MSP

Last up­dated: May 2018

This pri­vacy policy de­scribes how we use the per­son­al in­form­a­tion that we col­lect when you vis­it or use the MSP ser­vice that links to this pri­vacy policy (which here we’ll call the “Ser­vice”). The Ser­vice may be the MSP web­site (in­lud­ing the web­sites of our sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions), the Ed­it­Flow® ap­plic­a­tion, the Pub­liCast ser­vice, or some oth­er on­line product.

Your in­ter­ac­tion with Ed­it­Flow may be in re­la­tion with the se­lec­tion pro­cess of a peer-re­viewed pub­lic­a­tion, grants pro­gram or oth­er se­lec­tion pro­cess (which here we’ll call the “Journ­al”).

Your in­ter­ac­tion with our web­sites may be in re­la­tion with ac­cess­ing con­tent of one of our sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions (which here we’ll call the “Pub­lic­a­tion”).

Per­son­al data, or per­son­al in­form­a­tion, means any in­form­a­tion about an in­di­vidu­al from which that per­son can be iden­ti­fied. It does not in­clude data where the iden­tity has been re­moved (an­onym­ous data).

This policy may be sup­ple­men­ted by ad­di­tion­al pri­vacy terms or no­tices shown in cer­tain areas of the Ser­vice.

Through this Ser­vice, we may col­lect the fol­low­ing per­son­al data dir­ectly from you:

• name (first name, last name, etc);
• email ad­dress or oth­er con­tact in­form­a­tion;
• unique schol­arly iden­ti­fi­ers, like OR­CID ID, MR au­thor ID, etc;
• phys­ic­al ad­dress or loc­a­tion, and in­sti­tu­tion­al af­fil­i­ation;
• user­name or sim­il­ar ap­plic­a­tion-spe­cif­ic iden­ti­fi­er;
• the con­tents of your art­icle/pro­pos­al, ref­er­ee/re­view­er re­ports, or any oth­er doc­u­ments you up­load to the Ser­vice;
• gender, age group, ca­reer stage (only for those Journ­als that re­quire it, maybe for stat­ist­ic­al pur­poses);
• your con­nec­tions (in­terest, cita­tions, au­thor­ship or ex­pert­ise) with spe­cif­ic sci­entif­ic sub­fields/spe­cial­ties;
• your pref­er­ences, in­clud­ing your com­mu­nic­a­tion pref­er­ences.

The Ser­vice also auto­mat­ic­ally col­lects in­form­a­tion about your us­age of the Ser­vice and net­work con­nec­tion to it; spe­cific­ally, in­form­a­tion about your web browser, IP ad­dress, in­ter­net con­nec­tion, and your us­age and in­ter­ac­tion with this Ser­vice.

Fur­ther, we will re­tain in­form­a­tion about the art­icle/pro­pos­al you sub­mit to a Journ­al, and about peer-re­view re­quests you re­ceive from a Journ­al, and your sub­sequent re­sponse and activ­ity as they re­late to that Journ­al.

Please be aware that the Ser­vice is op­er­ated in the United States, and any in­form­a­tion you provide will be trans­ferred to the United States.

If an art­icle/pro­pos­al that you au­thored is sub­mit­ted to a Journ­al by a co-au­thor or agent oth­er than you, then that user might enter your per­son­al data in­to the Ser­vice on your be­half.

We may also col­lect in­form­a­tion about your pro­fes­sion­al and sci­entif­ic iden­tity that is already pub­licly avail­able or part of the sci­entif­ic re­cord, for ex­ample from in­sti­tu­tion­al, de­part­ment­al and per­son­al webpages, pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­ations, pub­lic­a­tions and in­dexes, bib­li­o­graph­ic data­bases, etc.

Fi­nally, an ed­it­or or oth­er staff mem­ber of a Journ­al or of MSP might enter your name and/or an up­dated email ad­dress in­to the Ser­vice (for ex­ample, to re­quest that you serve as a ref­er­ee/re­view­er for a sub­mit­ted art­icle/pro­pos­al) and/or es­tab­lish a con­nec­tion between you and spe­cif­ic sub­fields/spe­cial­ties.

We will use this in­form­a­tion to

• al­low you ac­cess to the Ser­vice;
• pro­cess or ful­fill an or­der, trans­ac­tion or con­tract;
• veri­fy your iden­tity and re­cog­nize you when you use the Ser­vice;
• es­tab­lish your pro­fes­sion­al iden­tity, when you sub­mit an art­icle to a Journ­al or are in­vited to re­view;
• es­tab­lish your in­terest or au­thor­ity in a sub­field/spe­cialty;
• con­tact you on be­half of an ed­it­or/staff of a Journ­al, with a re­quest to serve as a ref­er­ee/re­view­er for an art­icle/pro­pos­al;
• col­lect and share with you in­form­a­tion rel­ev­ant to your sci­entif­ic re­search or pro­fes­sion­al activ­ity;
• provide stat­ist­ic­al data to the pub­lish­er or own­er of the Journ­al (but only from data strictly re­lated to that Journ­al);
• provide tech­nic­al and oth­er sup­port and help for your use of the Ser­vice;
• provide you with in­form­a­tion re­lated to the Ser­vice;
• mon­it­or and ana­lyze the us­age of the Pub­lic­a­tion and/or the Ser­vice;
• re­spect your pref­er­ences and set­tings;
• im­prove our products and the Ser­vice, and de­vel­op new ones.

