Terms and Conditions

Orthopaedic Research Group - Terms and Policies

We've made it easy for you to read all our legal terms, policies, and community guidelines from one place. Here, you can access all the information you need to understand your rights when using Orthopaedic Research Group (ORG). If you're using one of our business products, this is where you'll find the terms and guidelines that apply to your use of that product and any related features or services.

General information

Orthopaedic Research Group (ORG, we, our or us) provides the services made available at www.orthopaedicresearchgroup.com and all other websites operated by the ORG and all associated applications, including mobile applications, and services ("Service"). The full contact information of ORG is, The Orthopaedic Research Group, 3/6 Kovundanpalayam, Metupalayam Road, Coimbatore – 641030, Tamil Nadu, India.

ORG’s mission is to connect the world of science and make train clinicians and make research open to all. We strive hard to develop yearning to do research in young minds through our activities. We also take adequate measures to train them and upskill them to carry out world class research. We help researchers connect with each other. Connections can only be established when potential connections and commonalities are known and connecting lines can be drawn. Openness can only be achieved with comprehensive accessibility. Our Service takes your work and activities on the Service into account to help connect you with other individuals who are relevant to you, and recommend relevant content. We also gather information from external sources, in order to disseminate as much relevant scientific content as possible to drive science forward. Any natural or legal person who, as a recipient of the Service, accesses or uses the Service for any purpose is a User ("User", "you"). Our registered Users ("associate members or members") can, by way of example, and not as a limitation, share their professional identities, credentials, awarded grants, display their academic publications, engage and collaborate with their networks, exchange knowledge and professional insights, contact or be contacted by other Users (including recruiters), post and view relevant content, and discover business and career opportunities. Some content is also visible to unregistered and logged-out Users ("Visitors").

Conclusion of agreement

These Terms constitute a legally binding agreement between ORG and any of its Users. In some jurisdictions, you may be bound to these Terms if you access the Service. Furthermore, a Visitor may also be asked to assent to these Terms in order to use a certain limited number of features on the Service. The Terms become binding on Members once we accept your offer to enter into a binding agreement with us, e.g., once you have submitted the registration process and we have sent confirmation that you have successfully registered for the Service.

The Service is only available to individuals who are at least 18 years old. If you are under 18, you may not use or attempt to register for the Service. In addition, if you have previously had your membership restricted by us, you may not attempt to register for the Service again.

Scope of the Service

Among other things, the Service provides you with the ability to use the video and text content that we provide to increase your knowledge on research and educational opportunities and to add, create, upload, submit, distribute, send, share, or post ("submit", "submitting", or "submission") content, articles, data, text, photographs, images, illustrations, advertisements, job posts, or other information on or to the Service (collectively, the "Member Submissions").

The Service also provides you with functionalities that support your scientific work, your professional life and development. To be as helpful as possible, the Service takes information about you as a Member, your Member Submissions and your activity on the Service into account in suggesting content and providing other aspects of the Service. This way we can make recommendations for connections, content, and features that may be useful to you. Also, by taking your work, research, career, experience, and other factors into account, we are able to provide you with opportunities, vacancies, information and helpful contacts. Keeping your profile information accurate and up-to-date helps us to make these recommendations more accurate and relevant.

ORG shall not be a contracting party to any agreements entered into by Users with other Users or with any third party via the Service. Users are solely responsible for the execution and/or fulfilment of agreements they enter into. ORG shall not be held liable for breaches of duty in relation to such agreements. If there is a dispute between you and a third party, you agree that ORG assumes no responsibility and is under no obligation to become involved.

The data entered and stored in the website to provide service are collected and collated by the research associates of ORG in good faith to meet the goals and scope of ORG and help the members. The ORG holds copyright of such content and any content on ORG cannot be reproduced without prior permission from the admin ([email protected]). At the same time ORG is not responsible for the validity of the content on our site. We post the contents in good faith. The content displayed should not be taken beyond the context of educating members. When extrapolated to clinical or practical implications be clear that the ORG is not responsible for the results of such implications. However, we will review any issues that are reported to us.

