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WE VALUE YOUR PRIVACY
We and our partners store and/or access information on a device, such as cookies
and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and standard information
sent by a device for personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement,
and audience insights, as well as to develop and improve products. With your
permission we and our partners may use precise geolocation data and
identification through device scanning. You may click to consent to our and our
partners’ processing as described above. Alternatively you may click to refuse
to consent or access more detailed information and change your preferences
before consenting.
Please note that some processing of your personal data may not require your
consent, but you have a right to object to such processing. Your preferences
will apply to a group of websites. You can change your preferences at any time
by returning to this site or visit our privacy policy.
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RESEARCHGATE 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 ResearchGate, and make sure you're respecting
the rights of others too.
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.
You can access downloadable copies of the current and previous versions of our
terms and policies here.
Terms
Privacy
Copyright
Community
Business
Last updated: October 19, 2022.
Privacy Policy
Contents
* 1. Introduction
* 2. Information we process and how we process it
* 3. How we use data we collect about you
* 4. How we use relevant publicly available data
* 5. Information we process when using technologies like cookies and pixels
* 6. Advertisements on ResearchGate
* 7. Third party services
* 8. Recipients and safeguards
* 9. Closing your account and retention of personal data
* 10. Automated decision-making
* 11. Data subject rights
* 12. Contact information
1. Introduction
ResearchGate GmbH, Chausseestraße 20, 10115 Berlin, Germany ("ResearchGate",
"we", "us", or "our") provides the services rendered to you through the
ResearchGate website available at https://www.researchgate.net, and through any
of its web pages and associated applications which may be available on multiple
devices, including mobile applications ("Service").
This Privacy Policy sets forth the collection and use practices of ResearchGate
for personal data we process in the course of providing the Service.
Our mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all.
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 ("Members") can share their professional identities and
credentials, display their academic publications, engage and collaborate with
their networks, exchange knowledge and professional insights, post and view
relevant content, and discover business and career opportunities. Some content
is also visible to unregistered or logged-out Users ("Visitors"). A User could
be a Member or a Visitor. An Author ("Author") is a natural person who, for the
purpose of our Service, is a member of the scientific community by, for example,
being an author/editor of a publication, or being an advisor or recipient of
scientific funding. An Author is not necessarily a User or Member of our
Service.
ResearchGate reserves the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, in
particular, to reflect changes in market conditions affecting ResearchGate’s
activities, changes in technology, changes in relevant laws and regulatory
requirements, and changes in ResearchGate’s system capabilities. If we make
material changes to this Privacy Policy, we may notify Members by email or other
reasonable means, including through notifications on our Service. If you object
to any new version, you should stop using our Service and/or close your account.
If you continue to use our Service after having been provided with such notice
you will be deemed to have acknowledged the Privacy Policy.
2. Information we process and how we process it
1. Basic data processed
Certain data will be processed when you access the Service, to resolve the
technical request of your device, display the site and maintain the safety
and security of our systems. This data is stored in so-called logs and
comprise the following:
* IP addresses and your mobile device's Identifier for Advertising (IDFA);
* the type of computer or mobile device you are using including operating
system and version;
* the types of browser you are using, the language, and your country;
* referring and exit pages and URLs;
* platform type;
* the number of clicks on a page or feature, pages viewed and the order of
those pages, the amount of time spent on particular pages or parts of
pages;
* domain names and;
* information collected for performance purposes (e.g. average load, render
time of pages, etc.).
Even though IP addresses and mobile identifiers are generally considered
personal data, we can not derive any direct conclusions about your identity
from such data.
Our legal basis for processing this personal data is Article 6 (1)(f) of the
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The data processed is very basic
data, and does not contain directly identifiable information about you. We
have a legitimate interest in being able to provide a functioning, reliable
and accessible website and resolve your server-request in an appropriate
manner.
All of our pages are secured using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) technology,
which encrypts data transmitted between our servers and your end devices. We
also apply other suitable technical and organizational measures to protect
your personal data.
2. Personal data we process
In order to provide you with functionalities, we need to process certain
data and/or information relating to you:
* Registration and maintenance of your Member account
If you choose to create a Member account on our Service, you will be
required, during the registration process, to provide your first and last
name, an email address, and a password. You will receive a confirmation
email. Your Member account will be confirmed after you have clicked on the
respective link in the account activation email. You may also be invited
to associate certain information we present to you with your account, such
as articles, institutional affiliation, and biographical information.
