These Terms and Conditions (Terms) create a contract between you and Frontiers Media SA (Frontiers) which applies to your use of our websites and to any other interaction between you and Frontiers.
These terms apply to all interactions with and use of Frontiers’ Publishing Platform and Loop Research Network (websites).
These terms come into effect on 25th May, 2018.
Frontiers is an award-winning Open Science platform and leading Open Access scholarly publisher. Our mission is to make high-quality, peer-reviewed research articles rapidly and freely available to everybody in the world, thereby accelerating scientific and technological innovation, societal progress and economic growth. Founded in 2007 by two neuroscientists, Frontiers has grown to become one of the world’s largest open-access publishers
These terms create a contract between you and Frontiers whenever you interact with us, whether or not you are registered with us. For example, these terms cover all visits to Frontiers websites; the submission, review, acceptance (or rejection) and publication of articles; and use of the Loop Research Network. Other rules and procedures of Frontiers, including the Author Guidelines, Privacy Policy and Copyright Statement, also apply. Other specific terms, such as our terms for editors, will also apply if you are or become an editor with Frontiers.
Our contract with you is personal to you and may not be assigned or transferred by you to any other person.
Your right to use of any Frontiers website and any Frontiers functionality is conditional on your complying with these terms and all other applicable rules and conditions of Frontiers. Frontiers will also comply with its terms and conditions.
You may become a registered user of Frontiers (including Loop) by clicking here. To register you must provide at least the minimum information required.
You can manage your privacy settings. You can find information on how to do this in our Help Centre.
If you already have a Loop profile, you are already a registered user of Frontiers. You should check to ensure that you have only one profile with Frontiers and Loop, where possible, to avoid confusion.
Only natural persons aged 18 or over may register with Frontiers, and you must register in your own name. You may not create more than one profile.
By registering with us you promise Frontiers that the information you provide is accurate and not misleading.
Frontiers may refuse or cancel a registration, at its discretion, with or without notice.
By successfully registering with us, you have the following immediate benefits:
you become a registered user of Frontiers and a member of the Loop network
you may submit articles for peer review and other content, and you can apply to become a Frontiers editor or reviewer.
Registering with Frontiers also means accepting the following:
you have read, understood and agree with these Terms, Frontiers’ Privacy Policy and Copyright Statement
you must comply with these terms and all other rules and conditions of Frontiers. This obligation also applies to all users, whether or not registered
you must comply with all generally-accepted academic and scientific norms and Frontiers’ own principles
you understand that Frontiers is not obliged to publish any content contributed by you, and that Frontiers may remove any content contributed by you, including retracting peer-reviewed articles.
If you wish to close your account with Frontiers, please contact support@frontiersin.org.
By registering with Frontiers, you consent to receiving email and other communications from Frontiers.
You may opt out of certain types of messages, such as marketing messages, in your settings, but you may not opt out of messages on matters such as administrative and legal issues, changes in terms and conditions and other necessary communications. If you do not agree to receive such emails and communications, you may not register with Frontiers and Frontiers may cancel any existing registration.
You must keep your email and other contact details up to date in your registration information.
As a user, registered or not, you may use all open functionalities of the Frontiers websites if you comply with all our terms. Some functionality may be restricted to registered users or to certain types of users (such as editors).
You may benefit from the CC-BY licence over articles and other content as described elsewhere in these terms.
If you are a registered user, you may create links to Frontiers websites from other respectable websites, but not from any website which does not comply with the requirements of these terms. Frontiers may remove any links and/or to require their removal, and you must comply with such a request. Frontiers is not responsible for the content of third-party websites.
Uploading of videos and similar materials is subject to all related rules, including third-party and intellectual property rules. Be aware of the warranties you give concerning your right to upload any content.
We believe in respecting the rights of all, including rights granted by law and those generally accepted in academia. If you believe your rights have been infringed, please contact us at this address: claims@frontiersin.org.
We expressly reserve the right to refuse applications to register with Frontiers and/or to suspend or cancel the accounts of users, at our discretion.
Frontiers strives to comply, as a minimum, with Swiss and EU laws on privacy and data protection and to apply the principles of recognised cross-border data protection procedures. Our updated Privacy Policy provides detailed information on what personal data we collect, how we use it and your rights concerning our processing of your data.
