Research Square respects your interest in maintaining the privacy of your personal information.
This is the privacy policy (“policy”) for www.researchsquare.com, which is run and provided by Research Square R&D LLC, 601 W. Main St. Suite 102, Durham, NC, USA (we, us and our).
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.
The following summary provides you with a quick overview of the processing activities that are undertaken on our website. You will find more detailed information under the indicated sections below.
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.
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, such as:
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.
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.
Pre-Publication Versions of articles submitted directly to the platform or via In Review can be accessed and read without registration. Comments you post on Pre-Publication Versions of articles will be available to a broader public. Inappropriate comments may be flagged for moderation. When you post a comment, you are required to provide your email address and name. The legal basis for this processing is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR.
We reserve the right to delete comments that are off-topic, spam, abusive, use excessive foul language, include ad hominem attacks or offend against legal regulations.
You may contact us without registering for an account. Whenever you contact us via the channels provided on the website (by phone, email or in writing) we will store the personal data you provide in our customer support software, Freshdesk. The personal data we store include:
For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR and for our legitimate interest to utilize customer communication as examples to improve our customer service team, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
The information you provide when contacting us will be processed to:
This information will be archived for later reference, and we will utilize the communications to improve our customer service. We will restrict the processing of the respective information in accordance with statutory retention requirements.
Our website offers services for purchase. In order to purchase services, you have to set up an account. With regard to the registration of an account and its subsequent use, we process:
The above information is necessary for the performance of the service and is labeled accordingly. We will process the personal data you provide to:
For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR.
Your personal data is, in the absence of exceptions within the specific services mentioned below, retained for as long as your user account is used. After deletion of your account, your personal data will be erased 1 month later. Statutory storage obligations or the need for legal actions that may arise from misconduct within the services or payment problems can lead to a longer retention of your personal data. In this case, we will inform you accordingly.
For the use of our paid services (video abstracts, video bytes, or other services) you have to set up an account as described under V. Your customer account retains your personal data in order to communicate with you during a submission. In addition, it allows us to enable re-edits and enables you to have access to your completed submissions whenever you need them. Finally, it enables us to answer complaints by viewing the completed work. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b.
By statutory law we are required to retain the provided financial data in relation to transactions (including address, payment and order information) for 10 years. Regarding this, the retention of your personal data is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. c GDPR.
With your email address you can subscribe to our newsletter and marketing e-mail communications that provide you with the latest news about our products and services, if you consent to receiving such communications. This also includes special offers and exclusive discounts. The legal basis for this processing is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR. Your email address will be retained as long as you subscribe to marketing emails.
On the site, this service is provided by means of a double-opt-in. Thus, you will receive an email containing a link by which you can confirm that you are the owner of the email address and wish to be notified via our email service. When your subscription is not confirmed within 96 hours after the confirmation mail has been requested, the personal data you provided will not be processed for any purpose and it will be automatically erased.
You may also opt-in to our newsletter and marketing email communications at account registration.You can unsubscribe from this newsletter and marketing emails by opting out via the link provided in each newsletter or marketing email.
We do not use your personal data for automated decision making which produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.
For statistical analyses we use web analytics services to collect information about the use of this site.
The tools collect information such as:
We use the information we get from the providers only to determine the most useful information you are looking for, and to improve and optimise this website. We do not combine the information collected through the use of the tools with personal data.
The tools collect only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or any other identifying information. The provider will use this information in order to evaluate your use of the website, to compile reports on website activities and to provide other services relating to website and internet use to us.
The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to analyse our website’s traffic to improve the user’s experience and to optimise the website in general.
We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (“Google”). On our behalf Google will use the information generated by a cookie for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet activity in connection with the use of the website.
We have activated the IP-anonymization function within the Google Analytics service, and your IP address will be truncated within the area of member states of the European Union or other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases the whole IP address will be first transferred to a Google server in the USA and truncated there. The IP-address your browser conveys within the scope of Google Analytics will not be associated with any other data held by Google.
You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser; however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. In addition to that you may prevent the collection of the information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) and the processing of this data by Google if you download and install the browser plug-in available at the following link: http://tools.google.com
Links to third party websites This website may contain links to third party websites. We are not responsible for the content and the data collection on respective third party websites; please check the privacy policy of respective websites for information of respective websites' data processing activities.
Where personal data is disclosed to the following 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 XI.
We employ other companies and individuals to administer, service, or process customer transactions. Examples of such activities include order fulfillment, order delivery, credit card payment processing, and customer service support. It may also be necessary for us to pass your information on to the editors that we work with to proofread your documents. We may also disclose information to our business partners for their own purposes, such as performing analytics, gaining customer insights, and marketing their products and services.
Credit card transactions are handled by a third-party financial institution and their vendors, which receive the credit card number and other personal identifying information such as IP address to verify the credit card numbers and process transactions.
In the event that we undergo re-organization or are sold to a third party (in whole or part), any personal information we hold about you may be transferred to that re-organized entity or third party subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy.
We may release your information when we believe, in our reasonable judgment, that release is appropriate to (i) protect the security and integrity of our website; (ii) protect our rights and property and the rights and property of others; (iii) take precautions against liability; (iv) comply with legal requirements or respond to judicial process; and (vii) provide information, to the extent legally permitted, to law enforcement agencies or for investigations on matters related to public safety.
The Websites are hosted and operated from within the United States. As part of the information sharing activities set out above, your personal data may be transferred to other countries (including countries outside the EEA) that may have different data protection standards from your country of residence. Please note that data processed in a foreign country may be subject to foreign laws and accessible to foreign governments, courts, law enforcement, and regulatory agencies. However, we will endeavor to take reasonable measures to maintain an adequate level of data protection when sharing your personal data with such countries.
In the case of a transfer outside of the EEA, this transfer is safeguarded by EU Model Clauses in accordance with Article 46 GDPR. You can find further information about the aforementioned safeguards by following this link https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en or contact us as set forth in Section XV of this Policy.
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.
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.
Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise some or all of the following rights:
Please submit any questions, concerns or comments you have about this privacy policy or any requests concerning your personal data by visit our Help Center.
The information you provide when contacting us will be processed to handle your request and will be erased when your request is completed. Alternatively, we will restrict the processing of the respective information in accordance with statutory retention requirements.
We reserve the right to change this policy from time to time by updating our website respectively. Please visit the website regularly and check our respective current privacy policy. This policy was last updated on July 1, 2022.