* Other personal data
During the registration process or when updating your profile, you can
choose to provide other information that can be used to identify and/or
contact you, including for example, a profile picture, your Twitter
account handle or your city of residence. You may also be invited or
required to provide information about you, including, for example,
demographic information, such as occupation, and research vita, education,
authorship of articles, academic or research expertise or interests,
conferences you have attended, groups of which you are a member,
information regarding your professional and academic career, academic
degree, your previous roles and jobs, and current activities and
interests.
* Third-party connectors
You can choose to create an account using your Facebook, LinkedIn or
Google account and subsequently use that third-party platform’s
credentials to log in to your ResearchGate account. Using this option
means that you are allowing ResearchGate to request and use certain data
from the third-party account. For Google, this involves us processing your
email address. For LinkedIn, we will process your email address, first and
last name, and profile picture. For Facebook, we will process your email
address and public profile information. The third-party platform might ask
for your consent to share this data with ResearchGate. As the personal
data we might process was originally collected by the third-party
platform, the initial data processing and sharing of the data with
ResearchGate are governed by the privacy policy of such third-party
platform. Please refer to the relevant third-party platform and/or its
settings, if you want to deactivate the connection between ResearchGate
and the third-party platform.
* Communications with us
When you communicate with us, you may provide us with your name, contact
details, and other personal data as part of your communication, as well as
the content of your message itself. Similarly, when we communicate with
you, we will process your personal information, such as your email
address. For some of our emails, we also process information indicating
whether you have opened the email.
* Communications through the Service
Many communications that you initiate through our Service (e.g. invitation
sent to a non-Member) will list your name in the header of the message.
Other communications that you initiate through the Service, like a request
for a full-text, will list your name as the initiator but will not include
your personal email address. Once you have mutually connected with an
individual, contact information you choose to include in your researcher
profile will be accessible by that individual.
* Recommendations
In order to provide our recommendation features, we process contact and
bibliographical data, information pertaining to your work, usage
frequency, type of devices you use to use the Service, including browser,
operating system and mobile device, research items you consulted,
interaction with particular pages or parts of pages, and number of clicks
on a page or feature, in order to provide the Service in a way that is
tailored to your interests. Also, based on the personal data you provide,
statistical evaluations, mathematical operations, and predictions, we may
infer other information about you and support our recommendation features.
For example, if you were to add several research items to the Service over
the course of several years, we may infer that you are not a junior
researcher anymore.
* Third-party providers
When you choose to benefit from a service or offer presented by
ResearchGate on behalf of a third party, you may share personal data with
ResearchGate to enable us to pass it on to the third party. The nature of
personal data will depend on the particular service or offer, but might
include your name, email address and affiliation. We do not share any of
this personal data with any third party unless you explicitly allow us to
do so.
* Paid Products and payment data
If you choose to purchase a product, service or subscription from
ResearchGate that is subject to a fee (“Paid Product”), there are two
alternatives regarding processing of personal data. Either we will process
the personal data to complete your order, or our Merchant of Record
(“MoR”) will. If, for a Paid Product, our MoR conducts the ordering flow
and processes personal data, we will clearly indicate this prior to
starting the ordering process and within the ordering process itself. In
each case:
1. If ResearchGate is conducting the order: we will process the personal
data that you provide in order to complete your order, such as your
billing address. ResearchGate does not process any credit card
information, however we do retain your name and address so we may
generate and send you an invoice. Credit card information is collected
and processed by a third-party provider, namely Stripe. Stripe
processes this data as an independent controller to process the
payment. For details about the data processing undertaken by Stripe,
please see its Privacy Policy.
2. If our MoR is conducting the order: where we are using the services of
a MoR, the ordering process is hosted and conducted by that third
party, who is reselling the Paid Product to you, having it licensed it
from us. The MoR will process any personal data required to complete
the order. Payment data such as credit card information will not be
processed by the MoR, as they will are use independent payment service
providers. To be able to associate your Member account with the Paid
Product purchased, provide support and ensure a frictionless user
experience within the ordering flow, we will share your primary email
address associated with your account (and subsequent updates to it)
with our MoR. Our MoR will send us a signal after you have successfully
purchased the Paid Product, so that we can associate your purchase with
your account and grant access to the Paid Product. Our current MoR is
“Paddle” (“Paddle” means, if you are purchasing a Subscription from the
United States, Paddle.com Inc, whose office is at 3811 Ditmars Blvd
#1071 Astoria NY 11105-1803; and otherwise, for the rest of the world,
Paddle.com Market Limited, incorporated in England and Wales with
Company number 8172165, whose office is at 15 Briery Close, Great
Oakley, Corby, Northamptonshire, NN18 8JG, United Kingdom). Please
refer to Paddle’s Privacy Policy for further information.