You are responsible for maintaining the security of your password. Do not share your password with any other person. If your password security may have been breached, change it immediately. Choose strong passwords and avoid obvious passwords. You must notify Frontiers immediately if you believe that unauthorised access has been gained to your account. Frontiers is not responsible for any damage suffered by you due to a lack of security on your part.
It is important to keep your personal information up to date. Please check it regularly.
Be aware that your public profile may be viewed by anyone visiting your profile on the Frontiers website, in any country. To change your privacy settings with Frontiers please log in to your account.
Frontiers is the owner of the frontiersin.org website, the software constituting that website and of all copyright and other intellectual property rights in those assets.
Frontiers is the owner of the combination of all content on its websites and of the look and feel of its websites.
Frontiers does not own the copyright in articles you submit to it – you (or your employer or funder) continue to own the copyright in your articles. See the section Licences (permissions) you grant as an authors and the Copyright Statement for more information.
"Frontiers In" and "Loop" are registered trademarks of Frontiers Media SA.
If published, your article will in principle remain published permanently, with your personal details and those of your co-authors, as well as those of the reviewers and handling editors, on the Frontiers website, and stored in archives, in repositories and potentially in other places.
When you submit an article to Frontiers, you promise that:
the article is not under consideration by any other journal; if it has been submitted for consideration elsewhere, it has been definitively rejected and is no longer being considered for publication
the article will not be submitted for publication elsewhere unless either published or rejected by Frontiers
you have the explicit consent of all co-authors to submit the article and to accept these conditions, including the granting of the CC-BY licence, on behalf of all co-authors
you have the authorisation of all copyright owners (which may include your employer or funder, and any owners of third-party graphics) to submit the article and to grant the CC-BY licence over the article
an article submitted to report original research is an original contribution, meaning it contains content that has not been previously published in its current form (except for manuscripts deposited as pre-prints in established community-validated pre-print services)
the article does not contain any non-attributed content from any existing source, including the authors’ own existing material
all contributors have been adequately acknowledged
the article and all authors meet the authorship criteria as outlined in the Author Guidelines
the article complies with all the rules on content
all findings have been verified in accordance with the highest scientific standards in the relevant field
all research involving regulated animals (i.e. all live vertebrates and higher invertebrates) has been conducted in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines, all applicable legislation and guidelines and accepted best practices, and the approval body has been identified in the article
research involving human subjects has been conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, you have identified the approval body in the article and the article states clearly that informed written consent was obtained from all participants
the article clearly declares any financial, commercial or other relationships which may be considered to represent a potential conflict of interest
you have disclosed all relevant facts to Frontiers concerning the author(s), the article, the underlying research, any relevant third-party rights and any actual or potential conflicts of interest.
Acceptance is at Frontiers’ discretion in accordance with its rules and processes. Once accepted, an article will in principle be published; on rare occasions an issue causing rejection may arise or be discovered, in which case the article may be rejected despite having been previously accepted.
There is no prior right to publication. Articles submitted will be subjected to ethical and technical checks and then to our rigorous and interactive peer-review process, which will require your cooperation.
If the article is published, you will become liable to pay our article publication charge (APC), or to ensure that it is paid. Current APCs can be seen here.
The Frontiers peer-review process is designed to ensure scientific rigour and does not check for the satisfaction of the other requirements.
You must ensure that all patent applications have been filed prior to submission of your article.
If Frontiers unjustifiably fails to publish an article within a reasonable period of its final acceptance and payment by the author, Frontiers shall refund the publication fee, to the exclusion of any other liability of Frontiers for such failure.
Once published, an article can not be removed except by Frontiers’ decision, taken in accordance with accepted retraction processes. The article is likely to be archived and referenced in a number of archives and repositories.
The article will be published with the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) and the names of the reviewers who endorsed publication during the peer review, as well as that of the handling editor.
Frontiers reserves the right to remove any content, and to retract peer-reviewed articles, which in its view breach any applicable terms of Frontiers and/or which in Frontiers’ view are inappropriate in any way. Such removal does not entitle the author to reimbursement of APC.
Frontiers is not liable for the acts or statements of others.
When you submit an article to Frontiers, you grant to Frontiers and to the world at large a permanent, non-cancellable, free-of-charge, worldwide licence (permission) to publish, display, store, copy and re-use that article – including any third-party materials – and to create derivative works from it. You can not terminate that licence. You must ensure that you have all necessary permissions from third parties. Ownership by the third party of the copyright can still be notified on the relevant materials, and attribution must be made in accordance with usual scholarly practices.
