Data Privacy Policy

Updated: 31 May 2018, notified by 30 April 2018

This Data Privacy Policy describes how Arc Humanities Press (as Data Controller in the sense understood in applicable law) collects, uses, processes, and discloses your information, including personal information. This policy is intended to conform fully to the requirements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation that has effect from 25 May 2018. We apply this policy to all data regardless of country.

1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We collect three general categories of information.

1.1 Information You Give to Us as Intellectual Property Holder

  • Author and Project Information. When you sign a publishing contract as author, editor, article contributor or series editor, we require certain contact information such as your forename, surname, email address, postal address, date of birth, short biography, and affiliation. You also supply us details about the work that you wish to publish with us, which then becomes subject to a contractual undertaking to publish your work. This information is retained and stored since it is necessary for us to remain in contact with you and to supply required metadata for cataloguing services in order to register officially your intellectual property, copyright, and your book.
  • Research Information. You may choose to provide additional information as part of the Project Proposal document that you supply to enable us to consider publishing your work. This includes subject-matter, details of fellow scholars who are experts in the field of your work, and information on your current and future research. This is used to provide interest codes, to develop contacts and understanding of the precise research field in which you operate, and to evaluate your work. This category of information will be processed based on your consent.

1.2 Information We Collect from Purchasers

Almost all our sales functions are provided by third parties, under contract to us. However, at some conferences we may collect information to facilitate a sale or we may collect information from you for the provision of free copies of our products (e.g., review copies).

  • Delivery Information. In addition to the relevant information on product(s) that you purchase or receive, we require contact and delivery details, which will include name, postal address, email address, phone number, and other information. This may be provided indirectly, such as a Journal Editor requesting a review copy to be sent to a Review Editor.
  • Payment Transaction Information. We do not currently process financial transactions for sales since this is undertaken for us under contract by specialist companies. We may record these details, with your consent, to forward to relevant third parties.

1.3 Information We Collect from Third Parties

We do collect information, including contact details, of scholars and others who may be interested in our work and our products. This information comes predominantly from lists of participants of conferences, members of scholarly associations, or lists of attendees of launch parties or similar events in which we are involved. This is always done in agreement with the organisers and data owners of the conference, association, or event. We do not control, supervise, or respond to how the third parties providing your information process your personal data, and any information request regarding the disclosure of your personal information to us should be directed to such third parties. In addition, for us to develop our understanding of, and contacts within, selected research areas we gather information direct from publicly accessible sources, particularly university webpages.

  • Publicly Available Information. We collect and verify information gathered on researchers, customers, and interested parties by consulting publicly available information from employers, primarily university webpages.
  • Research Information. We collect and verify information gathered on researchers from conferences that we attend or information that relates directly to our publishing programme, including from published conference programmes, supplemented by information publicly available from sites such as academia.edu.
  • Other Sources. To the extent permitted by applicable law, we may receive additional information about you, such as research interests, from third-party service providers and/or partners, and combine it with information we have about you.

We only use such information from EU citizens with their consent.

2. HOW WE USE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We use, store, and process information, including personal information, about you to provide, understand, improve, and to develop and promote our publishing programme and activities with scholars, researchers, and current or prospective purchasers.

2.1 Provide, Improve, Develop, and Promote our Publishing Programme

  • Provide information about you and your work to our partners in the publishing process, including project evaluators, copyeditors, designers, marketing teams, and distributors.
  • Register copyright and intellectual property with national agencies.
  • Promote your work through agents, websites, social media, and other marketing activities.
  • Provide sales reports and royalty statements to authors and rights-holders, and for the negotiation or sale of associated publishing rights.
  • Contact scholars in order to improve or develop our overall publishing programme and our activities.
  • Provide customer service.

We process this information given our legitimate interest in developing our publishing programme and selling publications for which we have contractual rights, and where it is necessary for the adequate performance of our contract with you.

2.2 Provide, Personalize, Measure, and Improve our Advertising and Marketing

  • Send you promotional news, marketing, advertising, and other information that may be of interest to you based on your preferences, and promotion through social media (including social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter).
  • Personalize, measure, and improve our advertising.
  • Conduct profiling on your characteristics and preferences (based on the information you provide to us, your publicly available research interests, information obtained from third parties, and your purchase history) to send you promotional news, marketing, advertising, and other information that we think may be of interest to you.

We will process your personal information for the purposes listed in this section given our legitimate interest in undertaking marketing activities to offer you products or services that may be of your interest and to sell products for which we have publishing rights. You can opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions included in our marketing communications or changing your notification settings in our email communications. Processing of such information for EU citizens is additionally subject to our having received consent to do this.

3. SHARING & DISCLOSURE

3.1 With Your Consent

Where you have provided consent, we share your information, including personal information, for the purposes described in Section 2 above.

3.2 Blogs, Product Listings, and other Public Information

Third-party service providers will promote your work and in so doing may make known information from required metadata that we supply the publishing industry, such as your affiliation and biography.

Information from product and author metadata may be indexed through third-party search engines. We do not control the practices of third-party search engines, and they may use caches containing your outdated information.

Our website platform lets you publish blogs or provide information about your research, including personal information, that is visible to the general public.

3.3 Compliance with Law or Legal Requests, Preventing Harm and Protection of our Rights

We may disclose your information, including personal information, to courts, law enforcement or governmental authorities, or authorized third parties, if and to the extent we are required or permitted to do so by law or if such disclosure is reasonably necessary. We do this: (i) to comply with our legal obligations, (ii) to comply with legal process and to respond to claims asserted against you or us, (iii) to respond to verified requests relating to a criminal investigation or alleged or suspected illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you, or any other of our partners to legal liability, or (iv) to protect the rights, property or personal safety of our employees, partners, or members of the public.