* Security
We process the number of profile pages users view to detect and prevent
data harvesting. We also process your IP address to filter out suspicious
requests. If you are a Member, we store your full IP address in connection
with your account registration request and your current last login.
Otherwise, your login activities are only stored in connection with your
truncated IP addresses. Also, we process information about your device,
its operating system and the browser you are using for your current
session.
* Statistics
We use activity data, such as number of read publications, projects and
number of citations, to generate statistics, which pertain to reading
behavior or achievements. For example, we may use such activity data in
order to calculate and display a read count on an individual publication
page.
3. How we use data we collect about you
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 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;
* to enforce obligations owed to us, and contractual terms and conditions; and
* for accounting, risk management and record keeping purposes.
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.
* ResearchGate 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.
Your ResearchGate account is generally visible to every other Member, but you
can determine the level of detail you want to share with other Members, e.g.
in your Privacy settings and by choosing how much information you add to your
profile. Your account can also be found by other Members using our search
functionalities and may be recommended to them via our recommendation
features. Your choices regarding the details you want to share with other
Members will also be respected in such features. You can also determine
whether your account is publicly visible to Visitors (and therefore subject
to being indexed by search engines). In cases where you purchase a Paid
Product and an account is required to make such purchase, we will associate
your account with information about your purchase to be able to administrate
your purchases, provide you with according support, and allow and revoke your
access to the Paid Product.
* 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 " email
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 internal activity insights
Your interaction with and interest in other Members’ work is as valuable to
them as it is to you. Therefore, we process information about reads of your
work and your interaction with other Members' work (e.g. publication
information, full texts, questions, answers). We use this information to
provide Members with insights about the consumption of their work. For
example we might show read statistics on publication and author levels that
might contain information about e.g. the number of reads in a given
timeframe, the countries and institutions the readers were affiliated with,
or, subject to both Members’ privacy settings, information about readers’
ResearchGate accounts. Where Members’ privacy settings allow more than
anonymous statistics to be provided, the additional level of detail allows
Members to get into contact with readers of their work.
* Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) or (f) GDPR. Where we
rely on our legitimate interest to offer these internal activity insights,
we believe our aim to provide you and fellow ResearchGate Members with
statistics, and, where applicable, additional details about interactions,
does not conflict with your expectations, interest and rights. The
described data processing, which is limited, is appropriate to achieve the
desired objective of helping Members understand how their work is
consumed.
* Offer Members external activity insights
Where Members choose to benefit from receiving external activity insights, we
might provide them with additional information such as consumption, mentions,
news coverage etc. relating to their profile and work on the Service. To do
so, we may associate aggregated and anonymous information we gather from
outside ResearchGate with your work, to provide information about how Users
found your publicly available work on ResearchGate, and what has referred
them to it (e.g. which search engine). We might also offer features that
provide information about instances where you and/or your publicly available
work on the Service are mentioned on third-party websites, platforms, or
services. For example, when your work is mentioned on social media or other
external platforms/websites/blogs, we might gather these mentions,
potentially including surrounding context, and enrich insights about your
work with them. We might directly show this third-party content to you by
displaying or embedding it in our Service, or providing references such as
links to the content. We might use the help of external, third parties to
achieve these purposes. Where such third parties are processing personal
data, they are described in Section Third party services for analytics,
measurement and ad delivery.
* Our legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR.
* 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
ResearchGate 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 researchers to
follow or connect with, or related researchers. 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 ResearchGate 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 6 Advertisements on
ResearchGate 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 7Third
party services), 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 6 Advertisements on ResearchGate 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. We might also share research
results with scientific bodies for science studies and related topics. In
none of these cases, we will share any personal data of Users.
* 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.
4. 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.
5. Information we process when using technologies like cookies and pixels
We and service providers acting on our behalf store log files and use tracking
technologies such as cookies, web beacons, tracking pixels, and local shared
objects, also known as flash cookies, to collect information relating to you and
your use of the Service.
1. Basics
"Cookies" are small files that enable us to store and collect specific
information related to you and your use of the Service on your computer or
other end devices. They help us to analyze the number of people who use the
Service, usage frequency, User behavior and advertising effectiveness, to
increase security and to tailor our Service and advertisements to your needs
and preferences.
