Among the SBPReports publishing team’s (further referred to as “we”) key priorities is the protection and accurate handling of the personal information of the users, for the preservation of their privacy. We respect and follow all laws and regulations that apply to the gathering and use of personal information, including the EU General Data Protection Regulation and US privacy laws. Here we describe the information we collect, the purposes for which it is used, and your choices regarding its use. This editorial policy also covers our staff, employees, officers, directors, volunteer editors and reviewers, and vendors and independent contractors under contract with us. SBPReports includes the following: the web pages and content, journal sites, and SBPReports or third-party tools, software, submission systems, web forms, registration system, and any other means through which we interact with you.

Information that SBPReports collects

Personal Information

We request personal information from you while interacting with the SBPReports website:

• When you register on the SBPReports website for updates or to receive other types of notifications from us, we will ask for your email address to enable us to send you the information you have requested.
• If you want to submit a manuscript or other research output to SBPReports for consideration, we will require the following information for the consideration, processing, and potential publishing of your research: your name, title, telephone number, email address, institution, department, address, and a credit card or other payment information. You may voluntarily provide us with additional information to help us identify and contact you, such as your middle name, degree, preferred name, secondary phone number, fax number, position, ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier), Web of Science, and Scopus identifiers, state or province, and areas of interest or expertise. Except for credit cards or other payment information, we will ask for the same information if you want to be considered as an editor or reviewer.
• If you want to submit a public comment on our website, we will ask for the following information: email, first name, and last name. Your display name will be made public along with your comment. If you request to delete your account, your comment will remain on our website but your display name will no longer be associated with your comment.
• If you register on the SBPReports Site, we will gather and store your username and password to identify you at sign-in and to administer your account.
• If we send you an email with links then we will gather and store the information about the links that you click on to track the effectiveness of our communications.

Additionally, SBPReports may process some basic personal information about you (email address, name, and research interest) that is publicly available to register you as a potential reviewer and expert or to contact you about publishing with SBPReports. If you do not wish to be contacted as a potential reviewer or for possible publication with SBPReports, you can email us at [email protected]. We will keep some of your personal information to recall your request not to be contacted in the future.

Finally, you may share demographic information about you, such as gender and ethnic origin. We usually collect and use this information on an anonymized basis.

Technical Information

Upon interaction with the SBPReports website you allow us to 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. We use click view data to provide statistics on articles such as the number of views and downloads. We also use session cookies, as described below. From time to time, we use software tools to playback user sessions for our internal use in assessing our customers’ interactions with our software, and these sessions may be linked to your user account. When we send you an email that contains personalized links then we will gather and store your name, email, and any link you click on when you click on the links to track the effectiveness of our communications.

Cookies

Cookies allow us to make the website work more smoothly for users. For users who are logged in, the cookies allow them to move between pages and remain logged in. We use analytics cookies to allow a better understanding, at an anonymous aggregated level, of how users use the site, and broad categories of users, including their location. Local storage is an area of your browser used by websites to store information on your computer rather than making additional web requests and can speed up browsing.

Visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using SBPReports websites, with the drawback that certain features of our websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies. You can modify your browser settings to notify you each time a cookie is sent to it and you can decide whether or not to accept. Alternatively, you can set your browser to refuse all cookies. Cookies that have already been set can be deleted at any time using your browser settings. The independent AboutCookies.org website contains comprehensive information on how to modify your browser settings. You can conceal your true IP address by using a virtual private network (VPN). You can opt-out of interaction tracking by enabling Do Not Track (DNT) in your browser.

Children’s Privacy

Use of the SBPReports is intended for adults at least eighteen (18) years of age and we do not knowingly collect personally-identifying information from children under the age of thirteen (13). 

The use of the information by SBPReports

If you are an author, we use your personal information for processing, reviewing, communicating about, facilitating editorial review and peer review, for publishing, and to facilitate payment of article publishing fees. If you are an editor or reviewer, we 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. We may also collect your name, email, address, and phone number at conferences or events if you agree.

If an author chooses to publish their peer review history, we make the manuscript review process available to the public when an article is published, including the contents of emails and other communications between reviewers, editors, and authors via the SBPReports.

We may also use your personal information to assist with improving our manuscript submission and tracking system and scientific communication.

If you provide demographic information to SBPReports as described in the “Information that SBPReports collects” section above, then we usually collect and use this information on an anonymized basis so that you will not be identified from it unless we tell you otherwise. We will use that information only for internal diversity tracking purposes. If you visit SBPReports to read content, we will use information such as your URL and cookies to provide a good experience.

If you submit a manuscript or other research content to us for possible publication, we will send the title and abstract of your manuscript, and your name, to one or more potential external/volunteer editors and reviewers to gauge their interest in reviewing your content. If they agree to review your content, we will send them your full manuscript and any revisions and relevant comments you have provided. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, we share information about you, your manuscript, or other research content as reasonably necessary with volunteer curators and channel managers. In addition to volunteer curators and channel managers, we may share the foregoing information with journalists before publication to promote your work.

If an author chooses to publish their peer review history, then the contents of emails and other communications between reviewers, editors, and authors via the SBPReports will be made public. If you are a reviewer and provide us with your consent, we will disclose your name as part of the peer review history when an article is published and the author has chosen to publish the peer review history. To remove your name from the peer review history after disclosure to the public, you can email [email protected].

We share the data with the following classes of the data processor:

• the organizations that provide or support our submission, publication fee billing, and customer relationship management systems;
• online data storage organizations;
• analytics companies, solely for them to be able to provide us with aggregated analyzed data.

