We will only use the personal data gathered over this website as set out in this policy. Below you will find information on how we use your personal data, for which purposes your personal data is used, with whom it is shared and what control and information rights you may have.
I. Summary of our processing activities
We publish scholarly journals, books, news and data. Some of this material is freely available; some of it is only available to subscribers. The following summary offers a quick overview of the data processing activities that are undertaken on our website. You will find more detailed information under the indicated sections below.
- When you visit our website for informational reasons without setting up an account, only limited personal data will be processed to provide you with the website itself (see III).
- If you are identified as belonging to a customer organisation then we collect information in order to be able to provide usage reporting to that customer.
- In case you register for one of our services, use the submission and peer review systems or subscribe to our newsletters, further personal data will be processed in the scope of such services (see IV and V).
- Furthermore, your personal data will be used to provide you with relevant advertising for our services and products (see VII) and for statistical analysis that helps us to improve our website (see VIII). Additionally, we improve your website experience with third party content (see IX).
- Your personal data may be disclosed to third parties (see X) that might be located outside your country of residence; potentially, different data protection standards may apply (see XII).
- We have implemented appropriate safeguards to secure your personal data (see XIII) and retain your personal data only as long as necessary (see XIII).
- Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise certain rights with regard to the processing of your personal data (see XIV).
II. Definitions
- Personal data: means any information relating to a natural person who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, or an online identifier.
- Processing: means any operation which is performed on personal data, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or any kind of disclosure or other use.
III. Informational use of the website
When you visit our website for informational reasons, i.e. without registering for any of our provided services listed under IV and without providing us with personal data in any other form, we may automatically collect additional information about you which will contain personal data only in limited cases and which is automatically recognised by our server.
Examples might include:
- your IP address;
- your device type, name and IDs;
- the date and time of your requests;
- the content of your requests;
- information on your browser version;
- your screen resolution;
- information on your operating system, including language settings.
We use such information only to assist us in providing an effective service (e.g. to adapt our website to the needs of your device or to allow you to log in to our website), and to collect broad demographic information for anonymised, aggregated use.
If you are identified by IP or equivalent method as belonging to a customer organisation such as university or a company then we will also collect the identity of that organisation and use it to create usage reports which show the organisation how much of the content we publish is being read by their students, members or employees. This information does not contain anything related to a personal login unless (a) you are a nominated administrator for that organisation or (b) your organisation specifically requires it as a part of a usage-based access contract.
The personal data automatically collected is necessary for us to provide the website, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR, and for our legitimate interest to guarantee the website’s stability and security, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
IV. Third party content and social media plug-ins
1. Social media plug-ins
We use the following social media plug-ins: Facebook, Twitter. This allows you to communicate with such services and like or comment from our website. Social media plug-ins enable a direct communication between your device and the servers of the social media provider, allowing the social media provider to communicate with you and collect information about you browsing our website. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to improve your website experience and to optimise our services.
Transfer of personal data takes place whether you have an account with the provider or not.
Please note that we neither have the control of the extent of personal data that is collected by the respective plug-in provider nor do we know the processing’s purpose or the period your personal data will be retained.
Further information about the processing of your personal data in the provider’s course of operation is provided via their respective privacy policy. Moreover, you will be provided with further information with regard to your rights and setting concerning privacy.
V. Information sharing
Where personal data is disclosed to third parties for the purposes mentioned above the legal basis for the transfer of your personal data is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b and f GDPR. Some of the recipients may reside outside the EEA. For further information about cross border transfer in general and transfers outside of the EEA see section on Cross border data transfers.
We may disclose your personal data to contractors who assist us in providing the services we offer through the website. Such a transfer will be based on data processing agreements (Art. 28 GDPR). Therefore, our contractors will only use your personal data to the extent necessary to perform their functions and will be contractually bound to process your personal data only on our behalf and in compliance with our requests.
In the event that we undergo re-organisation or are sold to a third party, any personal data we hold about you may be transferred to that re-organised entity or third party in compliance with applicable law.
We may disclose your personal data if legally entitled or required to do so (for example if required by law or by a court order). The legal basis for this will be Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. c GDPR (in conjunction with the respective national law).
VI. Security
We have reasonable state of the art security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. For example, our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorised personnel have access to personal data. Whilst we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of information will never occur, we use all reasonable efforts to prevent it.
You should bear in mind that submission of information over the internet is never entirely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via our website whilst it is in transit over the internet and any such submission is at your own risk.
VII. Data retention
We strive to keep our processing activities with respect to your personal data as limited as possible. In the absence of specific retention periods set out in this policy, your personal data will be retained only for as long as we need it to fulfil the purpose for which we have collected it and, if applicable, as long as required by statutory retention requirements.
VIII
. Your rights
Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise some or all of the following rights:
- require (i) information as to whether your personal data is retained and (ii) access to and/or duplicates of your personal data retained, including the purposes of the processing, the categories of personal data concerned, and the data recipients as well as potential retention periods;
- request rectification, removal or restriction of your personal data, e.g. because (i) it is incomplete or inaccurate, (ii) it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected, or (iii) the consent on which the processing was based has been withdrawn;
- refuse to provide and – without impact to data processing activities that have taken place before such withdrawal – withdraw your consent to processing of your personal data at any time;
- object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, that your personal data shall be subject to a processing. In this case, please provide us with information about your particular situation. After the assessment of the facts presented by you we will either stop processing your personal data or present you our compelling legitimate grounds for an ongoing processing;
- take legal actions in relation to any potential breach of your rights regarding the processing of your personal data, as well as to lodge complaints before the competent data protection regulators;
- require (i) to receive the personal data concerning you, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and (ii) to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from our side; where technically feasible you shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from us to another controller; and/or
- not to be subject to any automated decision making, including profiling (automatic decisions based on data processing by automatic means, for the purpose of assessing several personal aspects) which produce legal effects on you or affects you with similar significance.
You may (i) exercise the rights referred to above or (ii) pose any questions or (iii) make any complaints regarding our data processing by contacting us using the contact details set out below.