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Privacy Policy

This policy was last updated on October 11th 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.

I. Summary of our processing activities

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 without setting up an account, only limited personal data will be processed to provide you with the website itself (see III).
  • In case you register for one our services (e.g. discussion forum, blog or web shop) or subscribe to our newsletter, further personal data will be processed in the scope of such services (see IV, V and VI).
  • Furthermore, your personal data will be used for statistical analysis that helps us to improve our website (see V). Additionally, we improve your website experience with third party content (see VI).
  • Your personal data may be disclosed to third parties (see VII) that might be located outside your country of residence; potentially, different data protection standards may apply (see VIII).
  • We have implemented appropriate safeguards to secure your personal data (see XII) and retain your personal data only as long as necessary (see XIII).
  • Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise certain rights with regard to the processing of your personal data (see XIV).

II. Definitions

  • 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.

III. Informational use of the website

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:

  • your IP address;
  • your device type, name and IDs;
  • the date and time of your requests;
  • the content of your requests;
  • information on your browser version;
  • your screen resolution;
  • information on your operating system, including language settings

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.

IV. Registration for our services

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:

  • Information (such as your name and email address) that is provided by registration
  • Information in connection with an account sign-in facility (e.g. log-in and password details)
  • Communications sent by you (e.g. via e-mail or website communication forms)

We will process the personal data you provide to:

  • Identify you at sign-in
  • Provide you with the services and information offered through our website
  • Administer your account
  • Communicate with you

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.

Customer service

If you contact us by either

  • e-mail or physical mail
  • telephone or fax
  • chat/messaging support
  • through a website communication or submission form

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.

Depending on the communication channel used we may 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).

V. Analysis

1. General tracking information

The tools collect information such as

  • Device and browser information (operating system information, Mobile device identifier, mobile operating system, etc.)
  • IP address
  • Page accessed, URL click stream (the chronological order of our internet sites you visited)
  • Geographic location
  • Time of visit
  • Referring site, application, or service

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 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.

2. Google Analytics

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 you 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

VI. Third party content and social media plug-ins

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.

1. Social media plug-ins

We use the following social media plug-ins: Twitter. This allows you to communicate with such services and like or comment from our website. Social media plug-ins enable a direct communication between your device and the servers of the social media provider, allowing the social media provider to communicate with you and collect information about you browsing our website. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to improve your website experience and to optimise our services.

Transfer of personal data takes places whether you have an account with the provider or not.

Your personal data will be transferred to and processed in the United States. For further information about the potential risks of a cross border data transfer refer to VIII.

Please note that we neither have the control of the extent of personal data that is collected by the respective plug-in provider nor do we know the processing’s purpose or the period your personal data will be retained.

Further information about the processing of your personal data in the provider’s course of operation is provided via their respective privacy policy. Moreover, you will be provided with further information with regard to your rights and setting concerning privacy.

Twitter

We use the twitter-button. The button is provided by Twitter Inc., 795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. (“Twitter”) The buttons are marked using the text “Twitter” or “Follow” and a stylized blue bird. The button enables the user to share an article or a website of this homepage on Twitter or to follow the provider on Twitter.

If a user visits one of the websites using such a button, the user’s browser directly connects to Twitter’s servers. The Twitter-button and its content are loaded directly from Twitter’s servers and included in the website by the user’s browser. According to the provider’s knowledge, Twitter collects the user IP-address and the website’s URL when the button is loaded from Twitter’s servers. However, this data is only be used for loading and displaying the Twitter-button.

Further information can be found in Twitter’s privacy statement under: https://twitter.com/privacy .

Should you have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us via the e-mail address dataprotection@springernature.com .

2. External Service Providers

We use services from Youtube in order to play videos directly from our website and to understand the user satisfaction better or survey you on specific topic of interest. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to improve your website experience and to optimise our services.

YouTube

We use the "YouTube" service. The service is provided by Google LLC ("Google"), Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA, to enable us to show you videos on our Website.