In some cases, the applications or user interfaces you encounter while on our sites are managed by third parties, who may require that you provide your personal information. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third-party services or applications. We recommend carefully reviewing the user terms and privacy statement of each third-party service, website, and/or application before use.

SBPReports will never disclose demographic information, described in the “Information that SBPReports collects” section above, to third parties, unless it has been anonymized.

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.

Except in countries or jurisdictions where it is not be permitted by law, we may from time to time send you email communications regarding our business, products, or services in response to your use of the SBPReports. Where required by law, we may process your personal information for marketing purposes based on your consent.

You can opt-out of receiving such communications at any time by using the unsubscribe link(s) in emails we send you or by emailing us at [email protected].

How long does SBPReports store 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 SBPReports is active. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

You may request that we delete or amend your personal information. You may also be entitled to withdraw your consent when consent is the basis for processing your personal information. We apply the same procedures, limitations, and exceptions established for European Economic Area (EEA) and UK residents in this privacy policy to all who make such request to delete or amend personal information, or withdraw consent for processing personal information, regardless of geographic location. If you are a resident of the EEA or UK, see below for more specific details on how that applies to you.

Protection of the personal information

We use reasonable and appropriate physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect your information from unauthorized use, access, loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. We endeavor to protect the personal information we receive, gather and store, by such means as password protection, firewalls, and other means.

When we share your data with others, we have contractual arrangements with them that oblige them to safeguard the data, to use it only for the purposes we have requested, and not to disclose it to any other parties without our consent. The form of these contractual arrangements varies according to the location of the other party, and we employ stronger safeguards for parties outside the EEA.

Transmissions over the internet are never entirely secure and we cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via the SBPReports Site while it is in transit over the internet. Any such transmission of information by you over the internet is at your own risk.

SBPReports is headquartered in Estonia with service providers in the EU. SBPReports will take measures to protect the cross-border transfer of your information following applicable law. If you do not want your personal information transferred to the EU, please do not submit any information to us or use our services.

Changes of the Privacy Policy

SBPReports may make changes to this privacy policy from time to time. Changes to this privacy policy will be made by updating this page. If there are material changes to how we use your personal information, we will provide you with reasonable notice of such changes.

Additional Terms for EU and UK residents

If you reside within the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, the following additional terms apply.

The information we require, as identified in the “Information that SBPReports collects” section of this privacy policy, is processed:

• to enable SBPReports to provide our products and services to you
• finding and contacting qualified reviewers to ensure the high level of articles published in the SBPReports journal, as applicable
• contacting authors and other academics to ensure they are aware when SBPReports is calling for papers for relevant journals
• to ensure compliance with publishing standards and ethical guidelines and to take action necessary to uphold these
• for marketing to individuals at businesses/corporate addresses and our subscribers, market research, and business development
• for analytics, to gather metrics to better understand how users use the SBPReports, to evaluate and improve the SBPReports
• to provide information on SBPReports article processing charges and other relevant terms with institutions or consortia, where applicable
• to prevent fraud and other illegal activity
• the legitimate interests of others (for example, to ensure the security of our website)
• to comply with legal obligations, as part of our general business operations, and for other internal business administration purposes
• if we collect demographic information from you (such as gender and ethnic origin) to carry out diversity monitoring and such information is not collected in an anonymous format, then we rely on our legitimate interest to do so.

Where required by law, we may process your personal information in some cases for marketing purposes based on your consent (which you may withdraw at any time after giving it, as described in this privacy policy). Otherwise, email communication will be sent on an opt-out basis to any recipient who has registered or signed up to SBPReports services and did not opt-out.

Your Rights

You may be entitled to request that we delete your personal information in certain specific circumstances. If you wish to exercise this right, please submit your request at [email protected].

If you are an author and have submitted a manuscript or other research outputs to SBPReports, or you are an editor or reviewer that has reviewed manuscripts or other research outputs submitted to SBPReports, some of your data will be retained as necessary for SBPReports to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim; for archiving scientific research; and for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information. We may retain your data to preserve SBPReports publishing standards and ethical guidelines, which authors are made aware of before submission of any manuscript or other research output. Such personal data includes your name, institutional affiliation, title, and email address. 

If your article has been published or posted as a preprint, the following additional personal data will be retained for purposes of archiving scientific research: author’s role, ORCID iD and any competing interests.

We will consider all such requests and provide our response within a reasonable period (but no longer than one calendar month from our receipt of your request unless we tell you that we are entitled to a longer period under applicable law). We may require you to verify your identity before we respond to your request. Certain personal information may be exempt from such requests in certain circumstances, including as provided for in this privacy policy.

You may also be entitled to access your information, update your personal information which is out of date or incorrect, restrict the use of your personal information in certain specific circumstances, place a data portability request (applicable only when we use your personal information based on your consent or performance of a contract, and where our use of your information is carried out by automated means), and ask us to consider any valid objections which you have to our use of your personal information where we process it based on our or another person’s legitimate interest. Requests should be directed to [email protected].

We will consider all such requests and provide our response within a reasonable period (but no longer than one calendar month from our receipt of your request unless we tell you we are entitled to a longer period under applicable law). We may require you to verify your identity before we respond to any of your requests. Certain personal information may be exempt from such requests in certain circumstances, including as provided for in this privacy policy.

You also have the right to complain to a supervisory data protection authority regarding our data processing.

If you are in Europe, an up-to-date list of data protection authorities is available at https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en. If you are in the UK, the data protection authority is the UK Information Commissioner’s Office available at https://ico.org.uk/.

The Privacy Policy has been developed based on best practices, implied by PLOS