* This website uses so-called "session cookies" which after your session on
the website session ends, will automatically be deleted.
* This website also uses "persistent cookies" to record information about
repeat Users of the Service. Persistent cookies are designed to help us
continually improve the products and services we offer you and to ensure
the quality of our services. "Persistent cookies" remain for a certain
pre-defined period of time and are recognized by us when you return to the
Service (or one of our partner sites).
* You can edit the settings of your browser to prevent cookies from being
stored, to limit the storage of cookies to certain websites, or such that
your browser informs you every time a cookie is sent. You can also delete
cookies at any time. However, please note that if cookies are deactivated
you will not be able to take advantage of some of ResearchGate’s features.
For specific help on how to delete Cookies with the help of your browser,
please consult respective help sections, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla
Firefox or Safari.
2. Cookie table for ResearchGate
ResearchGate use cookies for various purposes, but cookies primarily help us
provide, protect and improve our products and services, tailor advertising
and content, and better understand the use of our services. The following
table will provide you with information on cookies that ResearchGate is
placing and using, their respective retention period and purpose.
Name
Party
Purpose
Lifetime
__cfduid
Cloudflare (see sec. Cloudflare)
This cookie helps Cloudflare detect malicious visitors to our website and
minimizes blocking of legitimate Users. It may be placed on your device to
identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security
settings on a per-client basis.
30 days
__cfruid
Cloudflare
This cookie relates to rate limiting policies. It is used by a rate limiting
feature with network address translation support enabled to distinguish
individual users behind a single IP. Using this allows to control the rate
of requests to our website.
30 minutes
cf_clearance
Cloudflare
When a Cloudflare captcha or Javascript challenge is solved such as for a
Firewall Rule or IP Access Rule, a cf_clearance cookie is set in the client
browser.
30 minutes
__cf_bm
Cloudflare
This cookie supports Cloudflare Bot Management by managing incoming traffic
that matches criteria associated with bots. The cookie does not collect any
personal data, and any information collected is subject to one-way
encryption. This encrypted file contains Cloudflare’s proprietary bot score
and helps manage incoming traffic that matches specific criteria.
30 minutes
did
ResearchGate
This is a random unique identifier.
One year
pl
ResearchGate
This is a random unique identifier.
One year
ptc
ResearchGate
Permanent Tracking
Two years
sid
ResearchGate
(Login) Session ID
One year
ciiir
ResearchGate
This cookie classifies whether you are interested in recruiting.
One year
cili
ResearchGate
This cookie marks the user as logged-in. It is created on every successful
log in and refreshed on every subsequent successful log in.
One year
cirgu
ResearchGate
This cookie tells us, whether you are a ResearchGate User with an account at
ResearchGate.
One year
SKpbjs-id5id
SKpbjs-id5id_last
SKpbjs_unifiedid
SKpbjs-unifiedid_last
Prebid
Where applicable, these cookies enable the technology Prebid to work, to
assign an identifier to you and to participate in so- called header bidding
for disseminating advertisements.
Three months
_gads
Google Ad Manager
This cookie is used to target advertising for users and publishers.
Two years
_ga
Google Analytics
Used to distinguish users.
Two years
_gid
Google Analytics
Used to distinguish users.
One day
_gat,
_gat_UA
Google Analytics
Used to throttle request rate.
One minute
_cmpBlockedVendorshash,
_cmpNoniabvendorshash,
_cmprepromptoptions,
euconsent,
eupubconsent,
googlepersonalisation,
noniabvendorconsent
Quantcast consent modal
These cookies will remember that you have maybe seen, interacted with, might
have applied settings and store your consent for the purposes of the consent
modal.
One year and 25 days
3. Other technology
In addition to cookies, this website uses so-called pixels, web beacons,
clear GIFs, and other similar mechanisms ("Pixels"). A Pixel is an image
file or link to an image file added to the website code but not sent to your
end device. Pixels are largely used for the same reasons as cookies, i.e. to
analyze the number of people who use our Service or, if the User's email
program allows HTML, to determine whether and when an email was opened.
Pixels help us to check and optimize the effectiveness of our Service and
offers as well as advertising campaigns served on ResearchGate. Pixels do
not provide us with personal data. Pixels are usually used in conjunction
with cookies. If you have deactivated the use of cookies in your browser,
then Pixels will only report an anonymous website visit.
We also use Pixel-based and cookie-based conversion tracking technologies
to, for example, measure the success of advertising campaigns served on the
Service. To this end we use technologies provided by Google (see below
SectionGoogle Services).