The data is used for the le­git­im­ate in­terests of the Journ­als and their own­ers/pub­lish­ers (in­clud­ing MSP), as well as of the sci­entif­ic com­munity, in

• hav­ing an ac­cur­ate re­cord of au­thor­ship, with safe­guards against pla­gi­ar­ism or im­per­son­a­tion, and with cor­rect con­nec­tions with the wider re­search lit­er­at­ure;
• fa­cil­it­at­ing a lively and vi­brant peer-re­view pro­cess, based on a wide and di­verse pool of ref­er­ee/re­view­ers and on re­li­able match­ing between an art­icle/pro­pos­al and a suit­able and qual­i­fied ref­er­ee/re­view­er;
• fos­ter­ing a well-in­formed sci­entif­ic com­munity, in which re­cent de­vel­op­ments are pub­li­cized to those in­ter­ested and in which rel­ev­ant con­tent can be ac­cessed.

The data is also used for our le­git­im­ate in­terest, as a pub­lish­er and pro­vider of soft­ware ser­vices, in

• un­der­stand­ing the real-world use of our Ser­vice in or­der to im­prove it;
• of­fer­ing the ne­ces­sary level of se­cur­ity and au­then­tic­a­tion, in par­tic­u­lar to pro­tect the con­fid­en­ti­al­ity of the peer-re­view pro­cess;
• guard­ing against pos­sible breaches and in­vest­ig­at­ing after the fact if a breach were to oc­cur.

We will only re­tain your per­son­al in­form­a­tion for as long as ne­ces­sary to ful­fil the pur­poses we col­lec­ted it for, in­clud­ing archiv­ing pur­poses and for sat­is­fy­ing any leg­al, ac­count­ing, or re­port­ing re­quire­ments.

Your name, email ad­dress, in­sti­tu­tion­al af­fil­i­ation and con­nec­tions between you and sub­fields/spe­cial­ties (but not how these con­nec­tions were es­tab­lished) will be shared with the ed­it­ors or staff mem­ber of any Journ­al that uses the Ser­vice, for ex­ample when they seek a ref­er­ee/re­view­er (but we will not share in­form­a­tion about your art­icles/pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted to, or ref­er­ee/re­view­er activ­ity for, any oth­er Journ­al).

The his­tory of your dir­ect in­ter­ac­tions with a spe­cif­ic Journ­al to which you sub­mit­ted an art­icle/pro­pos­al, or for which you were asked to serve as ref­er­ee/re­view­er, will be shared with the ed­it­ors, staff and own­er/pub­lish­er of that Journ­al (but with no oth­er Journ­al or own­er/pub­lish­er). Demo­graph­ic data might also be shared. If shared in this fash­ion, the fur­ther use of your data will be gov­erned by the pri­vacy policies of that spe­cif­ic Journ­al or its own­er/pub­lish­er.

If the Ser­vice of­fers ac­cess to the con­tent of a Pub­lic­a­tion and if you ac­cess this con­tent through an in­sti­tu­tion-sponsored sub­scrip­tion, then some per­son­al in­form­a­tion (e.g., IP ad­dress) and cer­tain us­age data gathered through the Ser­vice (e.g., num­ber of items you down­loaded) may be shared with your in­sti­tu­tion for us­age ana­lys­is and sub­scrip­tions man­age­ment.

We may need to share your per­son­al in­form­a­tion if we have a good-faith be­lief that it is reas­on­ably ne­ces­sary for com­ply­ing with a leg­al ob­lig­a­tion or court or­der, or to pro­tect our rights and prop­erty.

We do not sell, share or trans­fer per­son­al in­form­a­tion ex­cept as set out in this policy.

We will store this in­form­a­tion and keep it safe against theft, loss, mis­use, un­au­thor­ized ac­cess or dis­clos­ure, by us­ing reas­on­able and ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nic­al and ad­min­is­trat­ive se­cur­ity and back-up meas­ures.

At any time, you may re­quest ac­cess to the per­son­al in­form­a­tion about you that we hold in the Ser­vice, and re­quest cor­rec­tions or up­dates. As a se­cur­ity meas­ure, we may need to re­quest spe­cif­ic in­form­a­tion from you to help us con­firm your iden­tity and en­sure your right to ac­cess your data.

If you re­quest to de­ac­tiv­ate your ac­count or de­lete your per­son­al in­form­a­tion, we will en­deavor to ful­fill your re­quest. However, some per­son­al in­form­a­tion may per­sist in backup cop­ies for a cer­tain peri­od of time, and may also be re­tained as ne­ces­sary for our le­git­im­ate busi­ness pur­poses, as a pub­lish­er and pro­vider of ser­vices for pub­lish­ers of sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure, or to com­ply with our leg­al ob­lig­a­tions.

You have the right to ask us not to pro­cess your per­son­al in­form­a­tion for dir­ect mar­ket­ing pur­poses. You can do so by reply­ing to or fol­low­ing the opt-out links in any mar­ket­ing mes­sage we sent to you, or by send­ing us an email at pri­vacy@msp.org.

You also have the right to ob­ject, on grounds re­lat­ing to your par­tic­u­lar situ­ation, to the pro­cessing of your per­son­al data for any pur­poses. We will try to re­spond to all le­git­im­ate re­quests with­in one month.

We may change this pri­vacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be pos­ted on this page with an up­dated re­vi­sion date.

Not all Journ­als us­ing Ed­it­Flow® are gov­erned by this policy. If a Journ­al’s in­stance of Ed­it­Flow does not link dir­ectly to this policy, then the present policy does not ap­ply. For such a Journ­al, the own­er/pub­lish­er of that Journ­al is the data own­er and data con­trol­ler. In such case, all per­son­al-data col­lec­tion and its use are gov­erned by that own­er/pub­lish­er’s policies; MSP only col­lects, stores and pro­cesses the data fol­low­ing that own­er/pub­lish­er’s in­struc­tions.

If you have any ques­tions, com­ments or re­quests re­gard­ing this pri­vacy policy or our pro­cessing of your in­form­a­tion, please con­tact us at pri­vacy@msp.org.