Privacy Policy

Life Science Alliance Press Privacy Policy:
Collection and Use of Personal Data

Life Science Alliance LLC (LSA) is committed to protecting the privacy of authors, referees, and others who use its manuscript submission systems and journal websites. The limited personal data that are collected are never shared with advertisers or other third parties not directly connected to LSA. Personal Data are shared only with organizations such as site hosting services used to publish the LSA journal and with LSA partners to fulfill its publishing mission, including the use of third-party tools for automated screening for content issues. It is at the discretion of the editors to determine whether the results of these checks require further investigation. All reasonable practices are followed to ensure the ongoing protection of author, referee, and user personal data that may be collected and used during article ingestion, review, editing, production processing, publication, posting, and delivery of information related to all aspects of publication operations.

Your use of our website and manuscript submission system indicates your acceptance of this Privacy Policy.

To enable the processing of papers submitted for journal review, LSA collects personal data such as author names, ORCID IDs, email addresses, affiliations, phone and fax numbers, and other details in order to accurately identify authors as well as the individual submitting a manuscript, should that person not be a coauthor of the paper.

The terms noted below provide an accounting of how personal data are collected and used for the express purposes of preparing and publishing content, which include but are not limited to reviewing, editing, processing, publishing, hosting, billing for, and indexing content as part of routine publication publishing processes. In using LSA journal sites, as well as the submission system known as eJournal Press, authors and users agree to the privacy terms stated below.

As an author, referee, or site user, if you have any objections to any of the policies noted herein, you should not use our journal sites or any related services, including the manuscript submission system related to our sites.

Specifics related to the collection and use of personal data:

• Personally identifiable information: The collection of author and referee details is required for accurate identification in the manuscript submission system, and is necessary for communication with editorial and production staffs. Personal data collected at the time of submission are also used to register authors and referees for accounts within the submission system. Visitors may choose not to supply personally identifiable information, but this may prevent the use of some or all of the features and functionality of the sites.
• Non-personally identifiable information: This is information that is neither used nor intended to be used to personally identify an individual and is neither associated with nor linked to personally identifiable information. These are data collected via Life Science Alliance–branded websites, and include information such as your Internet protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser language, and the date and time of your visit.
• Cookies: “Cookies,” which are used on our sites, are small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s web browser while you are viewing a website. We may use both session cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personalized and interactive experience. Persistent cookies can be removed or blocked by following the help file directions in your Internet browser. We also use login cookies that allow you to retain access for a specified period. When your cookie expires, you may need to log in again to regain access. There are also third-party cookies that may be set on the sites to deliver analytics data.
• Aggregated data: Data about the collective behavior of visitors to our sites may be aggregated and displayed. However, personally identifiable information is never disclosed other than as described herein.
• Accessing and removing personally identifiable data: Users, authors, and referees can access the personally identifiable data we have collected about them at any time, by signing into the LSA manuscript submission system and clicking on ‘Download Copy of My Records’. Users can request that any data they have provided to us be removed from our servers and computer networks by clicking the ‘Contact’ link in the footer of the website or directly emailing contact@life-science-allaince.org and making the request. Note that the request must come from the email address that is registered for the record in question.
• Referee data: The collection of details about manuscript reviewers in LSA’s manuscript submission system is required for proper solicitation of reviewers as well as appropriate editorial staff engagement in the processing of decisions on manuscripts submitted. Referee information will be held indefinitely but never shared with other parties, apart from other select journals with explicit permission of the referees.
• Author data: Author details are captured from our manuscript submission system and used in the processing and publication of articles.  They are also shared confidentially with LSA production staff. Minimal author metadata are shared with third-party vendor(s) to permit article composition, including metadata capture, delivery of page proofs to the corresponding author, resolution of queries as processed by LSA production staff, and the sharing of metadata as part of routine indexing of published content in professional publishing databases, such as PubMed, PubMed Central, Web of Science, Crossref, ORCID, etc.
• Editor and editorial advisory board member data: The collection of details about editors and editorial advisory board members in LSA’s manuscript submission system is required for appropriate editorial staff engagement in the processing of decisions on manuscripts submitted. Editor and editorial advisory board member information will be held indefinitely but never shared with other parties.
• Third-party sharing: Author metadata are shared with third-party vendors for the creation of articles and indexing services. Search engines index content directly from published content on our journal website.
• Personal data stored in manuscript submission system: Author and reviewer account profiles, with identifiable personal details, are preserved in LSA’s manuscript submission system (eJournal Press) after the processing of a specific article and are visible only to authorized staff within eJournal Press, LSA and where appropriate directly affiliated  LSA partner journals. Email addresses or other personal information are never sold to third parties.
• Publication site hosting: Author and site user emails are collected by our online hosting service (HighWire Press Inc.) as part of Alerts/Announcements signup for the receipt of new-content Alerts and Announcements; emails collected for this purpose are not used for any other purpose except for the delivery of journal Alerts and Announcements.
• Invoice/billing cycle: Author’s financial details are used by the Finance Department of LSA expressly to collect author fees related to article publication. Credit card and purchase order information is used solely for the processing of payments for such purchases. Credit card information is not stored by LSA.
• IP addresses are used for statistical purposes including geographical data and are not used to identify individuals.
• At times, information may be disclosed under the strictest confidentiality to LSA consultants as required for internal business reviews.
• All other personal information collected at the manuscript submission stage, at any point during the journal article production process, or on pages that offer to authors or site users additional alerting, announcement or other services is used expressly for the stated purpose.

Life Science Alliance LLC reserves the right to update this Privacy Policy as required. Updates will be indicated by a “Last Update” date at the bottom of the page. Any continued use thereafter also constitutes your acceptance of the terms noted herein.

Last update: May 25, 2018