The licence (permission) you grant over your article (including any third-party materials included in your article) is a Creative Commons attribution licence (known as a "CC-BY" licence). You can not terminate that licence.
In summary, the CC-BY licence means that anyone may copy, re-publish and/or re-use your content, and create derivative works from it, for commercial or non-commercial purposes, without charge, but must clearly attribute the work to you and any co-authors, and they must cite Frontiers as the original publisher of that content. Complete information can be found here.
You agree that as the Creative Commons organisation updates the CC-BY licence, the licence terms granted by you are automatically updated to the new version.
Reproduction of all or part of an article is also subject to compliance with usual academic attribution practices, which must be scrupulously complied with in addition to the CC-BY requirements.
You may not reproduce or publish any content in any forum (online or not) which advocates any political, religious, anti-religious, racist, extremist, violent or disrespectful viewpoints. If you post any Frontiers content in such a forum, you must remove it immediately on request by Frontiers.
You may also not reproduce any content from our websites in order to denigrate Frontiers.
The same CC-BY licence also applies to any other content, such as reviews, opinions, conference abstracts and blog posts, which you may submit to Frontiers.
You irrevocably grant us permission to use any non-patented ideas set out in your content or in any message sent or submitted to Frontiers, without any charge and without restriction, for any purpose in any part of the world.
Any content of yours appearing on a non-Frontiers website remains subject to the terms and conditions of that website.
We have mediation processes for settling disputes related to articles, and we mutually promise to exhaust those possibilities prior to commencing any judicial dispute resolution mechanisms.
Frontiers has sponsorship programmes for Research Topics and other areas. Sponsorships must comply with strict ethical rules. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please contact us at topics@frontiersin.org.
Messages and other content promoting a commercial offering are not permitted without Frontiers’ written agreement.
Frontiers does not currently accept advertisements.
All content submitted to Frontiers, whether or not peer-reviewed, must comply with these rules. This is your responsibility when you submit any article or content.
All content must:
be accurate or be genuinely believed to be accurate after duly rigorous investigation
only state opinions which are genuinely held
comply with all generally accepted scientific and academic norms and with all accepted citation rules and norms, and must give appropriate credit for contributions
comply with all accepted ethical rules and norms, including any Frontiers ethical guidelines
not infringe any intellectual property rights (including copyright, moral rights and database rights) of any person
be the subject of any necessary consents and authorisations
not breach any terms and conditions of any website or other forum from which that content was copied or derived, or to which you provide a link, or from which you have provided a link to our website
not be defamatory
not be malicious, offensive, discriminatory, threatening, racist, extremist; not promote hatred or violence or denigrate any person, group of people or set of beliefs, or provide any link to any such material
only be for the purpose of furthering scientific and academic discourse in good faith, and in particular not be for the purpose, or have the effect, of promoting any commercial offering, service, product or interest, without Frontiers’ prior explicit agreement
not give a false impression that it emanates from Frontiers or is approved by Frontiers, or otherwise be misleading in any way
not be pornographic or indecent
remain polite and respectful, especially when disagreeing
not ascribe any negative psychological or other labels or descriptions to any named or identifiable person or group of people, without the specific, informed consent of the person or people concerned to such label or description being ascribed to him/her/them
not be for the purpose, or have the primary effect, of promoting any political, societal, religious or anti-religious views
not disclose confidential information, including personal data of others, without the consent of the owner of that information or data
comply with all applicable laws
not advocate, refer to or provide a link to any website or content which would itself infringe any of these principles.
We may remove any content, or retract peer-reviewed articles, at our discretion. You may also request deletion of content and we will consider such requests in their context. We may insert a place-holder to indicate that a comment has been deleted. We may retain deleted comments in our database.
Frontiers is not responsible for content posted by its users, including the content of peer-reviewed articles.
Content you post will by default be visible to others. You may alter your settings to reduce access to your content (but not to peer-reviewed articles) by editing the default settings for each post you make.
Any content posted by you may be commented on, copied, quoted and linked to by others.
