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Privacy notice

We know that you care how information about you is used and shared and we appreciate your trust in us to do that carefully and sensibly. This notice describes the privacy policy of JISC Collections. By visiting http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Notice.

Controllers of personal information

Any personal information provided to or to be gathered by us is controlled by the JISC Content Procurement Company Limited (which trades as JISC Collections), Brettenham House, Ground Floor, 5 Lancaster Place, London, WC2E 7EN, United Kingdom. JISC Collections is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office with the Registration Number Z9546606 in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

What personal information about our members do we gather?

The information we learn from members and other users helps us personalise and continually improve your experience of using our website. We use the information to receive, administer and process subscription(s) to online resources, deliver services, process payments, communicate with you about subscriptions, products, services and promotional offers, update our records and generally maintain your accounts with us, display content such as customer reviews, and recommend online resources and services that might be of interest to you. We also use this information to improve the user experience, prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our website, and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf.

Here are the types of information we gather.

  • information you give us: we receive and store any information you enter on our website or give us in any other way. Examples of what we collect are provided. You can choose not to provide certain information but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of our features. We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customising future shopping for you, improving our stores, and communicating with you.
  • automatic information: we receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many websites, we use "cookies" and we obtain certain types of information when your Web browser accesses www.jisc-collections.ac.uk and other content served by or on behalf of JISC Collections on other websites. Examples of the information we receive are provided.
  • email communications: to help us make emails more useful and interesting, we often receive a confirmation when you open email from JISC Collections if your computer supports such capabilities.
  • information from other sources: we might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information.

What about cookies?

  • cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computer’s hard drive through your Web browser to enable our systems to recognise your browser and to provide features such as adding resources to your Shopping Basket.
  • the Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies altogether. Additionally, you can disable or delete similar data used by browser add–ons, such as Flash cookies, by changing the add–on’s settings or visiting the website of its manufacturer. However, because cookies allow you to take advantage of some of our website’s essential features, we recommend that you leave them turned on. For instance, if you block or otherwise reject our cookies, you will not be able to add items to your Shopping Basket, proceed to Checkout, or use any web pages that require you to Sign in.
  • if you do leave cookies turned on, be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer. Please refer to our guide on how to sign off for more information.

Do we share the information we receive?

We do not sell trade or rent information on our members to any third parties.

In line with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998, we will use the information you have provided in Your Account for the administration of your subscription(s) to online resources through us. In order to do this it will be necessary for us to transfer the information you have provided to third parties who are involved in the administration of your subscription, namely:

  • the publishers of the content
  • the service providers, who will provide access to the online resource
  • JISC Regional Support Centres

Protection of JISC Collections and others: We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property or safety of JISC Collections, our users or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction. Obviously, however, this does not include selling, renting, sharing or otherwise disclosing personally identifiable information from our members for commercial purposes in a way that is contrary to the committments made in this Privacy Notice.

Whenever we transfer personal information to countries outside of the European Union in the course of sharing information as set out above, we will ensure that the information is transferred in accordance with this Privacy Notice and as permitted by the applicable laws on data protection.

How secure is information about me?

  • we work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information you input.
  • We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of personally identifiable customer information. Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.
  • It is important for you to protect against unauthorised access to your password and to your computer. Be sure to sign off when you finish using a shared computer. Please refer to our guide on how to sign off for more information.

What about links to other websites?

Our site may include links to other websites. We do not provide any personally identifiable customer information to third party websites.

These third party websites, or companies working on their behalf, sometimes use technology to send (or "serve") the links that appear on our website directly to your browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use cookies, JavaScript, web beacons (also known as action tags or single-pixel gifs), and other technologies to measure the effectiveness of their links. We do not have access to or control over cookies or other features that they may use, and the information practices of these third party websites are not covered by this Privacy Notice. Please contact them directly for more information about their privacy practices.

What information can I access?

We give you access to a broad range of information about your account and your interactions with our website for the limited purpose of viewing and, in certain cases, updating that information. Some examples of information you can access are provided. This list will change as our website evolves.

What choices do I have?

