Privacy Policy

The following explanations will provide you with information about how we use the personal data that we collect about you, and our legal basis for doing so under the GDPR. Generally speaking, we may, pursuant to Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (general data protection regulation) use your data based on our legitimate interests

to provide and improve our Service;
to perform internal quality checks;
to prevent, detect, process and investigate malfunctions, incidents, fraudulent or other illegal activities, or mitigate the risk of occurrence of the aforementioned events;
to ensure network and information security;
to create statistics on access channels and the use of our Service;
to contact you, if requested by you or if necessary to fulfil the contract or permitted by law;
enforcing obligations owed to us, and contractual terms and conditions and;
accounting, risk management and record keeping

Also, pursuant to Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR we may use your data to comply with legal obligations, e.g. to observe retention periods required by trade or tax law or to comply with obligations to disclose data based on a legally binding court decision or official order.

More specifically, we may use your data for the following purposes.

ORG account
The personal data you provide in connection with registering for your Member account will be used to create, maintain, and secure your account. By creating a Member account, you will benefit from functionalities and services that are not available to Visitors. Any personal data you provide in addition to the required data to register for an account, will facilitate your ability to get into contact with other Members, promote yourself and your research, and receive more relevant recommendations from our recommendation services.
Our legal basis for this processing this data is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
Communications
Depending on the way you are communicating with us, we may use your name, email address, telephone number, and the content of your previous correspondence to respond to you and provide assistance.
Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) or (f) GDPR. As a public-facing company, we have a legitimate interest in being able to receive, process, and respond to enquiries.
Transactional emails
Provided you have not opted out from receiving transactional emails from us, we will use your email address to send you emails about relevant developments on the Service concerning for example, your network, new features, publications, projects, updates from the Q&A section, and emails regarding your professional career.
You can opt out from receiving transactional emails at any time by clicking the "unsubscribe" link within an email or by visiting your account settings. Legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
Sponsored emails
Where you have provided your prior consent to receiving sponsored emails, we will use your email address to send you such emails. Where legally allowed, we will also use your email address to send you sponsored emails without your prior consent.

In any case, you can opt out from receiving sponsored emails at any time by clicking the "unsubscribe" link within an email or visiting the "notification settings" in your account.

Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(a) or (f) GDPR. Whenever we rely on our legitimate interest to process your email address for sending sponsored emails, we do so as it is in our best interest to make the Service as helpful and meaningful to you as possible, which may also mean that third-party content will be taken into consideration. In addition, these email campaigns help us in monetizing our Service, so we can keep offering it to you.
Offer Members tailored content
Using our recommendation technology, we process your personal data or infer information in order to provide the Service in a way that is tailored to your interests. This enables us to customize the features and offerings ORG provides to you through the Service. For example, we provide dynamic web pages that are individually adapted to you. We may present content recommendations such as research items that are "Suggested for you" and/or recommendations regarding other individuals such as "Who to follow" or "Related researchers" (other Members) you can follow. In the same way that you benefit from content and individuals recommended to you, you and your content might be recommended to other Members and therefore might appear in their experience, for example in their home feed. We derive learnings from Members’ interactions with tailored content and suggestions and subsequently take them into account to improve any further offerings of tailored content.

Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) or (f) GDPR. We have a legitimate interest in providing the best user experience based on the individual needs. This processing does not conflict with your interests as it corresponds with a person’s reasonable expectations when signing up for an account. The processing has no negative impact for our Members but is in their interests as it allows ORG to provide them a tailored service.
Offer Members tailored advertising content and relevant jobs
As a Member, we aim to offer you advertising content that is most relevant to you. In this context, we use, whether separately or combined, the personal data you provide, we collect, or we infer from your use of the Service and the Internet and also contextual information of the site you are currently visiting. This enables us to display advertisements that best match your particular interests, and job suggestions that are relevant to your scientific field, experience and research. For further information about advertisements on the Service, please refer to section Advertisements on ORG below.

Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR. Advertising is a ubiquitous part of the Internet, but we believe that advertising, when done well, is a good thing. We aim to display the most relevant and most helpful advertisements to you. To be able to do this, we must take your interests, your journey, and some of your personal data into account. Without this processing, the advertisements we would be able to disseminate would not be different from random advertisements you can see everywhere in the Internet. We take great care in choosing the right advertising partners and limiting the personal data we process. The personal data that we process for this purpose will not be shared with any third party except our technical service provider (see section Third party services for analytics, measurement and ad delivery), and will only support our purposes. Given that we limit the data processed, do not share it with other third parties, and process your personal data to display only relevant advertisements to you, we believe that our legitimate interest to monetize our platform and therefore continue to provide you with the Service outweighs. We believe our Service is a service to researchers, research, and science as a whole. Among other things, we make worldwide collaboration possible, and facilitate the solving of important scientific questions. Our mission is an important one. But this mission must be financed.
Offer Visitors tailored advertising content and jobs
As a Visitor, we also aim to offer you advertising content that is most relevant to you. In the case of Visitors, this means that the third parties delivering advertisements may take into account the context of the current site you are visiting. For further information about advertisements on the Service, please refer to section Advertisements on ORG below.

Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR and where applicable Art. 6 (1)(a) GDPR. Because some parts of our Service are available to everyone, even those who don’t have an account with us, we believe that wherever we haven’t asked you for your consent, the data processing conducted is of such limited effect on you, that our interest to monetize the platform and therefore continue to provide the Service also to non- Members, is legitimate.
Candidate search
A limited amount of your profile information (including only some information from the overview and research tabs) will be visible for recruiters with a Recruiter Account on the Service. If the information on your profile matches the search criteria entered by a recruiter in our candidate search feature, this limited version of your profile may show up in their search results. Recruiters may choose to contact you through the messaging functionality provided within the feature. Your inclusion in candidate search, including being contacted by recruiters, is fully under your control. You can choose to block specific recruiters, or opt out from being included in candidate search and contacted by any recruiters by changing your privacy settings at any time.
Legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
Ensure the security of your personal data We process your personal data in order to avoid its accidental or unlawful destruction, as well as its loss, alteration, or unauthorized disclosure. For example, we process the number of profile pages you and others view so as to detect and prevent data harvesting. Likewise, we truncate the last octet of your IP address to prevent you from being identified. Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(c) and (f) GDPR. We are legally obliged to secure data from unauthorized loss and alteration and it is also in our mutual interest to ensure data security. As this primarily serves the purpose of protecting your data there are no overriding interests on your part.
Generate statistics
We use your personal data to generate statistics which pertain to reading/search behavior and achievements. We also generate statistics for internal purposes in order to constantly improve the Service and its features. We also conduct research and development to maintain quality and improve our Service and the User experience.

Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR. We have a legitimate interest to assess and evaluate the traffic on our site to improve our Service. Such improvement is also in the interest of our Users as it allows them to always benefit from the best Service we can offer.