If you believe any content breaches any of these requirements, please contact us at editorial.office@frontiersin.org
The following activities are prohibited on Frontiers’ websites and can result in your registration being suspended or terminated, which Frontiers expressly reserves the right to do, and in your being liable for damages to Frontiers and/or to third parties:
Gaining or attempting to gain access to another user’s account without that user’s explicit and informed permission
Disguising your identity when interacting in any way on Frontiers’ websites
Any activity which is designed to, or is likely to, cause any harm or damage to Frontiers, any of Frontiers’ suppliers or any users of Frontiers’ facilities
Any attempt to copy, hack or reverse-engineer the code forming the website or any of its functionalities
Any act intended or likely to cause any damage to any Frontiers website, its availability on the internet, its underlying software or reputation, including (but not limited to) denial of service attacks
Uploading or placing on any Frontiers website, or in any website to which you provide links, any virus or other harmful or undesirable code
Any fraudulent, harmful or illegal activity
Any attempt to gain unauthorised access to databases or other resources of Frontiers or its suppliers
Posting or linking to any content which does not comply in all respects with the content requirements set out in these terms
Posting of any personal information of any other person without that person’s explicit informed consent
The posting of any commercial or promotional content, or any content which includes promotion of any commercial or business offering, without a specific agreement with Frontiers in that respect
The mounting or promotion of any pyramid scheme or other multi-level marketing scheme
Reproduction, duplication, copying or re-selling any part of any Frontiers website except for good-faith reliance on the CC-BY licence or as otherwise specifically permitted by these terms or following the specific and explicit agreement of Frontiers.
Frontiers does not object to text and data mining of its website's public content for the legitimate purpose of enrichment of external collections of scientific literature. However, we may need to restrict this activity if it hinders the performance of our website and its services. If you encounter problems, please feel free to contact our technical support: support@frontiersin.org.
Frontiers endeavours, through active maintenance, to ensure that its websites remain available, bug-free and error-free, but the need for planned and emergency maintenance and the nature of software development mean that no absolute guarantee can be given. We will do what we can to give adequate warning of any planned downtime and to minimise unplanned downtime.
We may from time to time withdraw services and replace them with others.
You are strongly advised to keep back-ups of any content which you do not wish to lose.
Frontiers adopts industry-standard measures to minimise the risk of attacks, viruses, other harmful code and hackers. Given that our platform exists to permit the contribution of content, and given the constant efforts of those with ill intent, we can not guarantee that the website, or links posted by users, will be free from third-party viruses and other malicious third-party software or that we will always be successful in preventing attacks from succeeding. We will continue in our efforts both to prevent such occurrences and to minimise their impact on us and on our users.
Breach of any of these terms by Frontiers or you would be a breach of our contract.
These terms, and other conditions and rules of Frontiers, will be amended from time to time. Amendments will be communicated in the manner(s) appearing most appropriate to Frontiers. This may include email and/or notification at login. For this reason you should visit our websites regularly to ensure you are informed of changes to Terms. Amendments take effect upon that communication being made available to you, whether or not you actually log in to receive the information.
YOUR USE OF FRONTIERS WEBSITES OR ANY WEBSITE TO WHICH THEY ARE LINKED IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. FRONTIERS WEBSITES AND THEIR CONTENT ARE PROVIDED FOR USE ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. FRONTIERS MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO FRONTIERS WEBSITES, THEIR AVAILABILITY OR THEIR CONTENTS AND HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT RELATING TO THE FRONTIERS WEBSITES, THEIR CONTENT OR ANY WEBSITE TO WHICH THEY ARE LINKED. NO ADVICE OR INFORMATION, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, OBTAINED BY YOU FROM FRONTIERS OR THROUGH OR FROM ANY FRONTIERS WEBSITE SHALL CREATE ANY WARRANTY NOT EXPRESSLY STATED IN THESE TERMS FOR WEBSITE USE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE GENERALITY OF THE FOREGOING, FRONTIERS STRONGLY RECOMMENDS THAT YOU INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY ANY INFORMATION UPON WHICH YOU CHOOSE TO RELY.
IN NO EVENT SHALL FRONTIERS OR ITS LICENSEES, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, SUPPLIERS OR CONTRACTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY NATURE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY CONSEQUENTIAL LOSS, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF INCOME OR PROFIT, LOSS OF OR DAMAGE TO PROPERTY, LOSS OF GOODWILL, USE, DATA OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, CLAIMS OF THIRD PARTIES, OR ANY OTHER LOSS, COST, CLAIM OR EXPENSE OF ANY KIND OR CHARACTER ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OF ANY FRONTIERS WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT OR ANY WEBSITE TO OR FROM WHICH ANY LINKS MAY BE ESTABLISHED.