6. Advertisements on ResearchGate
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.
1. 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 ResearchGate. ResearchGate 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.
2. Logged-in experience
The advertising content shown to logged-in Members is served by ResearchGate
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 7 Third-party services.
In the case of these advertisements, ResearchGate 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 ResearchGate 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.
ResearchGate 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
ResearchGate 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 ResearchGate 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 ResearchGate
served advertisements can be found in the cookie table above.
3. 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, ResearchGate 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:
* Clicking "Agree" has the effect of providing consent for all data
processing and according partners.
* 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.
* If you don’t want to provide any consent, you just have to click "Agree to
selected", since data processing that requires prior consent is default
"OFF".
* Any settings you made will be stored when you click "Agree to selected".
* Clicking "Agree to all" has the effect of explaining consent for all data
processing and according partners.
* "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 their
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.
In addition to opting out from personalized ads delivered to you with the
help of Google (see below in sec. 7), you can also opt-out from being
presented with any ads served to you using Amazon’s or OpenWrap’s
header-bidding technology for your logged-out visit of our Service, by
clicking here.
7. Third-party services
1. Google Services
Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to evaluate the usage behavior on
our Service. Google Analytics is a web analysis service provided by Google
Ireland Ltd, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. For this web
analysis service, Google uses cookies on our website to systematically
evaluate the interactions of Users on our Service. The information generated
by the cookie about the use of our Service by the user (e.g. truncated IP
address, website currently visited, referrer, duration of stay, and
frequency of the call of the website) is transferred to a Google server in
Ireland. In addition, a transfer of the data to another Google server in the
USA is possible. Google will use this information for the purpose of
evaluating your use of the Service, compiling reports on website activity
for us, and providing other services relating to website activity and
Internet usage. The processed data can be used to create pseudonymous user
profiles of Users. The data is deleted after 26 months. By activating IP
anonymization on our website, your IP address is truncated before it is
forwarded within the member states of the European Union or other states
party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional
cases will your full IP address be forwarded to a Google server in Ireland
and possibly the USA and shortened there. Google will not combine your IP
address collected via Google Analytics with other data that Google holds.
To opt out from Google Analytics, please click here. If you delete your
cookies, you have to click this link again.
Our use of Google Analytics is also administered by the consent modal as
described at Section 6 Advertisements on ResearchGate.
In addition, each of the following services is provided by Google Ireland
Ltd, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.
You can opt out from the following Google services using this link:
* Google Tag Manager is a solution that allows us to manage website tags
through one interface. The Tag Manager itself is a cookie-less domain and
does not collect personal data. The tool triggers other tags that may
collect personal data. Google Tag Manager does not access this data.
* We use Google DV 360, including the tool "Display & Video" to be able to
recognize you on third-party websites. For this purpose, the Google
Display & Video 360 will place cookies on your device which will enable
recognition of you in the Google advertising network. We are subsequently
able to present you advertisements on the basis of your surfing behavior
on third-party platforms. This service also enables us to evaluate
delivered advertisements and optimize them.
* Google Ad Manager enables the control and optimization of advertisements
on our Service. It also helps to create campaign performance reports and
prevents advertisements being displayed to you multiple times. Google Ad
Manager also uses cookies for this purpose.
To opt-out from receiving personalized ads delivered to you by Google on our
Service, please click here.
2. Cloudflare
We also use the services of Cloudflare, Inc. (101 Townsend St., San
Francisco, CA 94107, USA). Cloudflare helps us to provide our Service to our
Users in the fastest way by "copying" our Service and putting it on servers
that are geographically as close as possible to your current location.
Cloudflare distributes the server load to those servers that make the most
sense for your request. Additionally, Cloudflare blocks threats and abusive
bots and crawlers that have a negative impact on our bandwidth and server
resources. Cloudflare also provides an "I am under attack"- mode that
requests Users to solve a task before they can visit the site. Through
Cloudflare, our Service is more powerful and less vulnerable. For these
purposes Cloudflare uses cookies (see Cookie table for ResearchGate) and
processes data of which your IP address could be considered personal.
Cloudflare might store this data in the US. More information about
Cloudflare can be found here.
3. Intercom
In some parts of the Service you can get in direct and potentially live
contact with us to leave your questions and comments and get close to
real-time feedback and help. For this purpose, we are using the service
“Intercom”, a live chat and feedback tool provided by R&D Unlimited Company,
2nd Floor, Stephen Court, 18-21 Saint Stephen's Green, Dublin, Ireland.
