Privacy Policy

Introduction

ScieNFT 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 care in accordance with ScieNFT standards for integrity and objectivity and respect for your privacy. ScieNFT endeavors to comply with all laws and regulations that apply to the gathering and use of personal information, including US privacy laws and the EU General Data Protection Regulation. This privacy policy describes the information we collect, the purposes for which it is used, and your choices regarding its use. As used in this privacy policy, "we" and "us" includes all employees and stakeholders at ScieNFT and ScieNFT or third party tools, software, submission systems, web forms, registration system, and any other means through which we interact with you.

Information We Collect

Personal Information

We request personal information from you while interacting with ScieNFT, as follows:

When you register on ScieNFT 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 ScieNFT for consideration or for posting on our sites or as a preprint, we will ask for the following information so that we may consider, process, and possibly publish your manuscript, in conformance with accepted publishing standards: your name, title, telephone number, email address, institution, department, address, and 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), state or province, and areas of interest or expertise. Except for credit card or other payment information, we will ask for the same information if you want to be considered as an editor or reviewer. If you are a corresponding author, we require your ORCID iD to help identify you and connect your work to your ORCID record when an article is published. You can learn more about ORCID iD here.
If you want to submit a public comment on our website, your user name will appear with a possibility for all users to access your profile.
If you register on ScieNFT, we will gather and store your username and password to identify you at sign-in and to administer your account.
If we send you email with links then we will gather and store the information about the links that you click on in order to track the effectiveness of our communications.

Additionally, ScieNFT 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 ScieNFT on a particular topic.

Finally, we may collect demographic information about you, such as gender and ethnic origin. We usually collect and use this information on an anonymized basis. If you provide demographic information to ScieNFT, you do so voluntarily and ScieNFT will collect, store and use your demographic information in accordance with this privacy policy.

Technical Information

By generally visiting or otherwise interacting with ScieNFT, we 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 ScieNFT, and certain information known as "clickstream data" to enable us to understand how people interact with ScieNFT, to analyze data for trends and statistics, to help diagnose and solve issues with the our sites and our technologies, products, and services, and to optimize the performance of ScieNFT. We use click view data to provide statistics on articles such as number of views and downloads. We also use session cookies, as described below. From time to time, we use software tools to play back 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 which contains personalized links then we will gather and store your name, email, and any link you click on, when you click on the links in order to track the effectiveness of our communications.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

We and our third party providers use cookies and other tracking technologies to collect information.

Children's Privacy

Use of the ScieNFT 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).

How We Use and Disclose Your Information

Use by ScieNFT

ScieNFT uses your personal information as described in the "INFORMATION WE COLLECT" section, to customize your experience and facilitate our interactions with you.

If you are an author, we use your personal information for the purpose of processing, reviewing, communicating about, facilitating editorial review and peer review, for publishing, and to redeem your tokens.

If you write a news or an opinion for the News section, your name and biography (as provided by you) will be made public.

If you provide demographic information to SCIENFT as described in the "INFORMATION WE COLLECT" 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 simply visit ScieNFT to read content, we will use information such as your URL and cookies to provide a good experience, as described in the "INFORMATION WE COLLECT" section.

We may also collect your name, email, address and phone number at conferences or events.

Disclosure to Third Parties

When a paper is published or posted as a preprint, the following information appears as part of the paper: author's name, role, email address, affiliation, ORCID iD, any competing interests, affiliation and the NFT reference.

All reviews on ScieNFT are public hence as an author the reviews will appear automatically when submitted.

We may also disclose personal information as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy to other third parties, as follows:

Vendors, independent contractors, and consultants to enable us to provide products and services, such as financial institutions (for facilitating payment of fees owed), web and technical support providers (such as hosting providers and customer service and support providers), and third parties who provide syndication and preprints
Institutions or consortia if applicable
Third party workflow service intermediaries, to facilitate the performance of contractual obligations between ScieNFT and institutions or consortia, as applicable
Other publishers
Third parties authorized by you to receive such information.
To respond to claims asserted against us or comply with legal process (e.g., subpoenas or warrants), or lawful requests from government or law enforcement authorities (as required to meet national security or law enforcement requirements), and to enforce or comply with our agreements, terms of use, and this privacy policy
Academic research groups and third-party providers of tools or services that help inform ScieNFT how to improve the peer review system and scientific communication
To comply with applicable law, or as required or permitted by law
Where it is in our legitimate interests, under relevant law, to run, grow and develop our organization in order to expand the impact of science and medicine
If we sell any business or assets, we may disclose your personal information to the buyer of such business or assets
If substantially all of our or any of our affiliates' assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal information held by us will be one of the transferred assets
To protect the safety of any person or to prevent any illegal activity
To protect the rights, property, or safety of ScieNFT our staff, our users or other persons. This may include exchanging personal information with other organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction
Author's institution and/or ethics committee and other third parties, as appropriate, where we have identified a failure to comply with our publishing standards and guidelines or to uphold the integrity of research in cases of suspected research integrity breaches

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 prior to use.

ScieNFT will never disclose demographic information, described in the "INFORMATION WE COLLECT" section above, to third parties, unless it has been anonymized or otherwise deidentified.

No Sale or Leasing of Your Information

Except as described in the "Disclosure to Third Parties" section of 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.

How Long We Retain 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 ScieNFT 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.

Requests to delete, amend or withdraw consent (non-EEA or UK residents)

You may be entitled to 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. Please read the "Your Rights" paragraph under the "ADDITIONAL TERMS FOR EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA AND UK RESIDENTS" below for details. If you are a resident of the EEA or UK, see below for more specific details on how that applies to you.

Protection of 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. We also require that third party service providers acting on our behalf or with whom we share your information also provide appropriate security measures in accordance with industry standards.

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

Third Party Websites

If, in your interactions with the SCIENFT 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, and are not responsible for 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 and to review the third party's privacy policy for information on its data processing practice.

Sending You Email Communications

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 ScieNFT.

For UK and EEA recipients, ScieNFT legal basis for using your information to send email communications is our legitimate interests to run, grow and develop our organization in order to expand the impact of science and medicine and spread knowledge in this field. We describe our legitimate interests in more detail under the "Legal Basis for your information" section below. Email communications will be sent on an opt out basis to any recipient who has registered or signed up for ScieNFT services and did not opt out.

Where required by law, we may process your personal information for marketing purposes on the basis of 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 contact@scienft.com

You can opt out of receiving such communications by using the unsubscribe link(s) in emails we send you or by emailing us at contact@scienft.com

Changes to This Privacy Policy

ScieNFT may make changes to this privacy policy from time to time. Changes to this privacy policy will be made by updating this page. Please visit this privacy policy regularly to read the current version. If there are material changes to how we use your personal information, we will endeavor to provide you with reasonable notice of such changes, either by prominent notice on www.ScieNFT.Com or to your email address of record.

Additional Terms for European Economic Area and UK Residents

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

Legal Basis for Use of Your Information

The information we require, as identified in the "INFORMATION WE COLLECT" section of this privacy policy, is processed under the following legal basis:

ScieNFT legitimate interests. This includes:

to enable ScieNFT to provide our products and services to you
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 to our subscribers, market research and business development
for analytics, to gather metrics to better understand how users use of ScieNFT, to evaluate and improve ScieNFT Site, and to provide ScieNFT users with this information, where applicable
to provide information on ScieNFT publication fees 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) in order 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.

Contractual obligations. For the performance of contractual obligations between you and ScieNFT, including the ScieNFT Terms of Use.

Consent. Where required by law, we may process your personal information in some cases for marketing purposes on the basis of 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 ScieNFT services and did not opt out.

Your Rights

Deletion of Personal Information

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 by emailing us at contact@scienft.com

If you are an author and have submitted a manuscript or other research outputs to ScieNFT, or you are an editor or reviewer that has reviewed manuscripts or other research outputs submitted to ScieNFT, some of your personal data will be retained as necessary for ScieNFT 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 personal data for the purposes of preserving ScieNFT 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.

Access, Update, Data Portability and Other Rights

You may also be entitled to access your information, update your personal information which is out of date or incorrect, restrict use of your personal information in certain specific circumstances, place a data portability request (applicable only when we use your personal information on the basis of 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 on the basis of our or another person's legitimate interest. Requests should be directed to privacy@ScieNFT.org.

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.