Nothing in these Terms and Conditions for Users shall limit or exclude, or be interpreted as intending to limit or exclude, Frontiers’ liability for gross negligence (as defined under Swiss law) or for deliberate wrongdoing, or for any other matter for which, under any applicable law, liability can not be limited or excluded.
Any claim against Frontiers must be brought within one year of your becoming aware of the existence of that claim.
Frontiers may choose not to enforce its rights in the event of a breach of these Terms. Such forbearance does not prevent Frontiers from enforcing that right in the future.
No third party (except your co-authors on submission of an article) obtains any rights from your contract with Frontiers, which is personal to you.
Neither you nor Frontiers are / is liable for failure to fulfil obligations due to circumstances beyond the reasonable control of the affected party, but both you and Frontiers undertake to take all reasonable measures to limit the duration and effect of those circumstances and to find other ways of fulfilling your or its obligations.
Your agreement with Frontiers, including these terms and all other matters referred to above, is governed exclusively by the laws of Switzerland. You and Frontiers agree to seek in good faith to resolve any disputes through good-faith discussion, negotiation and mediation before resorting to litigation. Any dispute not so resolved shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Frontiers does not accept any other jurisdiction unless otherwise explicitly agreed by it in writing. You will consent to any action by us taken to stop or prevent you from bringing an action in breach of this clause, and to indemnify us for our costs in bringing such an action.
We have updated our Privacy Policy to ensure that you, our users and researchers around the world, have a clear view as to what personal data we have, how we use it and under what conditions we entrust it to our contractors; and also to clarify the choices you have. This also ensures we are in line with the latest laws on data protection.
This Privacy Policy comes into effect on 25th May, 2018.
Frontiers has a mission – to make scientific and scholarly research open to all, as more than ever, science and technology are needed to engineer solutions to move us towards a sustainable society. To do this we seek to engage with the world’s research community and to serve each researcher as best we can. Being able to understand your research interests, speciality and publications helps us in this task.
Our goal with this policy is to be as clear as possible. If you have any questions you are welcome to contact us at data.controller@frontiersin.org.
Frontiers and its open research network, Loop, have one single registered user base and a unified registration.
When you register with Frontiers or Loop, you provide us with certain information, which becomes part of your registered user profile with Frontiers. Some basic information is required for registration, and you may choose to provide additional personal information. We also ask you if you wish to link other, publicly-available, information about your professional activities – including articles published, awards received etc – to your profile.
When registering, and any time after registration, you choose how much information you wish to provide, based on the privacy options available on the registration page and on your profile once registered.
If you, as a registered user, undertake an activity with Frontiers, such as submitting, co-authoring or reviewing an article, or becoming an editor, your contributions will be linked to your user profile. This approach maximises impact for your professional achievements and credits you for your contributions.
You may register with Frontiers via your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter profile. We will store the name, profile picture and email address from that external profile. We do not ask that external party for any more information and we do not provide any information to the external party as part of that process. The external party will know that you are registering with Frontiers.
You may respond to a promotion on another website by contacting us and expressing an interest in receiving communications or participating in a Frontiers initiative in your area of interest or expertise. We will retain the personal information you provide to us for this purpose.
You can, if you wish, link your ORCiD profile with your Frontiers account. If you choose to do this we will add your ORCiD and your ORCiD-listed publications to your Frontiers profile.
We may provide other linking services in the future to provide a better service to you.
When you visit any page on the Frontiers websites, some technical information is automatically collected:
Geo-location data. We record (via IP addresses and time stamp) from where in the world you are accessing the article, research topic and profile pages on our websites. This does not identify any individual (unless you are a registered user and logged in) and allows us to consolidate this data to understand where readership is located, and to provide impact metrics services, such as for your article or research topic.
Log data. We record information, known as log data, including browser interaction data and other information that your device’s browser automatically sends to any website you visit. This log data includes your IP address, which browser you are using and its settings, the date and time of your request, and data on how you used our website, "cookie" data (we explain this below) and information about your device.
Device information. We collect information on the type of device you are using, its operating system, browser type and version and other information to enable us to ensure that our website operates properly with your device. This may include information unique to your device. The information your device sends to us depends on its manufacturer.
