INTRODUCTION
Open Review Hub (ORH) 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 ORH’s standards for integrity and objectivity and respect for your privacy. ORH endeavors to comply with all laws and regulations that apply to the gathering and use of personal information, including but not limited to the Law of Ukraine On Protection of Personal Data, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), US privacy laws, the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield. As used in this policy, “we” and “us” includes ORH and our staff, employees, volunteers, and independent contractors under contract with us. “ORH Site” includes the following: the web pages and content on the ORH website, conferences and journal sites, and the tools, software, submission systems, web forms, registration system, and any other means through which we interact with you.
YOUR USE OF AND INTERACTION WITH THE ORH SITE CONSTITUTES YOUR UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY, AS THEY MAY BE MODIFIED FROM TIME TO TIME. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH AND ACCEPT ALL OF THE PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY, DO NOT USE THE ORH SITE AND DO NOT PROVIDE OR SUBMIT ANY PERSONALLY-IDENTIFYING INFORMATION BY MEANS OF OR WHILE USING THE ORH SITE. BY PROVIDING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO US, YOU CONSENT TO OUR COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY.
INFORMATION WE MAY COLLECT
Personal Information
While interacting with the ORH Site, we may request personal information from you, which includes items such as: your name and surname, country of residence, email address, organization name, institutional affiliation, scientific rank, and ORCID iD. Optional personal information we may request from you includes your digital photograph, personal website URL and your IDs or user profile URLs on the following websites: Scopus (https://www.scopus.com), ResearcherID (http://www.researcherid.com), Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com), ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com). Your provision of such information is strictly voluntary. You can generally visit the ORH Site without disclosing such information. If you register on the ORH Site, we will gather and store your user name and password. If you register on the ORH Site with your Google (https://accounts.google.com) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com) account, we will gather and store your ID, user name and profile picture on the abovementioned websites.
If you are an author who is submitting or has submitted a manuscript or other research outputs to ORH for our consideration or for posting on the ORH site or as a preprint, we will require you to provide the above types of information so that we may consider, process, and possibly publish your paper, in conformance with accepted publishing standards. Where your paper is published or posted as a preprint, at least your name and surname, email address, affiliation, and ORCID iD will appear as part of the paper. Likewise, when you register on a ORH Site for updates or to receive other types of notifications from us, we will ask for your email address at a minimum to enable us to send you the information you have requested.
Technical Information
Additionally, by means of your interactions with the ORH Site, we may 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 ORH Site, and certain information known as “clickstream data” to enable us to understand how people interact with the ORH Site, to analyze data for trends and statistics, to help diagnose and solve issues with the ORH Site and our technologies, products, and services, and to optimize the performance of the ORH Site. We also use session cookies, small data files stored in your browser so you don’t have to log in each time you visit any of our web pages. However, no cookies will be stored in your browser before you give us your consent by clicking the button in the special banner in the lower part of the website. You may also be able to adjust your browser settings to prevent storing session cookies on your computer. Please note, that by not accepting cookies, some pages may not fully function and you may not be able to access certain information on the ORH Site.
Protection of Children
Use of the ORH Site is intended for adults at least eighteen (18) years of age, and we will not knowingly collect personally-identifying information from children under the age of thirteen (13). ORH endeavors to adhere to the provisions of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA").
HOW WE MAY USE AND DISCLOSE YOUR INFORMATION
Use by ORH
ORH uses your personal information as described above, and to customize your experience on the PLOS Sites and to facilitate our interactions with you. If you are an author, we will use your personal information for the purpose of processing, reviewing, communicating about, facilitating editorial review and peer review, for publishing. If you are an editor or reviewer, we may 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 ORH as it may affect your work with us. If you simply come to ORH Site to read content, we will use information such as your URL and cookies to provide a good experience, as described above.
Except as where necessary to provide services to you, ORH staff do not typically take note of your personal information; the information is mainly stored on or by our computers, computer networks, servers, tools, and systems, as described above.
Potential Disclosure to Third Parties
If you submit a manuscript to us for possible publishing as a part of conference proceedings, journal or other content collection, we may publish it online in full as well as your name and surname, email address, affiliation, and ORCID iD to gauge the interest of potential editors and reviewers in reviewing your paper.
We may disclose personal information as discussed above and as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy to our employees and to third parties under contract with us, including vendors, volunteers, independent contractors, and consultants, web and technical support providers, other publishers and/or content hosting providers under contract with us, third parties authorized by you to receive such information, and as may be required or permitted by law. As described above, we may also share information regarding you and your manuscript or other research content as reasonably necessary with parties such as external editors and reviewers, and with community of the ORH website users.
No Sale or Leasing of Your Information
Except as described in 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.
HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION
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 ORH 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.
ADDITIONAL REASONS WHY WE MAY GATHER, USE, DISCLOSE, AND STORE PERSONAL INFORMATION
In addition to the reasons stated above, we may use your personal information to comply with contracts, legal agreements, our terms of use and privacy policies, and to comply with applicable laws. We may produce personal information as and to the extent compelled by court order or a law enforcement agency.
PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We endeavor to protect the personal information we receive, gather and store, by such means as password protection, firewalls, encryption, and other means.
THIRD PARTY WEBSITES
If, in your interactions with the ORH Site, 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, or 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.
CONSENT TO RECEIVE EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS
We may send you email communications regarding our business, products or services in response to your use of the ORH Site, and by registering or providing your email address, you consent to receive such communications. You may out of receiving such communications by adjusting setting on your personal ORH Site profile page, by using the unsubscribe link(s) in emails we send you, or by contacting us at openreviewhub [dot] org
gmail [dot] com.
HOW TO CONTACT US REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
If you wish to discuss what personal information we may have pertaining to you, or the handling or potential disclosure of the same, or you wish to withdraw consent regarding these matters or to ask us to delete your personal information, you may contact us at openreviewhub [dot] orggmail [dot] com.