preprint to timestamp priority; check the venue's scoop-protection policy (several journals allow ~6 months for in-progress work). The alert email includes this checklist.