Where appropriate, we may notify individuals known to us about legal requests unless: (i) providing notice is prohibited by the legal process itself, by court order we receive, or by applicable law, or (ii) we believe that providing notice would be futile, ineffective, create a risk of injury or bodily harm to an individual or group, or otherwise be harmful. In instances where we comply with legal requests without prior notice, we will attempt to notify the individual(s) concerned where appropriate after the fact and where we determine in good faith that we are no longer prevented from doing so.

3.4 Service Providers

We use a variety of third-party service providers to help us provide services related to our publishing programme. Our service providers are mainly based in the UK, continental Europe, Australasia, and North America.

For example, service providers may help us: (i) publish your work, (ii) market, sell, and fulfil purchases of your work, or (iii) provide customer service, advertising, or payments services. These providers have limited access to your information to perform these tasks on our behalf.

We need to share this information, including personal information, in order to ensure the adequate performance of our contract with you.

3.5 Social Media Platforms

Where permissible according to applicable law we may use certain limited personal information about you, such as the name of your publication or your name, to hash it and to share it with social media platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, to generate leads, drive traffic to our websites or otherwise promote our products and services. These processing activities are based on our legitimate interest in undertaking marketing activities to offer you products or services that may be if your interest and to promote your own work.

The social media platforms with which we may share your personal data are not controlled or supervised by us. Therefore, any questions regarding how your social media platform service provider processes your personal data should be directed to such provider.

Please note that you may, at any time ask us to cease using your data for these direct marketing purposes by sending an email to [email protected].

3.6 CARMEN Worldwide Medieval Network

Since we act as the publishing arm of the learned society for medieval studies worldwide, the CARMEN Worldwide Medieval Network, we may share with them your information, including personal information, and we may publicize activities of CARMEN to you.

4. YOUR RIGHTS

You may exercise any of the rights described in this section by sending an email to [email protected]. We may need to ask you to verify your identity before taking further action on your request.

4.1 Managing Your Information

We hold your information in one of two databases: our projects database, which provides metadata to the industry in order to sell your work; or our customer relations management database, which stores our contact information. The projects database is governed by contractual undertakings and our legitimate interest in retaining this data in order to sell the work for which we have contractual rights. All information held in our customer relations management database is held by consent.

We also store copies of documents relating to your book (proposal forms, contracts, manuscripts, evaluation reports). Where this information is not provided confidentially, such as an anonymous peer-review report, or where it includes commercially sensitive information, such as project budgets, we will share this information with you, upon request.

4.2 Rectification of Inaccurate or Incomplete Information

You have the right to ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information concerning you.

4.3 Data Access and Portability

You are entitled to request copies of your personal information held by us (as far as technically feasible and as far as it does not infringe on confidentiality as described in section 4.1 above).

4.4 Data Retention and Erasure

We generally retain your personal information for as long as is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and us and to comply with our legal obligations. If you no longer want us to use your information you can request that we erase your personal information. Please note that if you request the erasure of your personal information:

  • We may retain some of your personal information as necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as promotion of products for which we retain the publishing rights.
  • We may retain and use your personal information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations, including for tax, legal reporting, and auditing obligations.
  • Information you have shared with others (e.g., blogs) may continue to be publicly visible on our website.

4.5 Withdrawing Consent and Restriction of Processing

Where you have provided your consent to the processing of your personal information by us you may withdraw your consent at any time by unsubscribing or by emailing us and specifying which consent you are withdrawing. Please note that the withdrawal of your consent does not affect any processing activities based on such consent before its withdrawal. Additionally, you have the right to limit the ways in which we use your personal information, in particular where (i) you contest the accuracy of your personal information; (ii) the processing of your data is unlawful or you oppose the erasure of your personal information; or (iii) we no longer need your personal information but you require the information for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims.

4.6 Lodging Complaints

You have the right to lodge complaints about the data processing activities carried out by us before the competent data protection authority, namely the Information Commissioner’s Office for the United Kingdom.

5. SECURITY

We are conscious of our responsibility to implement and update administrative, technical, and physical security measures to help protect your information against unauthorized access, loss, destruction, or alteration.

Our product-author metadata is stored using software developed, maintained, and controlled by BooksoniX. BooksoniX is a product of Head Software International Ltd (Company Registration number 1546246, at Cardiff, UK) with whom we have a contractual undertaking.

Our customer relations management data is stored, developed, maintained, and controlled by us, using generally available commercial software. Additional files relating to projects (as described in section 4.1 above) are stored on a shared facility accessible only to individuals contracted to us.

If you know or have reason to believe that your credentials have been lost, stolen, misappropriated, or otherwise compromised or in case of any actual or suspected unauthorized use of your data, please contact us following the instructions in the Contact Us section below.

6. CHANGES TO THIS DATA PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to modify this Data Privacy Policy at any time in accordance with this provision. If we make changes to this Data Privacy Policy, we will post the revised Data Privacy Policy on our website and modify the “Updated” date at the top of this Data Privacy Policy.

Where changes are substantive we will provide you with notice of the modification by email at least thirty (30) days before the date they become effective. If you disagree with the revised Data Privacy Policy, you may unsubscribe. If you do not unsubscribe before the date the revised Data Privacy Policy becomes effective, your continued subscription will become subject to the revised Privacy Policy.

7. CONTACT US

If you have any questions or complaints about this Data Privacy Policy or our information handling practices, you may email us or contact us at Arc Humanities Press (c/o TMC Accountancy Ltd), 14 Clifton Moor Business Village, James Nicolson Link, York YO30 4XG, United Kingdom.