AccScience Publishing

AccScience Publishing is dedicated to protecting your personal information and will make every reasonable effort to handle collected information appropriately. All information collected will be handled with care in accordance with the highest standards for integrity and objectivity and respect for your privacy. As used in this privacy policy, “we” and “us” includes AccScience Publishing and our staff, employees, officers, directors, volunteer editors and reviewers, and vendors and independent contractors under contract with us. “Sites” includes the following: the web pages and content on the AccScience Publishing websites, journal sites, and AccScience Publishing or third party tools, software, submission systems, web forms, registration system, and any other means through which we interact with you.

(A) Information we collect

Personal information

We request personal information from you while interacting with the Sites, as follows:

When you register on a Site for updates or to receive other types of notifications from us, we will ask for your email address to enable us to send you the information you have requested.
If you want to submit a manuscript or other research output to AccScience Publishing for consideration, we will ask for the following information so that we may consider, process, and possibly publish your manuscript, in conformance with accepted publishing standards: your name, title, telephone number, email address, institution, department, address, and credit card or other payment information. You may voluntarily provide us with additional information to help us identify and contact you, such as your middle name, degree, preferred name, secondary phone number, fax number, position, ORCID ID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier), state or province, and areas of interest or expertise. Except for credit card or other payment information, we will ask for the same information if you want to be considered as an editor or reviewer.
If you register on a Site, we will gather and store your username and password to identify you at sign-in and to administer your account.

Additionally, AccScience Publishing may process some basic personal information about you (email address, name and research interest) that is publicly available to register you as a potential reviewer and expert or to contact you about publishing with AccScience Publishing on a particular topic.

Finally, we may collect demographic information about you, such as gender and ethnic origin. We usually collect and use this information on an anonymized basis. If you provide demographic information to AccScience Publishing, you do so voluntarily and AccScience Publishing will collect, store and use your demographic information in accordance with this privacy policy.

Technical information

By generally visiting or otherwise interacting with the Sites, we collect, have access to, store and use your computer’s IP address, the URL/domain name of any referring website, the time and date of your visit to the Sites, and certain information known as “clickstream data” to enable us to understand how people interact with the Sites, to analyze data for trends and statistics, to help diagnose and solve issues with the Sites and our technologies, products, and services, and to optimize the performance of the Sites. We use click view data to provide statistics on articles such as number of views and downloads. We also use session cookies, as described below. From time to time, we use software tools to play back user sessions for our internal use in assessing our customers’ interactions with our software, and these sessions may be linked to your user account. When we send you an email which contains personalized links then we will gather and store your name, email, and any link you click on, when you click on the links in order to track the effectiveness of our communications.

Cookies and other tracking technologies

We and our third party providers use cookies and other tracking technologies to collect information. For more detailed information about the cookies and other tracking technologies we use, why we use them, the basis for using them, and your choices, see our Cookie Policy.

(B) How we use and disclose your information

Use by AccScience Publishing

AccScience Publishing uses your personal information as described in the “Information we collect” section, to customize your experience on the Sites and facilitate our interactions with you.

If you are an author, we use your personal information for the purpose of processing, reviewing, communicating about, facilitating editorial review and peer review, for publishing, and to facilitate payment of article publishing fees.

If you are an editor or reviewer, we use your personal information to contact you about your potential or actual role as an editor or reviewer, to request and facilitate your review and handling of manuscripts, and to update you on news and developments at AccScience Publishing as it may affect your work with us.

If an author chooses to publish their peer review history, we make the manuscript review process available to the public when an article is published, including the contents of emails and other communications between reviewers, editors and authors via a Site.

We may also use your personal information to assist with improving the peer review system and scientific communication, as part of AccScience Publishing’s ongoing research program on the processes we use in the course of manuscript handling.

If you provide demographic information to AccScience Publishing as described in the “Information we collect” section, then we usually collect and use this information on an anonymized basis so that you will not be identified from it unless we tell you otherwise. We will use that information only for internal diversity tracking purposes.

If you simply visit the Sites to read content, we will use information such as your URL and cookies to provide a good experience, as described in the “Information we collect” section.