User Obligations

ORG strives to connect and upskill the world of science. It is essential for the credibility of the world of science and for the reputation of researchers that Members identify themselves using their real names and their true affiliations. You must therefore provide only true and non-misleading statements and use your real name; you may not use pseudonyms or pen names. You may not accept, adopt, or post content that falsely or misleadingly implies an incorrect identity, inaccurate biographical facts, or misleading information about your research, qualifications, work experience, awarded grants, or achievements.

You warrant and represent that all personal data you provide is accurate. You are obliged to update such data when it changes. If you choose to use a profile photo, you must use a photo where you can be clearly identified and for which you have the necessary usage/license rights; images of more than one person, other people, animals, text, graphics and inappropriate content are not permitted.

You are responsible for ensuring that the use or other exploitation of any Member Submissions by you as contemplated by these Terms does not infringe or violate the rights of any third party, including without limitation any privacy rights, publicity rights, patent, copyrights, contract rights, or any other intellectual property or proprietary rights. Except in the case of Member Submissions containing content exclusively in the public domain, you represent and warrant, and can demonstrate to our full satisfaction upon request that (i) you own or otherwise control any and all rights or licenses required in order to submit or share all content in your Member Submissions and you consent to the use of such content as contemplated by these Terms, and (ii) you have full authority to act on behalf of any and all owners of any right, title, or interest in and to any content in your Member Submissions to use such content as contemplated by these Terms.

You understand that depending on your settings, your profile information, account activity or Member Submissions may be publicly available. In such case you understand that it may be shared with third parties (including other Members, recruiters or Visitors) and that we cannot and do not control any such third parties.

You are obliged to keep your password confidential at all times. ORG will not disclose your password to any third party, and will not ask for your password at any time other than during the login process. You are solely responsible for anything that happens through your account, unless you close it or report misuse.

You must not publish, share, sell, or make available information that is provided within the Service to any third party outside the Service, unless such a distribution or disclosure is intended within the scope of and in accordance with the Service. Information made available within the Service is not to be commercialized by Users in any way.

You must not store, process, or use any other data for any other purpose than the natural purpose of such data being published within the Service by the respective User.

Export control laws

We do not represent that the materials made available in the Service are appropriate or available for use in any particular location. Those who choose to access or use the Service do so on their own initiative and are responsible for compliance with all applicable local laws, including, if you are in the United States, any applicable export control or foreign assets control regulations.

Copyright and other intellectual property rights

The software running the Service, the site design and content, the logos and other graphics, articles and other texts, as well as the database are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws in multiple jurisdictions.

Changes to the Service

We reserve the right to modify the Service or to offer services different from those offered at the time of the User’s registration at any time, in particular under, but not limited to, the following circumstances:

We introduce new features that enhance the Service;
To the extent we are required in order to comply with applicable law, including in the event of a change in such laws;
To the extent we are required to do so because of a legal order or decision by a government authority;
To the extent the respective modifications are required to mitigate any potential security vulnerabilities;
If the modification is only beneficial to the Member; or
If the modification is of a purely technical or process-related nature without any material impact on the Member.

We may change the Terms at any time. You will become subject to the new terms if you explicitly agree to them, or we provide you with notice of the changes. We will provide such notice by sending you an email and/or notifying you on the Service. Unless we state otherwise, changes are effective thirty days from the time they are posted. In our notices, we will inform you of the new terms and the main changes to these Terms, your right to object and the importance of the deadline to object. You are obliged to check your account regularly for a notice about changes to these Terms. For the avoidance of doubt, if you continue to use your Account after the notice period, you agree that you are bound by the changes.

If you do not agree with the new terms you must close your account.

If you have a dispute with us, the version of the terms in effect at the time that we receive actual notice of your dispute shall apply.

ORG may be liable without limitation for damages resulting from injury to life, limb, or health which occur due to a breach of duty by ORG or one of its legal representatives or vicarious agents. ORG may also be liable without limitation for damages owing to a lack of a characteristic warranted by ORG or due to malicious conduct by ORG. In addition, ORG may be liable without limitation for damages due to intent or gross negligence by ORG or one of its legal representatives or vicarious agents.

