When do we collect data?

The amount and type of data collected strongly differs between non-registered users called “visitors” from here on (not logged in) and registered users called “users” (registered and logged in). Details are shown in the following two paragraphs.

What data do we collect from visitors?

As long as you are not logged into the editorial management system only minimal usage statistics data is collected.

Usage statistics: The Open Journal System collects information about the use of the website. This includes information about the number of visits of specific sites and the number of downloads of articles, supplementary files, or citation information. This information includes:

• Anonymized (encrypted) IP address
• Date and time of visit or download
• Request URL
• Referer URL
• System information (browser and OS information)

This information is stored and archived on the server (log files and in the application database). The data is processed to analyze and improve the website and the service provided.

Webserver logs: In order to effectively maintain our web server we keep track of all requests sent to the server. This information is kept for a maximum of four weeks and can be accessed and processed by our system administrators to identify and analyze possible problems and monitor the server performance. This information includes:

• IP address
• Date and time of request
• Requested URL
• Referer URL

What data do we collect from users?

When a visitor creates a user account (registration) a series of personal information is processed and stored in the application database. Given our Open Access Policy, registration is not required to access any of our published content. Personal user registration is required to (i) get email notifications when new volumes or announcements are getting published, to (ii) submit an article to our journal, or (iii) take part in the editorial process (as reviewer or editor).

This information is mandatory for the editorial process from the initial submission until the final decision (publication/rejection) and to interact with the users involved during this process.

During registration the following personal information is required:

• Given name and family name
• Username
• E-mail address
• User password (encrypted)
• Affiliation
• Country

The system automatically records the registration date, last login date, roles registrations (reader, author, and/or reviewer), and notification settings. After registration additional information can be provided. This includes:

• Reviewing interests
• E-mail signature
• Phone
• Mailing addresses
• Bio statement
• Homepage URL
• ORCID iD

This information is available to the user via the user profile (and, with the exception of username and dates, can be edited by the user; GDRP Art. 15). System administrators, journal managers, and editors can also access and edit this data (except the username and dates) via the application back end. The data can be downloaded and processed by journal managers. The data is not otherwise publicly available for users which are not part of the editorial team.

Members of the editorial team are listed on the Editorial Team page where given name, family name, personal home page URL, ORCIDiD and affiliation is listed and publicly available.

Who needs an active user account?

User registration is required for the following reasons:

• To receive emails about newly published volumes and announcements (news).
• To submit your work to our journal as an author (principle contact).
• To offer to act as a reviewer in the future.
• To take an editor role in our journal.

No registration or login is needed to:

• To get access to fresh and historical publications (manuscript, supplementary material, replication material, meta information, …).
• As a 'contributor' (co-author) of a submission. In this case you must give the author who submits the work (principle contact) the permission to provide the following information: given name, family name, country, role, and email address which allows us to inform you about the authorship. This information is stored as meta information and not connected to an active account.

How will we use your data?

Visitor information

Site usage data are used to create reports and summary statistics to analyze and improve our service. The usage data are completely anonymized and can in no means be related to individuals, groups, or geographical areas.

We reserve ourselves the right to share this information with third parties in its raw (anonymized) form or a pre-processed form for (i) scientific reasons and/or (ii) when used for outreach/publicity related to our journal. For more details about the data collected see “What data do we collect from visitors?”.

Information from/about registered users

The term “registered user” belongs to everyone who creates or has created a user account on our website. This includes:

• Readers who would like to be informed about new announcement and volumes
• Authors
• Reviewers
• Editors and system managers

During registration a series of private information is required. This information is mandatory to provide the service as is and is necessary to be able to execute the editorial process from submission to publication. Detailed information about the data collected is listed under “What data do we collect from users?”.

How do we store your data?

Data is stored in the application database and as files in different formats on the server providing the service. Our server is located at the facilities of the Universität Innsbruck, Austria, who thankfully support us by providing the required hardware and technical help. A transfer of data to a third country does not take place.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files stored by your browser on your computer and allow websites to provide certain features and to recognize visitors.

Most browsers are configured to automatically accept all cookies. However, you can also change this setting to be informed every time a cookies is set and decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to accept them or generally reject cookies to be set.

If you reject cookies the functionality of our website will be limited. You can still browse, download and read published articles and most publicly available content, however, you will no longer be able to log into the system which is mandatory if you act as an author, reviewer, or editor.

Existing cookies (stored on your local personal computer) can always be deleted by cleaning your browser cache. The 'Help' feature of your browser will provide you with the information on how to do so.

How do we use cookies?

Our website makes use of the technical minimum of required cookies all time. For normal visitors these cookies are used to monitor the site usage (anonymized).

When logging into the system, session cookies are set which are mandatory to keep you logged in and to use the editorial management system. When disabling these cookies logging in will no longer be possible.

How to delete my account?

Individuals have, under certain circumstances, the right to be forgotten (erase personal information including the user account; Art. 17 GDPR).

Readers

Users which never took part part in the editorial process (as author, reviewer, or editor) have the right to be deleted. We automatically inform readers via email when being inactive for more than 1 year (based on last login date/time). This message will inform the users that their account will automatically be erased if they do not log in within the next 4 weeks. To keep the account, the users have to visit our website and log in once to extend the lifetime of the account for another year.

Authors, Reviewers, and Editors

If the user has been part of our editorial process at least once by:

• Submitting articles as an author
• Acting as a reviewer
• Working as an editor

the right to be forgotten no longer holds (Art. 85 GDPR; Scholarly Publishing, Data Privacy, and the Public Interest).

We have the right and need to keep all historical records of all steps in the editorial process (from submission to final publication or rejection) as they are an essential part of the service to (i) process submissions and (ii) comprehensibility. Our editors and managers can, at any time, access these data. Authors and reviewers can only selectively access records of submissions they have been actively working on.

• For more details about the data collected please read: What data do we collect from users?

If you are no longer interested in emails (notifications) users can log into the system, go to their user profile,

• go to “Notifications” and change the settings for “Public Announcements”,
• or go to “Roles” and withdraw one or multiple roles. The Reader role in combination with enabled notifications is responsible for receiving emails for announcements and newly published volumes.

Depending on the settings this will put the user into hybernation.

What are your data protection rights?

We are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to do the following:

• Right to access: You have the right to access all the personal information stored in our application database via user profile. New, active, published, and archived submissions and the entire editorial process can accessed via our editorial management system. Access to information of specific submission depends on your user role.
• Right to rectification: You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request to complete information you believe is incomplete.
• Right to erasure: See “How to delete my account?”.
• Right to restrict processing: You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.

In case you make a request related to GDPR please contact our Support Contact. We will respond as quickly as possible but at least within four weeks.

Changes to our privacy policy

We are keeping our privacy policy under regular review and place any updates on this website. This version has been last modified on September 25, 2021.

How to contact us

Please visit our Contact page.