Privacy Policy

This is the privacy policy (“policy”) for this website which is run and provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd, Chowley Oak Lane, Tattenhall, England, UK, CH7 3PG. (we, us and our).

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.

  1. 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 to provide you with interesting advertising for our services and products (see VIII) and for statistical analysis that helps us to improve our website (see IX). Additionally, we improve your website experience with third party content (see X).
  • Your personal data may be disclosed to third parties (see XI) that might be located outside your country of residence; potentially, different data protection standards may apply (see XII).
  • We have implemented appropriate safeguards to secure your personal data (see XIII) and retain your personal data only as long as necessary (see XIV).
  • Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise certain rights with regard to the processing of your personal data (see XV).
    1. 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.
    • 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:

  • For collection to provide to sponsoring pharmaceutical companies for the purposes of transfer of value tracking and compliance purposes
    • Your name
    • You email address
    • The downloads you access
    • The date and time of access
  • The following information is collected because we use Google Analytics to measure user activity on our website
    • Your IP address
    • Your device type, bowser version and operating system
    • The date and time of your requests

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.

Personal data that is collected automatically is retained for 24 months and properly erased afterwards.

  1. Providing Name and Email address to our services

The information that is necessary for the performance of the service is labelled accordingly. All further information is provided voluntarily.

We will process the personal data you provide to:

  • Watermark PDFs to provide you with a personal copy
  • Provide your details to a sponsoring pharmaceutical company legal compliance department for the purposes of transfer of value reporting to the relevant regulatory organisation within that country

For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR. [Addition: For any purpose that is not necessary for the performance of a contract (e.g. behavioural Advertising and profiling) state the legitimate interest that justifies processing. E.g.: The use of your personal data for behavioural advertising and profiling is done for the legitimate interest to improve your experience while using the website, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.]

We WILL NOT use the personal data and contact data you provide by registration to inform you directly about our additional products and services.

Your personal data is, in the absence of exceptions within the specific services mentioned below, retained for as long as the ePrint is live on our servers. After the project has been completed, your personal data will be erased within 1 month. 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.

  1. Information sharing

Your personal data will be disclosed to the following third parties for the purposes mentioned above:  Sponsoring pharmaceutical companies for whom Springer Healthcare will act as data controller. Legal basis for the transfer of your personal data is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b and f GDPR. In certain jurisdictions pharmaceutical companies who provide digital access to clinical journal articles are obliged to keep records of which clinicians have provided such a benefit in kind.  Springer Healthcare will provide your personally identifiable information on request to the legal and regulatory groups within these sponsoring organisations.

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 5.

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 disclose your personal data to following contractors who assist us in providing the services we offer through the website [No such operators at this time]. 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).

  1. 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 Safe Harbour. You can find further information about the aforementioned safeguards by contacting Simon Fry, Digital Product Development Director (simon.fry [at] springer [dot] com).

  • 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.

  • 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.

  1. 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.

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.

  1. 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 Officer. You can contact our Group Data Protection Officer via gerald[dot]coppin[at]springernature[dot]com

 

The information you provide when contacting us (name, email address) 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.

  1. 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. This policy was last updated on 02-May-2018.