  • As discussed above, you can always choose not to provide information, even though it might be needed to generate a subscription or to take advantage of other features on the site such as My Collections and Customer Reviews.
  • You can add or update certain information on pages such as those referenced in the Which information can I access? section. When you update information, we usually keep a copy of the previous version for our records.
  • If you do not want to receive Conditions of Use and other legal notices from us, such as this Privacy Notice, those notices will still govern your use of our website and orders placed with us and it is your responsibility to review them for changes.
  • The Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies altogether. Additionally, you can disable or delete similar data used by browser add–ons, such as Flash cookies, by changing the add–on’s settings or visiting the website of its manufacturer. However, because cookies allow you to take advantage of some of the essential features on our website, we recommend that you leave them turned on. For instance, if you block or otherwise reject our cookies, you will not be able to add items to your Shopping Basket, proceed to Checkout, or use any products and services that require you to Sign in.

Notices and revisions

If you have any concern about privacy at www.jisc-collections.ac.uk, please email us a thorough description and we will try to resolve the issue for you.

Our business changes constantly and our Privacy Notice and the Conditions of Use will change also. We may email periodic reminders of our notices and conditions, unless you have instructed us not to, but you should check our website frequently to see recent changes. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Notice applies to all information that we have about you and your account. We stand behind the promises we make, however, and will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of member information collected in the past without the consent of affected members.

Related practices and information:

Examples of information collected

1. Information you give us

1.1 Membership of the JISC Content Procurement Company Limited

Personal information provided as part of the registration process to become a member of the JISC Content Procurement Company Limited, in particular contact details for the contact representative for communications regarding JISC Collections, and the contact details for the institutional/affiliate membership accounts for our website.

1.2 Subscription services

Personal information provided as part of the subscription registration process is used by us and other relevant third parties to administer the subscription.

1.3 Contact details

JISC Collections may also use the contact details provided by you (such as your name, job title, telephone and fax number, your email and postal addresses) to keep you informed of new online resources that we have licensed and other activities which may be of interest to you, either by post, phone or email. In order to do so your data will be added to our Contacts Database and made available to other staff within JISC Collections. We will only add the contact details you have submitted to us onto the Contacts Database provided you have given us permission to do so.

Please remember that you can alter your contact details in your membership account at any time.

1.4 Other information you give us

You provide most such information when you search, subscribe to an online resource, register for an event, post, participate in a consultation, contest or questionnaire or communicate with our Subscriptions Helpdesk. For example, you provide information when you: search for an online resource; subscribe to a resource through our website; provide information in Your membership account (and you might have more than one if you have used more than one in the case of institutional mergers for example); communicate with us by phone, email or otherwise; participate in a consultation; complete a questionnaire or a contest entry form; provide and rate reviews; and employ other personal notification services. As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as: your name; institution name, job title, postal addresses, telephone number, fax number and email address; invoicing information; payment details; people (with postal and email addresses, phone numbers and fax numbers) listed in Your membership account settings; content of reviews and emails to us; and financial information.

2. Automatic Information

Examples of the information we collect and analyse include: the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; email address; password; computer and connection information such as browser type and version; operating system and platform; subscription history, which we sometimes aggregate with similar information from other customers to create features such as Best Sellers; the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our website (including date and time); cookie number; online resources you viewed or searched for; and any phone number used to call our Subscription Helpdesk number. We may also use browser data such as cookies, Flash cookies (also known as Flash Local Shared Objects), or similar data on certain parts of our website for fraud prevention and other purposes. During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

3. Information from other sources

Examples of information we receive from other sources include: updated Publisher / Content Provider contact information or other third parties, which we use to correct our records and administer subscriptions to online resources or communication more easily; account information; search term and search result information from some searches conducted through the web search features offered by our project websites; search results and links.

Co–branded and joint offerings

In the future we may offer joint or co–branded products and services.

Information you can access

Examples of information you can access easily at our website include: up to date information regarding orders in the "My Collections" area of your Membership Account; personally identifiable information (including contact names, email addresses, password and contact addresses); payment settings (including invoice contacts and addresses) and authentication method information (including IP address ranges and the UK Access Management Federation IdP ID).