This policy was last updated on 7th November 2022.
This is the privacy policy (“policy”) for this website which is run and provided by Springer Nature Switzerland AG, Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham Switzerland.
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.
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.
Our website offers access to database products that enable you to gain fast access to information relevant to your scientific domain. In order to use the aforementioned services you may have to set up an account. With regard to the registration of an account and its subsequent use, we process:
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 with the next regular database clean-up (within 6 weeks). 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.
If you contact us by either
we will process the personal data you provide to process and fulfil your request. For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a and b GDPR.
To provide the requested service your data may be stored in a ticketing system and/or on a support platform to enable data access by the relevant customer support team member. Where appropriate the data will also be forwarded to a different team to fulfil the request (e.g. to update your data) or be used on physical data records, e.g. invoices. We may use generative AI to support us in providing the response or service requested; any output is subject to human oversight before being used.
We use Freshdesk (provided by Freshworks GmbH, Neue Grünstraße 17, 10179 Berlin, Germany) as a ticketing system to store and process your requests. Depending on the region you call from and team providing support we use different telephony solutions. For the most part, customers contacting customer service are directed to our level 1 teams at our Philippines-based data processor Straive (77 Robinson Road, # 13-00 Singapore 068896), if necessary, the service ticket is forwarded to a local level 2 Springer Nature Customer Service team or another relevant team at Springer Nature.
We do not process any sensitive data unless provided by you because you e.g. need support in coping with access issues due to a disability or reveal any protected characteristics during communication. For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR.
We share anonymous, aggregated data within the business. We forward emails internally, or provide access to tickets for other teams to e.g. share positive feedback with a stakeholder, or for review by internal teams seeking to improve the products and services. For this the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to improve our service quality and provide tailored solutions to the customers.
We store your data until completion of the request and, if applicable, as long as required by statutory retention requirements (e.g. for 3 years after completion to prove adequate handling of service requests or subject access requests made under the GDPR).
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.
Depending on the provider the information generated about your use of the website may be transferred to and processed in third countries, e.g. the United States. For further information about the potential risks of a cross border data transfer please refer to section VIII. 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 consent, Art. 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR 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-anonymisation 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: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Where personal data is disclosed to 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 section on Cross border data transfers.
We may disclose your personal data to contractors/data processors who assist us in providing the services we offer through the website. Such a transfer will be based on data processing agreements (Art. 28 GDPR). Therefore, our contractors will only use your personal data to the extent necessary to perform their functions and will be contractually bound to process your personal data only on our behalf and in compliance with our requests.
In the event that we undergo re-organisation or are sold to a third party, any personal data we hold about you may be transferred to that re-organised entity or third party in compliance with applicable law.
We may disclose your personal data if legally entitled or required to do so (for example if required by law or by a court order). The legal basis for this will be Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. c GDPR (in conjunction with the respective national law).
We may disclose anonymous aggregate statistics about users of the website in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics will include no personal data. We also supply standardized usage reports to institutional customers, also known as Counter Reports. For more information on Counter Reports - https://www.projectcounter.org/code-of-practice-sections/usage-reports/
In addition to the above mentioned anonymous reports and by special arrangement:
When you read research journals and eBooks or use database products, we will process your personal data to create usage reports. For journals and eBooks this will include your full text HTML and PDF downloads, your IP address and potentially your email address. This data is necessary for the usage report as it provides information on the usage and overall interest in a particular journal or group of journals or eBooks.
The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) 1 lit. f GDPR. We have a legitimate interest to assess and evaluate the use of our content to be able to improve our services. We will retain this data securely for ongoing internal analysis and future reference.
We may share the usage data with licensee under whose license you are accessing and using our services, (e.g. your employer, the institution you are a member to, your university etc. “Licensee”). The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) 1 lit. f GDPR. The Licensee has a legitimate interest in using the usage data to assess and evaluate the economic efficiency of its license for our content. Based on this evaluation, the Licensee will be able to determine e.g. the necessity to obtain more licenses or reduce the number of licenses or to allocate costs internally. Further, the usage data may allow the Licensee to request contributions or funding. The Licensee is contractually limited to use using the usage data for no other purposes than these economic efficiency assessment purposes.
In addition, we ourselves have a legitimate interest in enabling the Licensee to use the usage data to conduct respective evaluation and assessments is also in our interest as it makes our service more attractive for the Licensees.
If the Licensee resides outside the EEA, the transfer is safeguarded by a Commission’s adequacy decision such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. You can find further information about the aforementioned safeguard by contacting onlineservice@springernature.com.
You may object to the transfer of the usage data to the Licensee at any time without reason by sending an email to onlineservice@springernature.com.
Within the scope of our information sharing activities set out above, your personal data may be transferred to other countries (including countries outside the EEA) which 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 endeavour 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 a Commission’s adequacy decision such as the EU Model Clauses. You can find further information about the aforementioned safeguard at https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en.
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:
You may (i) exercise the rights referred to above or (ii) pose any questions or (iii) make any complaints regarding our data processing by contacting us using the contact details set out below.
Please submit any questions, concerns or comments you have about this privacy policy or any requests concerning your personal data by email to our Group Data Protection Office. You can contact our Group Data Protection Officer via dataprotection@springernature.com
The information you provide when contacting us onlineservice@springernature.com 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.
While using an institutional account for this website we don’t track any personal, performance, functional or 1st or 3rd party related information. We only use essential cookies necessary for it to function correctly. Please read our privacy policy and California Privacy Statement for more information.
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