Website tracking and improvement data. We may log the manner in which visitors to our website navigate our website. This is done to improve the usability of our website and to track the success of our communications and promotions.
Browsing history of registered users on our websites. This enables us to understand better the interests of our registered users.
Third-party analytics. Please see the section below on Online Tracking concerning our use of Google Analytics and third-party web analytics.
Payment information. We or our relevant contractors may, depending on your choices, retain your payment information.
Frontiers collects publicly-available information and information from subscription services on researchers, both registered and non-registered. Only information relevant to professional research activities is collected, such as name, institutional affiliation, contact details, publications, academic activities and specialisation(s), editorships and awards.
This enables us to provide researchers with high-quality publishing services, such as identifying the most suited expert reviewers for articles or building world-class editorial boards.
We remember interactions of registered and non-registered users with Frontiers. This may include emails received from you, acceptance of terms and conditions, your visits to the website, submission of content, acceptance of reviewer or editor roles, participation in the review process, acceptances and rejections of articles, Frontiers surveys you may complete and any other interaction between you and Frontiers.
Google Analytics. Frontiers uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google. Google Analytics uses cookies (see the section below on cookies) to allow us to analyse your use of our website. The information generated by the cookie regarding your use of this website will, as a rule, be transmitted to and stored on a Google server in the US. Information sent by Frontiers to Google Analytics does not personally identify any resident of Switzerland, the EU or EEA. In exceptional cases your full IP address may be transmitted to a server of Google in the US and shortened there. Google will use this information on our behalf to analyse your use of our website, to compile reports on website activities and provide additional services relating to website use and internet use to the website operator. The IP address collected through Google Analytics from your browser will not be merged with any other data held by Google.
You may also prevent Google from collecting and storing information in cookies, from storing information about your use of the website (including your IP address) and from processing such information by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available here.
For more information about Google Analytics and privacy, please refer to the Google website.
Third-Party Web Analytics. We also use selected third-party web analytics services, also sometimes referred to as "pixels", with services such as Twitter, Google and Facebook. See the section on Advertising Networks below.
You may choose, via Loop, to connect with other researchers and registered users. Frontiers stores this information as part of its networking service. Your connections are visible to Frontiers and, unless you have opted not to make this public, to other users of Loop. This service enables you to be kept up to date with new publications in your areas of interest and to connect with colleagues.
We use the information we collect to:
Provide services for you and to the research community, including creating and managing your account (for registered users), providing our publishing and networking services and providing relevant research-related news and information to you within your areas of expertise and interest
Invite you to participate in Frontiers activities, particularly to review relevant articles within your area of specialisation, to contribute to cutting-edge research topics, and possibly to join an editorial board or to meet at a conference. The information we collect about your professional activities enables us to ensure that only relevant invitations are sent to you
Identify and disambiguate. To ensure that, where the same name is shared by more than one person, we are dealing with the right person in the publishing operations of our business
Comply with your privacy and email choices
Understand the user experience of our website and our editorial processes, in order to improve our services, website and processes, and to imagine new services, so that your experience with Frontiers can be the best possible
Understand the geographical locations and institutional affiliations of our users
Inform you of Frontiers activities, events and opportunities
Answer your queries and provide you with support and service
Conduct surveys aimed at providing you with a better service.
Advertising networks. We intend to participate in advertising networks administered by third parties, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These networks allow us to target our promotions to you by using data matching, demographic data, your stated or inferred interests and your browsing activity on our website, which is tracked over time by automated means such as cookies, web server logs and web beacons. The networks use the information gathered to show you advertisements and promotions tailored to your interests and specialisation. The networks may also track your browsing on other websites which participate in the advertising network. We also track the effectiveness of our promotional and marketing activities via these networks. You may opt out of participation in these activities. Please see the section on Opting Out below.
Cookies. Cookies are small pieces of text sent to your browser by a website you visit and from your browser back to the website. Frontiers uses cookies. Some cookies last only for the duration of your visit (these are called "session cookies"), while others remain on your computer until they expire or are deleted (known as "persistent cookies"). Some cookies are associated with your Frontiers account (and thus your personal information).