Where Intercom is integrated to a page, you will find a small icon on the
bottom right of the page. For providing us with your data and feedback,
Intercom will process the data you provide and pass it on to us. This may
include a link to your ResearchGate account, your email address and any
additional personal data you choose to share. To enable the tool to work, it
necessarily needs to process some of your data, such as your IP- address and
information about the browser you are using. For more information about
Intercom’s data processing, please refer to their Privacy Policy.
4. Twitter for Websites
In accordance with what we described in Section 3, subsection “Offer members
external activity insights”, we may embed Tweets in our Service. We do this
with the help of “Twitter for Websites”, a tool offered by Twitter (Twitter
Inc., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA). As a
default, the external Twitter content in our Service will not be loaded
unless you explicitly allow it to be loaded. You can change your mind about
whether to allow this at any time. When you allow “Tweets” to be loaded,
Twitter will process data about you and may process this data outside of the
EU. For example, Twitter will process information about what page you are
currently on, your IP- address, browser type and operating system.
Generally, Twitter will use this information to offer personalized
suggestions and show personalized advertisements to you. We implement
“Twitter for Websites” in such a manner that information from our Services
shall not be used by Twitter for personalization. For more information about
Twitter’s data processing, please refer to Twitter’s privacy policy or more
specifically to Twitter’s privacy policy regarding “Twitter for Websites”
where you will also find information about Twitter-specific privacy
controls. For the purposes described and only if you allow Tweets to be
loaded, Twitter will place cookies on your device. For more information,
please see their Cookie Policy.
5. Zendesk
For email addresses intended to receive general, external inquiries (such as
press inquires, support inquiries), we may use the services of “Zendesk”. We
also use Zendesk to process incoming inquiries that have been sent to us by
using our contact forms. Zendesk is a platform that helps organizations
understand,structure and prioritize incoming inquiries of users, customers
or otherwise interested parties. Zendesk is operated by Zendesk Inc., a
Delaware corporation, with its address at 1019 Market Street, San Francisco,
CA 94103, USA. Zendesk aggregates data already known to us, data about
earlier communications with you and data supporting your current inquiry.
This data may also be allocated to your Member account if you have one.
We have contractually agreed with Zendesk that personal data will be hosted
in the EU. Still, Zendesk is a US corporation and reserves the right to
process personal data in the US where this is required for support or
service purposes required by us. Where personal data is processed outside of
the EU, we concluded Standard Contractual Clauses in accordance with Art. 46
GDPR with Zendesk. Furthermore, Zendesk is one of the few companies that
have Binding Corporate Rules rolled out to their corporation which were
approved by the European Commission in accordance with Art. 47 GDPR. You can
find these here. For further information on Zendesk’s data processing,
please also refer to their Privacy Policy.
8. Recipients and safeguards
1. Recipients
ResearchGate does not sell any of your personal data.
The personal data that ResearchGate collects from you and that you provide
to ResearchGate 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 ResearchGate, 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.
2. 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.
9. 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 of Service 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, enforce our Terms of
Service, 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).
10. Automated decision-making
We do not engage in automated individual decision-making, including profiling
(according to Art. 22 (1) and (4) GDPR).
11. 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 (see below at section 12).
You have the right to object to all types of processing that are based on Art.
6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interests), based on grounds relating to your
particular situation, Art. 21(1) GDPR. To the extent we process your personal
data pursuant to Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR for direct marketing purposes, you can object
to such processing at any time without giving a particular reason.
You may (i) exercise the rights referred to above or (ii) pose any questions or
(iii) make any complaints regarding data processing by contacting us here.
12. Contact information
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please email
our Data Protection Officer at privacy@researchgate.net, contact us here, or
send a letter to:
Data Protection Officer
ResearchGate GmbH
Chausseestr. 20
10115 Berlin, Germany
You can find additional information about security and privacy in our Help
Center here.
Representation for data subjects in the UK:
We value your privacy and your rights as a data subject and have therefore
appointed our UK subsidiary as our privacy representative and your point of
contact. If you want to contact us via our representative or make use of your
data subject rights, please contact:
RESEARCHGATE LIMITED
1 The Green, Richmond,
Kemp House 160 City Road
TW9 1PL
UNITED KINGDOM
uk-representative@researchgate.net
In the event you still have requests or complaints, please contact the Berlin
Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom.
https://www.datenschutz-berlin.de/
Tel.: +49 30 13889-0
Fax: +49 30 2155050
Further contact details can be found here.
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