SciTeMed Publishing Group (SciTeMed) 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 extreme care in accordance with SciTeMed’s standards for integrity and objectivity and respect for your privacy. SciTeMed endeavors to comply with all laws and regulations that apply to the gathering and use of personal information, including but not limited to US privacy laws, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield. As used in this policy, “we” and “us” includes SciTeMed Publishing Group and our staff, employees, editors and reviewers, and vendors and independent contractors under contract with us. “SciTeMed Sites” includes the following: the web pages and content on the SciTeMed websites, journal sites, submission systems, web forms, registration system, and any other means through which we interact with you.

Your use of and interaction with the SciTeMed sites 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 SciTeMed sites and do not provide or submit any personally-identifying information by means of or while using the SciTeMed sites. By providing personal information to us, you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this privacy policy.

While interacting with the SciTeMed Sites, we may request personal information from you, including but not limited to things such as your name, mailing address, email address, institutional name, telephone number, credit card or other payment information, and ORCID iD. Your provision of such information is strictly voluntary. You can generally visit the SciTeMed Sites without disclosing such information.

Additionally, by means of your interactions with the SciTeMed Sites, 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 SciTeMed Sites, and certain information known as “clickstream data” to enable us to understand how people interact with the SciTeMed Sites, to analyze data for trends and statistics, to help diagnose and solve issues with the SciTeMed Sites and our technologies, products, and services, and to optimize the performance of the SciTeMed Sites. 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. From time to time, we use software tools to play back user sessions for purposes of assessing our customers’ interactions with our software, and these sessions may be linked to your user account. If you do not want session cookies stored on your computer, you may be able to adjust your browser settings prevent this, but note that by not accepting cookies, some pages may not fully function and you may not be able to access certain information on the SciTeMed Sites.

Use of the SciTeMed Sites is intended for adults at least eighteen years of age, and we will not knowingly collect personally-identifying information from children under the age of thirteen. SciTeMed endeavors to adhere to the provisions of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA).

SciTeMed uses your personal information as described above, and to customize your experience on the SciTeMed Sites and to facilitate our interactions with you, if any. Except as where necessary to provide services to you, such as to communicate with you regarding a manuscript you have submitted, SciTeMed 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.

We may disclose personal information as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy to our employees and to third parties under contract with us such as vendors, volunteers, independent contractors, and consultants, to financial institutions for the purposes of facilitating payment of fees owed, 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. We may also share information regarding you and your manuscript or other research content as reasonably necessary with parties such as external editors, reviewers, community journal staff, curators, and channel managers.

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.

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 SciTeMed 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.

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.

We endeavor to protect the personal information we receive, gather and store, by such means as password protection, firewalls, encryption, and other means. If, in your interactions with the SciTeMed Sites, 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.

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 SciTeMed Sites. By providing your email address, you consent to receive such communications. Where required by law, we will request that you opt-in (consent) to receive such communications from us before sending you such information.  You may opt out of receiving such communications by contacting us at contact@scitemed.com or by using the unsubscribe link(s) in emails we send you.

If you wish to discuss what personal information we may have pertaining to you, or the handling or potential disclosure of the same, you may contact us at contact@scitemed.com, and we will promptly address your inquiry.