Apart from the cases set out above, ORG’s liability shall be limited to typical foreseeable contractual damages in the event of a breach of any of its cardinal contractual duties due to slight negligence. Cardinal contractual duties are an abstract description of those obligations whose fulfilment is indispensable for the proper implementation of an agreement and on whose fulfilment the contracting parties can usually rely. Any other liability on the part of ORG is excluded.

The courts of India shall have sole jurisdiction over any disputes arising out of or in connection with these Terms.

Any administrative emails from ORG will be sent to the Member’s current primary email address listed for their account. In the event that the last email address you provided is not valid, or for any reason is not capable of delivering you the notice, our dispatch of the email containing such notice will nonetheless constitute effective notice. For security and privacy reasons, non-personal email address (such as generic company email addresses) may not be listed as contact email addresses for an account.

How we use relevant publicly available data?

We also process personal data relating to Authors that is publicly available and relevant for our Service.

We may obtain a variety of information about Authors from publicly available sources, such as information regarding previous research published, the publication itself (including personal data too) and other functions or references of an Author related to a publication. We may also process information related to an Author, to create a record of their body of scientific contributions, or that might help understand professional connections between Authors and Members. Where an Author's scientific work was publicly or privately funded, we may also process this publicly available information.

When we collect publicly available materials we do not have a way to ensure that personal data in such materials has been processed in accordance with the applicable laws. However, if you notify us that your personal data contained in such materials is inaccurate or has been processed in violation of applicable data protection laws, we may delete it upon verification of your identity.

The public data processed may be associated with an account when an Author chooses to become a Member.

Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR. The data processed is publicly available data. Also, the data processed has to be processed to provide a correct and complete scientific picture. Our legitimate interest is to provide a comprehensive and accurate repository of scientific work, contributions and success. Without processing additional public data, we could not achieve these aims. Furthermore, since we offer the possibility to connect this data with an account, we provide Members a convenient way to establish an account that is as complete as possible, without the effort of manually adding the information themselves.

Advertisements on ORG:

We display advertisements on our Service so we can continue to offer many of our features for free. We generate revenue by disseminating advertisements. We allow selected partners to advertise their products, content, jobs and more, on our Service.

Basics
When advertisers or ad networks place advertisements on our Service, they may collect or we may share the following types of information from within our Service:
- performance data (such as the number of clicks on an advertisement);
- aggregated and/or de-identified information about you and other Users collectively that is not intended to specifically identify you (such as Users who are located in Berlin);
- certain technical information (for example, IP addresses, cookieIDs, non-persistent device identifiers such as Identifiers for Advertising (IDFAs); and
- other contextual data about our dissemination and your potential perception of advertisements.
Advertisers or ad networks may collect this information through the use of tracking technologies like browser cookies and web beacons (see explanations above), and they may use a single tracking technology or multiple tracking technologies at the same time.
The information collected may be used to:
- measure how effective advertisements are;
- offer you targeted advertising in order to personalize your experience by showing you advertisements that are more relevant to you; and/or
- undertake web analytics to analyze traffic and other User activity to improve your experience.
After clicking on a third-party advertisement, you may no longer be on a site hosted by ORG. ORG is not responsible for any third party, or its affiliates or agents, failing to use your personal data in accordance with such third party's privacy policy, or any contractual or other legal obligations to which such third party, its affiliates or agents, may be subject.
Logged-in experience
The advertising content shown to logged-in Members is served by ORG itself using the help of third party technology providers, such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and GoogleDV 360. Information on those service providers can be found at section Third party services for analytics, measurement and ad delivery.

In the case of these advertisements, ORG has a direct relationship with the advertiser. We take great care when choosing such advertising partners. We allow them to target you based on pre-defined segments of which you may be a part. These segments are created by ORG and may take into consideration your profile information and/or contextual information. For example, a segment might take into account your skills, disciplines, career level, current location, or what page on the Service you are currently visiting. We may also infer data such as gender or age group (for example 20-35 male) to assign you to a segment. An example of a segment that an advertising partner could target is: "Scientist, Biotechnology, EU, on a publication page containing a publication about a virus." Targeting this segment would mean that only Members who are part of this segment will see that advertiser’s advertisement on the Service.

