MDPI Privacy Policy

We have aligned this Privacy Policy with both the Swiss Data Protection Act (“SDPA”) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). The GDPR has established itself worldwide as a benchmark for strong data protection, therefore our company has set itself to implement the highest standards in data protection. As GDPR and SDPA may have slight differences in the definitions used, we base the following Privacy Policy text on GDPR definitions, which have the same meaning in SDPA. Notwithstanding the above, please note that whether and to what extent the GDPR or SDPA is applicable to you depends on the individual case.

• The goal of our community guidelines is to create a place for scholars to share scientific research and make contact. SciProfiles hopes that scholars will be open to discussing their experiences or troubles in their academic careers, either in the form of posts or discussion groups. Therefore, in order to create a good community environment and present valuable content, we want users to post content that meets one or more of the following standards:

• This privacy policy informs you in accordance with Art. 12 ff. GDPR about how we handle your personal data when you use our website. In particular, it explains which data we collect and what we use it for. It also informs you about how and for what purpose this is done.

• The protection of your personal data is important to us, especially with regard to safeguarding your personal rights when processing and using this information. When you use this website, various personal data are processed depending on the type and scope of use. Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable natural person (hereinafter “data subject”); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified directly or indirectly (e.g. by means of association with an online identifier). This includes information such as the name, address, email, telephone number and date of birth.

• As with any website, our server automatically and temporarily collects information in the server log files that are transmitted by the browser while you are browsing through our website. Depending on the settings of your browser the following data are collected:

  • IP address of the requesting computer,

  • the Internet page from which you visit us (referrer URL),

  • Date, time and duration of the server session

  • Browser type and version

  • Type of end device and operating system used by the requesting computer

• The storage of server log files is necessary for technical reasons to provide a functional website and to ensure system security. This also applies to the storage of your IP address, which is necessary and, under further conditions, can at least theoretically enable an assignment to your person. In addition to the above-mentioned purposes, we use server log files solely for the purpose of designing and optimizing our website in line with demand, purely for statistical purposes and without any reference to your person. A personal evaluation of the server log files does not take place. This data is not merged with other data sources. The access data collected in connection with the use of our website is only stored for the period of time for which this data is required to achieve the aforementioned purposes. Your IP address is stored on our web server for a maximum of two years for IT security purposes. For data which are stored through cookies, please see section 3 below.

• If you visit our website to find out about or use our range of products and services, the basis for the temporary storage and processing of the server log files is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR (legal basis), which permits the processing of data for the fulfilment of a contract or for the execution of pre-contractual measures. In addition, Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR serves as the legal basis for the temporary storage of technical access data. Our legitimate interest in this regard is to be able to provide you with a technically functioning and user-friendly website and to ensure the security of our systems.

We encourage users to report content that violates our platform regulations to maintain a good community environment. If you see something you believe may violate our policies, whether in profiles, posts, discussion groups, messages, comments, or anywhere else, please report it to us. There are two ways to report, as follows:

1. Report content: users can report content by clicking on the three dots icon in the upper right-hand corner of the content itself on SciProfiles.

2. Report accounts: users can report another user's account by clicking three points on the user's profile page and then clicking the Report button.