Open Exploration respects your privacy and makes every effort to protect your personal information and handle the gathered information carefully and appropriately. The following privacy policy ensures that you (the website users) are fully aware of how, why and when we process your personal information, as well as the information regarding your rights and our obligations. To provide a safe and secure user experience, Open Exploration 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, etc.
"We" "Our" and "Us" include all staff, employees, editors, reviewers, and any contractors who work for us. "The website" includes Open Exploration website and all the journal websites, and the tools, software, submission systems, web forms, registration system, and any other means through which we interact with you.
By connecting to Open Exploration website, there are two types of information which may be collected.
Personal Information
When you register on our website, publish articles with us, or subscribe to our journals, your personal information may be gathered including your name, address or email address, institution, phone number, ORCID, user name and passport, etc. All above these are collected voluntarily. If you just visit the website, you do not have to disclose such information.
Additionally, as permitted by applicable law(s), we may collect personal information about you from other third-party sources, including publicly available data sources, your employer or your university/school. This personal information may be used to update and enhance any existing personal information that we currently hold.
Technical Information
When you visit the website, some technical information may be collected, which may include the Internet Protocol address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, your geographic location, browser type and version, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform; and information about your visit, including the source of your visit, the full click path, mouse movement through our websites (including date and time); and services you viewed, searches made on our website, page response times, download errors and length of visits to certain pages.
We use your information to:
★ invite you to participate in article review and research study, submit manuscripts, or attend academic events;
★ understand the geographical locations and institutional affiliations of our users;
★ answer your queries and provide you with support and service;
★ conduct surveys aimed at providing you with a better service;
★ produce statistics about the usage of our websites to learn what we are doing well and where we can improve the online services we offer, as well as website and system administration or internal audits and reviews. We may share aggregated statistics with the third parties with whom we work, but these statistics will not include information which will allow you to be identified;
★ inform you of other products or services available from the websites or to contact you for your opinion of current products and services or potential new products and services that may be offered;
★ use your contact information in order to send you e-mail, postal mail, or other communications regarding updates at Open Exploration.
If we intend to process your personal data for a purpose other than that for which it was collected, we will provide you with information on that purpose and any other relevant information.
We use your information based on the following terms.
★ You have consented to our use of your personal information for a specified purpose. In this case, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
★ Processing is necessary to perform our contract with you or to take steps before entering into a contract with you.
★ Using your information is necessary for complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes and enforcing our contractual agreements.
★ It's in our legitimate interests that we use your information.
Open Exploration takes security measures to protect your personal information against accidental, unlawful or unauthorized access, loss, destruction, alteration, disclosure or use.
Open Exploration may retain certain records for legitimate reasons. 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 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.
Your personal information may be transferred to other countries which may have different protection standards from your country. In this case, your data will be subject to foreign laws or accessible to foreign governments. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your personal data is processed safely and in accordance with this privacy policy.
When you visit the website, you may enter the third party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of the third party websites that you visit through a link on Open Exploration websites. Please check the privacy policies of these third party websites for details.
You have a number of choices concerning your personal information.
You can ask to be informed what personal information we collect from you.
If you are a registered user, you can access your account at any time and make corrections or updates. You can select what information you provide and apply to deactivate your account.
You can manage the settings on your browser to decide whether it accepts cookies and which cookies it accepts; you can also manually delete cookies. Please go through the instructions on how to do this from your device or browser provider.
You can ask us to stop using your information and stop sending you emails or promotional notifications concerning our services.
You can take legal action in relation to any potential breach of your rights regarding the processing of your personal data; you can lodge complaints with the competent data protection regulators.
You may make any complaints about our data processing by contacting us at info@explorationpub.com.
Open Exploration reserves the right to amend the policy. Any modifications will be posted herein to keep you informed, please check this policy periodically.
Your use of Open Exploration website shall indicate your understanding and acceptance of the terms of this privacy policy. If you do not agree with all the terms herein, you shall not use the website.
If you have any questions, concerns or comments about this privacy policy or any requests concerning your personal data, please contact us at info@explorationpub.com.