By using this information and these segments, we and our advertising partners are able to present relevant advertisements to you. We will take your previous interactions with advertisements into account when determining whether to present you with subsequent advertisements and in subsequent segmentation efforts. This is another way that we try to avoid providing you with advertisements that are not of interest to you.

ORG might also re-target you with advertisements of our advertising partners on third-party platforms. For this re-targeting, we don’t share any of your personal data with our advertising partners. Rather, we provide Google DV 360 (see below) with an anonymized (i.e. hashed) value of your ORG cookie ID. Google DV 360 might have the same hash value already in its systems, received from a third-party platform. Whenever this is the case, we could present you with an advertisement from one of our advertising partners on a third-party platform.

You can opt out from receiving cookie-based tailored advertisements on the Service and retargeting at any time, by clicking here. Note that this opt out will place a cookie on your device so we can remember your choice, which means if you delete your cookies at any point in time, you would have to opt out again.

Please also note that opting out from ORG cookie-based tailored advertising will not have the effect of disabling advertisements completely. For the delivery of advertisements, we will still take into account the context of the page you are currently visiting and personalize advertisements based on information other than cookie-based information.

Information about the respective cookies we are using for ORG served advertisements can be found in the cookie table above.
Logged-out experience
A great amount of information, particularly publication pages and the Q&A section of our Service, are available also for Visitors. These parts of our Service are also free for everyone. As a result, logged-out Visitors will find advertisements there.

Primarily, ORG enables third-party networks and platforms with which we have a business relationship to disseminate advertisements on the Service.

For each of those third parties, their technology, data processing and purposes, we may ask you for your explicit consent. We do so with the help of our consent modal. Here’s how to navigate it:
- Under "More options", you will find a list of data processing purpose-stacks. By clicking on these, you can find out what each stack specifically consists of, according legal descriptions and a corresponding list of partners that process data under this purpose stack. You can choose to allow the stack or just parts of the stack. If you prefer to not allow a stack or specific purposes, you don't have to do anything.
- Clicking "Agree" has the effect of explaining consent for all data processing and according partners.
- Any settings you made will be stored when you click "Save and exit".
- If you don't want to explain any consent, you just have to click "Save & exit", since data processing that requires prior consent is default “OFF”.
- "Additional links" will refer you to this Privacy Policy.
- Under "More options" – "Partners" you will find a list of partners, their purposes and respective descriptions, as well as links pointing to the respective partners privacy policies. Here you can make specific choices regarding each partner. Some personal data is processed without your prior consent, but you have the right to object.
- Under "More options" – "Legitimate interest" you will find a list of "Legitimate interest purposes" and "Legitimate interest vendors". When you unfold the legitimate interest purposes, the legal description and the partner relying on legitimate interest for this purpose is provided. When you unfold the description of a specific partner, you can also find out for which purposes, the specific partner relies on Legitimate interest. Where processing of personal data is being executed without your prior approval but with the legal basis "Legitimate Interest", you have the right to object. Under "More options" – "Legitimate interest", you can explain your objection for each purpose and each partner, but you can also click "Object all".
- Most important for you: unless you granted consent by clicking "Agree" in our consent modal, our partners will only be able to process very limited personal data and only if they can claim legitimate interest to do so.
- At any time, you can withdraw any consent given or modify your consent. You can do so by re-prompting the consent modal by clicking here.
- Please note: even if you have not provided your consent, you will still be presented with advertisements, but such advertisements will not be tailored to you.
Recipients and safeguards:
- Recipients
  ORG does not sell any of your personal data.
  
  The personal data that ORG collects from you and that you provide to ORG is processed in Canada and stored on servers in Canada. Canada is one of the few countries for which the EU has adopted an adequacy decision in which it decided that Canada ensures an adequate level of protection according to EU standards. You can review the Commission Decision here.
  