YouTube places a Cookie on your browser, in which certain information for the display of videos are stored and transferred to Google. We do not have any influence on Google's data processing activities You can find further information on how Google processes your information in Google`s privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy . Your data will be sent to a country outside the EEA. For further information about the potential risks of a cross border data transfer refer to VIII.

VII. Information sharing

When you use database products, we will process your searches, clicks and record views as well as your IP address and potentially your email address. The search data is used to assess how users are navigating to the database, whether by regular/direct search or via a search engine. The click data may indicate a transfer of interest to activity within the database by the user. The record views provide details beyond the click data allowing to assess whether the database is configured appropriately as the user has moved on to view detailed abstract/citation metadata hosted on the database.

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 may share the usage data with your employer, the institution you are a member to, your university etc. 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 the usage data for other purposes than these economic efficiency assessment purposes.

In addition, allowing our 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.

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 safeguards at https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en.

Should you have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us via the e-mail address dataprotection@springernature.com.

Your personal data will be disclosed to the following third parties for the purposes mentioned above:

  • Google (see above),

Legal basis for the transfer of your personal data is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b and f GDPR. We use the functionality to optimise our service to you.

Some of the recipients mentioned above reside outside the EEA. For further information about cross border transfer in general and transfers outside of the EEA see VIII.

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 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. 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).

VIII. Cross border data transfers

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 safeguards at https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en .

IX. Children's Privacy

Our Site is not directed to children under the age of 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13 on our Site. If we become aware that we have inadvertently received personal information from a visitor under the age of thirteen on our Site, we will delete the information from our records.

X. Your Choices

We give you the option of requesting that we not use your information for marketing purposes, or share your information with related companies for their own marketing purposes. Click here to send us an e-mail with your name and e-mail address, if you do not want us to use your information for marketing purposes, or share your information with related companies for their own marketing purposes.

Please be aware that we are able to process an opt-out request only for a specific e-mail address. So, if you have more than one e-mail address or if you have changed your e-mail address, your opt-out request may not be processed properly. If you believe you have opted out, but continue to receive e-mails from us, please contact us by one of the means listed under "Contacting Us" below, and we will endeavor to resolve the issue.

XI. Notice to California Residents

California's "Shine the Light" law, Civil Code section 1798.83, requires certain businesses to respond to requests from California customers asking about the business' practices related to disclosing personal information to third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes. In the alternative, such businesses may have in place a policy not to disclose personal information of customers to third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes if the customer has opted out of such information-sharing. We have such a policy in place. As discussed above in the section entitled "Your Choices", if you wish to opt-out of our sharing of your information with third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes, please follow the appropriate opt-out link in that section.

XII. Security

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.

XIII. Data retention

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.

XIV. Your rights

Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise some or all of the following rights:

  1. require (i) information as to whether your personal data is retained and (ii) access to and/or duplicates of your personal data retained, including the purposes of the processing, the categories of personal data concerned, and the data recipients as well as potential retention periods;
  2. request rectification, removal or restriction of your personal data, e.g. because (i) it is incomplete or inaccurate, (ii) it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected, or (iii) the consent on which the processing was based has been withdrawn;
  3. refuse to provide and – without impact to data processing activities that have taken place before such withdrawal – withdraw your consent to processing of your personal data at any time;
  4. object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, that your personal data shall be subject to a processing. In this case, please provide us with information about your particular situation. After the assessment of the facts presented by you we will either stop processing your personal data or present you our compelling legitimate grounds for an ongoing processing;
  5. take legal actions in relation to any potential breach of your rights regarding the processing of your personal data, as well as to lodge complaints before the competent data protection regulators;
  6. require (i) to receive the personal data concerning you, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and (ii) to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from our side; where technically feasible you shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from us to another controller; and/or
  7. not to be subject to any automated decision making, including profiling (automatic decisions based on data processing by automatic means, for the purpose of assessing several personal aspects) which produce legal effects on you or affects you with similar significance.
  8. 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.

XV. Contacting us

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.

XVI. Amendments to this policy

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.

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