Cookies do not themselves identify you, but we may link information identifying you (for example your IP address) to a cookie on your browser. We use cookies to:
Apply any preferences you may have indicated
Track your navigation of our website (without identifying you) so we can analyse the usability of our website and improve it, and so that we can understand your interests and thus only send you information relevant to you
Know if you are logged in when you move to another part of our website (for session management)
Keep you logged in from one session to the next, if you so choose
Secure your data when communicating with our website.
All Frontiers cookies are used only in the frontiersin.org domain. We also use third-party analytics cookies such as Google and other third-party Analytics. For further information on this, please see the above sections on Google Analytics and Advertising Networks.
You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser; however, if you do this, you may not be able to log in or use the full functionality of Frontiers’ websites.
A list of the cookies which are transferred to our users’ browsers can be seen here.
Frontiers operates globally, and your information may be transferred to other Frontiers entities and to third-party contractors outside your home country. The privacy protections and the rights of authorities to access your information in these countries may not be the same as in your home country.
When we transfer information outside the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland we take additional measures. This includes having standard clauses approved by the European Commission and the Swiss data protection authority in our contracts with parties that receive information outside the EEA. We also rely on European Commission and Swiss government adequacy decisions about certain countries, as applicable, for data transfers to countries outside the EEA; this may include reliance on the EU-US privacy shield.
When you register, some basic information, such as your name and institutional affiliation, is made public on your Loop profile. You can choose whether to make any other registration or profile information public or not. Anyone, including non-registered users, can see the information you make public.
When we publish an article of which you are an author, editor or reviewer, your name is published with the article. This is part of the Frontiers mission to improve peer-review through transparency and accountability, and to credit and acknowledge your contribution. Anyone can see your name in connection with that article. Your name and association with that article cannot be removed or deleted unless required by accepted scholarly publishing practice.
We use subcontractors, with appropriate data protection measures, to perform some of our processes. These include typesetting and copy-editing of articles, and customer relationship management.
We work with numerous public research repositories, scholarly databases and other organisations (such as CLOCKSS, Crossref, DOAB (Directory of Open-Access Books), DOAJ (Directory of Open-Access Journals), MedLine, OpenAire, PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus and Web of Science and other reputable scholarly repositories), to archive research articles and/or their metadata, as well as databases to enable plagiarism checks such as iThenticate, which provides additional discoverability and a further guarantee of a permanent record of those articles; or to enable plagiarism checks to be handled efficiently. With some repositories only the metadata is provided, which includes information identifying the authors and reviewers of an article. You can find further information on third parties we work with here.
Use of tracking and custom audience methods, described elsewhere in this privacy policy, involve sharing of information as described in those sections.
We may be required to share information with law enforcement agencies.
All data we collect, use and share is for the purpose of providing our services to you and to the research community.
Frontiers takes a variety of technical, physical, organisational and administrative measures to provide an appropriate level of protection for your information against accidental, unlawful or unauthorised access, loss, destruction, alteration, disclosure or use.
We define access rights to information and we use technology to limit access to those who are authorised. We ensure that our servers have adequate security. We control physical access to our premises. We have in place, and we apply, an IT and data security policy. We work to ensure that our contractors have in place appropriate security measures and process data in accordance with applicable laws.
You have a number of choices concerning your personal information.
If you are a registered user, you have a number of choices as to what information you provide and how much of that information is made public. You should review your personal information and your privacy settings regularly. To do that, please go to your profile settings.
You can manage the settings on your browser to change whether it accepts cookies and which cookies it accepts; you can also manually delete cookies. Please see the instructions of your device or browser provider for how to do this.
You have the right to:
be informed of the information we store concerning you. Our intention is to respond to any request for information within thirty days of the request
require that your information be corrected or deleted. If you are registered, you can update your registration information by logging in to your profile. Frontiers may consider it has an overriding need to retain all or some information in order to provide its services as a responsible publisher
object to us processing your information. You can ask us to stop using your information, including when we use your information to send you emails or promotional notifications concerning our services. If you opt out of receiving promotional messages, we will continue to send service emails if you are registered with us
require us to send your data provided by you and stored by us to a third party, where this is technically feasible
complain to a data protection regulator.
If you are a registered user, you should regularly check your registration information to ensure it is up to date and, to the extent you wish, complete.
Opting Out. You can opt out of the use by Frontiers of your data on social media platforms.To opt out of the use of your data on social media platforms, please visit the ad choices page of the relevant platform:
Frontiers is for professional researchers and those interested in science, and is for people aged 18 and over. People under the age of 18 should not register with Frontiers.