Disclosure to third parties

If you submit a manuscript or other research content to us for possible publication, we will send the title and abstract of your manuscript, and your name, to one or more potential external/volunteer editors and reviewers to gauge their interest in reviewing your content. If they agree to review your content, we will send them your full manuscript and any revisions and relevant comments you have provided. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, we share information about you, your manuscript, or other research content as reasonably necessary with volunteer curators and channel managers. In addition to volunteer curators and channel managers, we may share the foregoing information with journalists prior to publication for the purpose of promoting your work.

We may also disclose personal information as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy to other third parties, as follows:

Vendors, independent contractors, and consultants to enable us to provide products and services, such as financial institutions (for facilitating payment of fees owed), web and technical support providers (such as hosting providers and customer service and support providers), and third parties who provide syndication and preprints
Institutions or consortia, to facilitate payment of publishing fees on the author’s behalf, if applicable
Third party workflow service intermediaries, to facilitate the performance of contractual obligations between AccScience Publishing and institutions or consortia, as applicable
Other publishers
Third parties authorized by you to receive such information, such as third parties that facilitate the automatic update of your ORCID record.
To respond to claims asserted against us or comply with legal process (e.g., subpoenas or warrants), or lawful requests from government or law enforcement authorities (as required to meet national security or law enforcement requirements), and to enforce or comply with our agreements, terms of use, and this privacy policy
Academic research groups and third-party providers of tools or services that help inform AccScience Publishing how to improve the peer review system and scientific communication
To comply with applicable law, or as required or permitted by law
Where it is in our legitimate interests, under relevant law, to run, grow and develop our organization in order to expand the impact of science and medicine
If we sell any business or assets, we may disclose your personal information to the buyer of such business or assets
If substantially all of our or any of our affiliates’ assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal information held by us will be one of the transferred assets
To protect the safety of any person or to prevent any illegal activity
To protect the rights, property, or safety of AccScience Publishing, our staff, our users or other persons. This may include exchanging personal information with other organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction
Author’s institution and/or ethics committee and other third parties, as appropriate, where we have identified a failure to comply with our publishing standards and guidelines or to uphold the integrity of research in cases of suspected research integrity breaches

In some cases, the applications or user interfaces you encounter while on our sites are managed by third parties, who may require that you provide your personal information. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third party services or applications. We recommend carefully reviewing the user terms and privacy statement of each third party service, website, and/or application prior to use.

AccScience Publishing will never disclose demographic information, described in the “Information we collect” section, to third parties, unless it has been anonymized or otherwise deidentified.

No sale or leasing of your information

Except as described in the “Disclosure to third parties” section of this privacy policy, we will not disclose your personal information to third parties without your consent.

We will not sell or lease your personal information to any third party. We may disclose aggregate demographic and statistical information with our business partners; this information is not specific to the identification of you as an individual.

We keep your personal information for as long as is necessary to provide services to you, and for as long as your account and/or registration with AccScience Publishing is active. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements.

(D) Protection of personal information

We use reasonable and appropriate physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect your information from unauthorized use, access, loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. We endeavor to protect the personal information we receive, gather and store, by such means as password protection, firewalls and other means. We also require that third party service providers acting on our behalf or with whom we share your information also provide appropriate security measures in accordance with industry standards.

Transmissions over the internet are never entirely secure and we cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via a Site while it is in transit over the internet. Any such transmission of information by you over the internet is at your own risk.

(E) Third party websites

If, in your interactions with the Sites, you are linked or directed to, or click on, a third party website, we cannot control what information you may provide to that party or on/at that website, and are not responsible for how that party may use or disclose any information you may provide to them. As such, we urge that you exercise caution before providing them with your personal information and to review the third party’s privacy policy for information on its data processing practice.

(F) Sending you email communications

Except in countries or jurisdictions where it is not be permitted by law, we may from time to time send you email communications regarding our business, products or services in response to your use of the Sites.

Where required by law, we may process your personal information for marketing purposes on the basis of your consent.

(G) Changes to this privacy policy

AccScience Publishing may make changes to this privacy policy from time to time. Changes to this privacy policy will be made by updating this page. Please visit this privacy policy regularly to read the current version. If there are material changes to how we use your personal information, we will endeavor to provide you with reasonable notice of such changes, either by prominent notice on our websites or homepages or to your email address of record.

(I) How to contact us regarding your personal information

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, you may contact us at editorial@accscience.com.