  Some of your personal data is accessible to other Users of our platform who may, for example, visit your publication pages or profile.
  
  Your personal data may also be transferred to third parties as described in this Privacy Policy and where applicable to those third parties listed in our consent modal. These parties might be advertisers or companies that help us disseminate advertisements, measure the performance of our advertisements and/or analyze your use of the Service. These third parties will not receive data that directly personally identifies you. The data shared is limited to identifiers such as IP addresses and cookie IDs. Your name, email address, and other directly identifying data will only be shared with third parties if you explicitly allow us to share this data.
  
  We may also disclose personal data in response to legal process or when the law requires it (for example, in response to a court order) or, to the extent permitted by applicable law, to protect the rights, property, or safety of ORG, the Service, Users of the Service (including you), and others.
  
  We may use third party service providers, in particular for technical and business services, tax advisors and legal counsel. These service providers receive personal data solely for the performance of their services for us on our behalf. They are contractually obliged not to use personal data for other purposes.
- Safeguards
  Some of the third parties with whom your personal data will be shared are located outside of the European Economic Area, in countries whose data protection laws may not be as extensive as those which apply to us.
  
  If we transfer your personal data to countries outside of the European Economic Area or which do not offer adequate and similar protection, we will ensure that we do this in accordance with applicable data protection regulations (for example, by putting in place an appropriate data transfer instrument such as the European Standard Contractual Clauses).
  
  We will do this with a view to ensuring that the level of protection applied to the processing of your personal data in these countries is similar to that applied within the European Economic Area.
- Closing your account and retention of personal data:
  For Members, we generally store their personal data as long as their account is active.
  
  If you have created an account, you can close it yourself in your ‘Account Settings’. If you request that we close your account for you, we might ask for proof of identity before doing so.
  
  We may also close inactive accounts or accounts that are used in violation of our terms or any applicable law.
  
  Immediately after closing an account, it will not be accessible/visible anymore. Please note that closing an account is irreversible.
  
  For Members, we will retain personal data from closed or inactive accounts to the extent and as long as it is necessary and relevant for our operations and/or to comply with law, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, and/or take other actions otherwise permitted by law.
  
  In general, personal data from closed or inactive accounts will be deleted or anonymized from our system backups one year after the account is closed or deactivated.
  
  We only keep personal data for the time strictly necessary in order to enable the use of our Service and/or to fulfil the purposes identified above, and/or to comply with any legal or regulatory obligations. In all other cases, we delete your personal data with the exception of such data that we are required to retain for the purpose of contractual or statutory (e.g., taxation or commercial law) retention periods. In particular, we keep payment and invoice related information or support inquiries to the extent required by trade and tax law for the statutory retention periods (ten, respectively six years).
- Data subject rights:
  In addition to your rights to withdraw any consent you may have granted or exercise any opt out option we provide, you may be entitled to exercise some or all of the following rights:
  - Right of access by the data subject in accordance with Art. 15 GDPR. In particular, you can obtain information about the purposes of processing, categories of personal data, categories of recipients to whom your data has been or will be disclosed, planned storage period, and origin of your data if it was not collected directly from you.
  - Right to correct inaccurate personal data or complete incomplete data according to Art. 16 GDPR.
  - Right to obtain deletion of your personal data stored with us in accordance with Art. 17 GDPR, subject to legal or contractual retention periods or other legal obligations or rights which must be observed.
  - Right to restrict the processing of your personal data in accordance with Art. 18 GDPR in the event that: you contest the accuracy of the data; the processing is unlawful but you oppose its deletion; we no longer need the personal data for the purposes of the processing but you need it for your assertion; it may be relevant to the exercise or defense of legal claims; or you have lodged an objection to the processing in accordance with Art. 21 GDPR.
  - Right to data portability in accordance with Art. 20 GDPR, to receive the stored personal data concerning you in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format or request the transfer of this data to another responsible party.
  - Right to lodge a complaint with your competent supervisory authority. Your competent authority is the authority at your usual place of residence or the authority competent for us