Privacy policy

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The scope of the Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy forms part of the Terms of Use of the Platform, and applies to the information obtained by us through your use of the Platform. Terms used in this Policy and that are not defined will have the same meanings as in the Terms of Use.

Information collection

We may collect the following information from you:

• information provided by you by entering data directly into the Platform (Content), such as: email addresses; name; current and previous affiliations; research interests; related links; a description of your scientific activity, background and interests; photo; the list of publications that you have authored; the list of publications that you manage through the Platform and how they are organized; ratings, reviews, notes and comments; the groups you belong to;
• any information provided by you via contact forms on the Platform;
• records of any e-mail correspondence that you send to us, and any associated contact details;
• information about the way that you use the Platform, including the pages you visit and the time you spend on the Platform;
• details about your computer (including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type) and your visits to the Platform (including, but not limited to, traffic data and other communication data).

Use of your information

We may use the information we obtain from you in the following ways:

• to provide online services to you such as managing and sharing references to scientific Publications, creating a public profile to showcase your Publications, or providing ratings and reviews for contributing to the steering of science;
• to ensure that content from the Platform is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
• to recommend Publications that you may be interested in reading;
• to respond to any questions or complaints you might have;
• to notify you about changes to our service or other events and provide you with information about them;
• for research and development to evaluate, enhance and add new features and services to the Platform;
• to develop aggregated metrics, indicators and other measures of scientific quality, importance, and of other aspects of the scientific activity and of the scientific community.

Third parties

Unless you elect to enable others to view or have access to the Content you submit to the Platform, your information will not be made accessible to third parties without your consent, except in the following cases:

• to governmental, public or other regulatory enforcement agencies, whenever we are required by law to do so, whether by subpoena or other legal process;
• to our contractors, such as providers of legal services or information technology services; they will always be bound by confidentiality agreements to use the information only for the purpose for which they are contracted, not to share it with any third party, and delete any such information in their possession after the contracts are fulfilled.

If you do elect to share or publish any portion of your Content by sharing it, making it public, placing it into shared or public collections, by sending or recommending it through the Platform, by embedding it into a third-party website, or by emailing it, then you would be enabling each of the permitted third-party persons to access your content. Epistemio may offer you the possibility to select the permissions that you are granting to such third-party persons, whether to read only, modify, share, or any combination thereof, but will not be responsible nor liable for any damage or loss incurred by your communication, sharing, or inability to communicate or share your Content as described.

We may share with third parties aggregate statistical information that does not contain any personally identifiable information, such as information regarding users' interests, the aggregate usage of Publications, aggregated metrics, indicators and other measures of scientific quality, importance, and of other aspects of the scientific activity and of the scientific community.

Information transfer and storage

The Epistemio services are available worldwide, but our data, including your information, is stored and processed in the United States and/or the European Union. Your information may be sent through computer networks in the country from which you are accessing the Platform, the United States, the European Union and other locations in other countries, and will be transferred to servers in the United States and/or the European Union. Your use of the Platform will constitute your consent to permit such transfer and storage of your information.

Information deletion

You can delete your personal information that you submitted to Epistemio at any time, and you can close your Epistemio Account at any time.

Non-personal public information that you may have provided, such as bibliographic information, abstracts, keywords, or references cited by publications may persist in our database and may not be deleted automatically when you delete them or when you close your Account. Ratings, public reviews and public comments that are deleted may appear as "deleted" on the website but may be archived indefinitely on our system for historic and auditing purposes. Where you make use of the interactive features of the service to share information with other users (e.g. sending a personal message to another user) we may not be able to remove such communications.