Privacy Statement

Scholar Media Publishing Company (SMP) along with its various affiliated businesses (collectively, "SMP", "we", "us" or "our") wants to inform you about the ways we process your personal information. In this Privacy & Cookie Notice we explain what personal information we collect, use and disclose.

Personal information means any data relating to an individual who can be identified, directly or indirectly, based on that information. This may include information such as names, contact details, (online) identification data, online identifiers or other characteristics specific to that individual.

This Privacy & Cookie Notice applies when you visit our websites, solutions and other services, including events and web chat communications, that refer or display a link to this notice ("Services"). This Privacy & Cookie Notice may be supplemented or replaced by additional privacy statements or terms provided to you from time to time.

WHO WE ARE

Scholar Media Publishing Company (SMP), established in 2011 in Hong Kong, China, is an international company focused on journal publishing, publishing services and consulting.

  • We are committed to safeguarding the personal information of our customers, users, employees and other stakeholders, while helping our customers, employees, investors and society create a deeper impact and make the right decisions.
  • If you wish to contact us in relation to questions regarding your personal information, we refer you to the HOW YOU CAN CONTACT US section below.

WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

When you use the SMP journal sites, the journal may collect personal data about you in the following ways: directly from you; through automated technologies such as cookies; and from other sources, such as our business partners and data processors. The information may include:

  • Contact details, such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, and social media handle;
  • Demographic information, such as your age, gender, and educational, professional or other background information;
  • Username and password;
  • Payment information, such as a credit or debit card number;
  • Educational, professional, or other interests;
  • Comments, feedback, posts, and communications with other users of the journal services;
  • Background check information (e.g., for job applicants);
  • Photo or video (e.g., by closed-circuit television if you visit our office locations);
  • Communication preferences, language preferences, or other preferences; and/or
  • Other identifiers, such as a government-issued identification number (e.g., Social Security Number, tax identification number) or institution-issued identification number (e.g., student ID number).

HOW WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION

We and our third-party service providers may collect personal information from the following sources:

  • Direct interactions, such as when you register for our Services, make a purchase, or communicate with us, including through our web chat features.
  • Data from third parties, such as information on third-party websites or other information you may have made publicly available, or information provided by third party sources, including but not limited to government entities and data resellers.
  • Automated tracking technologies, such as information automatically collected about your interaction with our Services and websites using various technologies such as cookies, web logs and beacons and internet tags.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Based on the history of your action with the SMP journals, and with your prior consent where necessary during that time, the journals may use your personal data for purposes that we may notify you of from time to time where we have a legitimate business interest, your prior consent, or another lawful basis to do so. Detailed purposes in use of your personal data may include below:

  • Performing any contract or other transaction we enter into with you;
  • Providing, activating, managing and supporting our products or services;
  • Notifying you about changes or updates to our Sites, products, or services;
  • Communicating with you about our or our partners’ programs or events (including webinars, conferences, or promotional activities such as sweepstakes, contests, or surveys);
  • Marketing our Sites, products, or services to you (including by delivering commercial emails, newsletters, targeted advertising, phone calls, and/or SMS messages);
  • Operating, evaluating and improving our business (including enhancing and personalizing our Sites, services, products and communications; developing new Sites, services and products; and assessing the effectiveness of our promotions and advertising);
  • Performing data analytics for internal research or other business purposes;
  • Responding to your inquiries, requests, or other comments;
  • Our initiatives such as Open Access, Open Science, or diversity and inclusion initiatives (for example, we may use information such as inferred gender to analyze representation and improve equitable outcomes);
  • Detecting fraud, investigating suspicious activity (e.g., violations of our Terms of Use) and otherwise keeping our Sites safe and secure; and/or
  • Complying with our legal or regulatory obligations.

HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Your personal information will be processed to the extent necessary for the performance of our obligations, to comply with legal obligations, and for the time necessary to achieve the purposes for which the information is collected, in accordance with our data retention policies and the applicable data protection laws. When we no longer need your personal information, we will take all reasonable steps to remove it from our systems and records or take steps to properly anonymize it so that you can no longer be identified from it.

HOW WE PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We have put in place an internal framework of policies and minimum standards across all our businesses to keep your data safe. In addition, we limit access to personal information by our employees, business partners, service providers and third-party service providers to a 'need-to-know' basis. More specifically and in accordance with the law, we take appropriate technical and organizational measures (policies and procedures, IT security and others) to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of your personal information and the way it is processed.

THE USE OF COOKIES AND INTEREST BASED ADVERTISING

Cookies are small text files, which might be stored on your computer or mobile device. Similar technologies may include pixels, beacons, tags, embedded scripts, social media plugins or other tracers or similar technologies. These tracking technologies are often used in conjunction with cookies but may be stored in a different manner.

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies (collectively referred to as "Cookies") for several different purposes, including to optimize our websites, to facilitate website browsing and to analyze website traffic. Cookies may collect information to analyze personal browsing behavior, remember you and your preferences, personalize our Services, and to deliver and measure advertising (including interest-based advertising).

We may use Cookies belonging to one of the four categories listed below.

  • Strictly Necessary Cookies - These are necessary for the website to function. They are usually set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, this may have an effect on the proper functioning of (parts of) the site.
  • Functional Cookies - These enable the website to provide enhanced functionality, user experience and personalization, and may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies, then some or all of these services may not function properly.
  • Performance Cookies - these support analytic services that help us to improve our website's functionality and user experience.
  • Advertising Cookies - these can be applied to collect insights, to issue personalized content and advertising on our own and other websites.

If you do not want Cookies to be stored, most modern browsers allow you to select the appropriate options or preferences from the settings in your browser or you may select the appropriate preferences in the cookie-tool(s) provided on some of our websites.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Our websites may contain links to other SMP or third-party websites, which may have privacy & cookie notices that differ from ours. We are not responsible for the collection, processing or disclosure of personal information collected through such other websites.

We are also not responsible for any information or content contained on such websites. Links to other websites are provided solely for convenience. Your usage and browsing on any such website is subject to that website's own policies. Please review the privacy notices posted on other websites that you may access through our website.

SMP may provide you with additional or different privacy notices, in specific instances, on how your personal information is collected and used for a specific Service.

HOW YOU CAN CONTACT US

If you have any questions about how we process your personal information or if you want to exercise one of your rights, you can contact us at: info@hksmp.com

In response to a request, we might ask you to verify your identity if needed, and to provide information that helps us to understand your request better. If we do not grant your request, whether in whole or in part, we will explain why.

In some circumstances, certain individuals may designate an authorized agent to submit requests to exercise certain privacy rights on their behalf. To do so, you must provide that authorized agent written and signed permission to submit the request on your behalf and verify your own identity directly with us. Note that we may deny a request from an authorized agent that does not submit proof that they have been authorized by you to act on your behalf.