Where individuals aged less than 18 are involved in Frontiers for Young Minds, Frontiers only communicates with them via parents, guardians, teachers or science mentors. No personally identifiable information on any person whom we believe to be under 18 is stored by Frontiers.
If you have questions or concerns concerning Frontiers’ storage or use of your personal data, you can contact us at data.controller@frontiersin.org.
If we make changes to this policy, those changes will come into effect upon their posting on our website. If changes involve any substantive change to your rights or possibilities, we will inform you via your registered email address or with a pop-up announcement the next time you log in, or by another appropriate method.
Frontiers Media SA
May 2018
All content included on Frontiers websites (including Loop), such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, video/audio clips, downloads, data compilations and software, is the property of Frontiers if created by Frontiers, or of the person or entity who or which owned it prior to submission to Frontiers. If not owned by Frontiers, it is licensed to Frontiers Media SA (Frontiers) or its licensees and/or subcontractors.
The copyright in the text of individual articles (including research articles, opinion articles, book reviews, conference proceedings and abstracts) is not the property of Frontiers, and its ownership is not affected by its submission to or publication by Frontiers. Frontiers benefits from a general licence over all content submitted to it, and both Frontiers and its users benefit from a Creative Commons CC-BY licence over all content, as specified below.
Images and graphics not forming part of user-contributed materials are the property of or are licensed to Frontiers may not be downloaded or copied without Frontiers’ explicit and specific permission or in accordance with any specific copyright notice attached to that material.
The combination of all content on Frontiers websites, as well as the design and the look and feel of the Frontiers websites, and the copyright and all other rights in such content and combination, are the sole property of Frontiers.
As an author or contributor you grant permission to others to reproduce your articles, including any graphics and third-party materials supplied by you, in accordance with the Frontiers Terms and Conditions. The licence granted to third parties over all contents of each article, including third-party elements, is a Creative Commons Attribution ("CC BY") licence. The current version is CC-BY, version 4.0, and the licence will automatically be updated as and when updated by the Creative Commons organisation.
You may include a requirement to reproduce copyright notices in materials contributed by you, but you may not restrict the right to reproduce the entire article, including third-party graphics. This means that you must obtain any necessary third-party consents and permissions to reproduce third-party materials in your articles submitted to Frontiers.
E-books are subject to the same licensing conditions as the articles within them.
Articles published prior to the effective date of this notice: Please note that reproduction of third-party graphics and other third-party materials contained in articles published prior to the effective date of this notice may be subject to third-party notices prohibiting their reproduction without permission. You must comply with those notices.
Articles published prior to July 2012: The licence granted for these articles may be different and you should check the pdf version of any article to establish what licence was granted. If an article, dating from before July 2012, carries only a non-commercial licence and you wish to obtain a commercial licence, please contact Frontiers at editorial.office@frontiersin.org.
All software used on this website, and the copyright in the code constituting such software, is the property of or is licensed to Frontiers and its use is restricted in accordance with the Frontiers Terms and Conditions. All copyright, and all rights therein, are protected by national and international copyright laws.
This Copyright Statement comes into effect on 25th May, 2018.
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Updated in April, 2019.
We want to make you aware of updates to our privacy policy, terms and copyright statement. Below we say a few words about each of them, and we encourage you to read them.
It is important to keep you informed about what data of yours we may have, as well as how we use, share and protect it.
Our new, updated privacy policy does all of this, informs you of your options and also gives you detailed information about the cookies used on our websites. This is part of our work to ensure we are aligned with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation.
The main changes in our terms are these:
Registration with Frontiers and the Loop network for researchers is now unified.
Third-party materials are now subject to the Creative Commons CC-BY (attribution) licence, and you therefore promise Frontiers, when submitting an article, that you have the permission of owners of all third-party materials forming part of your article
Clarification of the provisions regarding exclusive rights for Frontiers until an article is published or rejected by Frontiers
Removal of the old indemnity clause.
The main changes in our Copyright Statement are these:
All materials in articles, including third-party materials, are now subject to the Creative Commons CC-BY licence. All third-party permissions must be in place to publish those materials on CC-BY terms.
E-books are now subject to exactly the same CC-BY licence as the individual articles within them.
All changes are with effect from 25th May, 2018.
Frontiers In and Loop are registered trade marks of Frontiers Media SA.
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