These General Conditions create a contract between you and Frontiers Media SA (Frontiers) which applies to your use of our websites, including those of Hosted Journals as defined below.
Frontiers is an award-winning Open Science platform and leading Open Access scholarly publisher. Our mission is to make science open, so that all may live healthy lives on a healthy planet. Founded in 2007 by neuroscientists Kamila Markram and Henry Markram, Frontiers has grown to become one of the world’s largest and most cited open-access publishers.
Frontiers publishes its own journals (referred to here as Frontiers Journals) and journals owned by third parties (referred to here as Hosted Journals). When we refer to Journals, we include both Frontiers Journals and Hosted Journals.
In these terms, Websites (with a capitalised W) refer to all Frontiers websites, including those of Hosted Journals. An Owner means Frontiers as owner of all Frontiers Journals, or the respective owner of a Hosted Journal.
These Conditions will continue to apply to all Journals except, for a specific Hosted Journal, to the extent of any clear inconsistency or contradiction with the conditions published for that Journal, which will prevail to the extent of that inconsistency or contradiction, and only in connection with that Hosted Journal.
Hosted Journals may have additional conditions, which, if applicable, will appear on the Website of the Hosted Journal concerned. Hosted Journal Conditions apply only to the Hosted Journal on whose Website they appear.
These terms create a contract between you and Frontiers whenever you interact with us, whether or not you are registered. If you interact with a Hosted Journal, your contract is also with the owner of that Hosted Journal.
Interactions can include visits to any Website; the submission, review, acceptance (or rejection) and publication of articles; and use of the Loop network for researchers. Other rules and procedures of Frontiers, including the Author Guidelines, Privacy Policy and Copyright Statement, also apply in respect of all Frontiers Journals, and also in respect of Hosted Journals, except, in the case of a Hosted Journal, to the extent inconsistent with or contradicted by guidelines, rules, procedures or conditions appearing on the Website of that Hosted Journal.
Other specific terms, such as the applicable conditions for editors, will also apply if you are or become an editor with any Journal.
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 any Website and any related functionality is conditional on your complying with these conditions and all other applicable rules and conditions specified by Frontiers. Frontiers will also comply with its rules and conditions.
One registration suffices for both Frontiers Journals and Hosted Journals. You may register 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.
You should check to ensure that you have only one profile with Frontiers and Loop, to avoid confusion.
Who may register? Natural persons aged 18 or over may register, and you must register in your own name. You may not create more than one profile. By registering with us you promise Frontiers, and all other relevant Owners, 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. One registration allows any user to interact with any Journal. By registering you automatically become a member of the Loop network.
you may submit articles for peer review to any Journal. You may also submit other content, and you can apply to become an editor or reviewer of a Journal.
Registering with Frontiers also means accepting the following:
you have read, understood and agree with these Conditions, Frontiers’ Privacy Policy and the Copyright Statement
you must comply with these terms and all other rules and conditions of Frontiers. This obligation applies to all users, whether or not registered;
you must comply with all generally-accepted academic and scientific norms and Frontiers’ own principles, as well as any additional principles of Hosted Journals;
you understand that Frontiers is not obliged to publish any content contributed by you, and that Frontiers may at its discretion remove any content of any kind contributed by you, including retracting peer-reviewed articles.
Communications and emails: By registering with Frontiers, you consent to receiving email and other communications from Frontiers and from the Owners of relevant Hosted Journals.
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.
If you wish to close your account with Frontiers, please contact support@frontiersin.org. Hosted Journals may provide a dedicated support address on their respective websites, but an email can also be addressed to Frontiers for support on any Journal.
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 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 there is any reason to believe 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 insufficient attention to 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 Loop privacy settings, 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.
The owner of each Hosted Journal is the owner of the combination of content of the Website for any Hosted Journal(s) owned by it. Frontiers is the owner of the combination of all content on Frontiers Websites, and of the look and feel of its Websites.
Neither Frontiers nor, unless otherwise specifically stated for a Journal, the owner of Hosted Journals owns, or claims ownership of, the copyright in articles you submit to any Journal – you (or your employer or funder) continue(s) to own the copyright in your articles. See below and the copyright statement for more information.
“Frontiers In” and “Loop” are registered trademarks of Frontiers Media SA. The names of Hosted Journals may constitute trade marks belonging to the owners of those Hosted Journals.
When you submit an article (which includes the article abstract, but excludes article metadata, as defined below) to any Journal, you grant to Frontiers and/or to the Hosted Journal owner and to the world at large a permanent, non-cancellable, free-of-charge, worldwide licence (permission) to publish, display, store, copy, adapt 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 the owner of the copyright in your article, which may be your employer or funder, and from all other third parties who own the copyright in any aspect of your article. 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 the abstract any third-party materials included in your article) is, unless otherwise stated for an article or for the relevant Journal, a Creative Commons attribution licence (known as a “CC-BY” licence). You can not terminate that licence. For some governmental or international governmental organisations, the licence may be another, similar, licence.
In summary, the CC-BY licence means that anyone may copy, re-publish, adapt 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 at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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.
Licence over certain article and journal metadata. Article and journal metadata, as defined in this paragraph, are the property of Frontiers or of the Owner of the relevant Hosted Journal, and are subject to a Creative Commons CC0 licence. “Article and journal metadata” means the following elements, to the extent applicable, in relation to the journal or each article, as applicable: Publisher, journal name, journal abbreviation, ISSN, DOI, article ID, subject, article type, article title, article URL, author names, contributor group, author note, author affiliation, Orcid and Loop Profile URLs, corresponding author's email address, publication date, acceptance date, submission date, volume number, volume ID, issue number, issue ID, permissions, copyright statement, copyright year, copyright holder, license information, creative commons URL, conflict of interest statement, keyword group, figure count, table count, equation count, reference count, page count, word count, supplementary material count, funding statement, funder / contract / sponsor / grant and number, citation, product information, conference information. No elements other than those listed in this paragraph are included in article or journal metadata, and nor are they licensed under CC0 terms, unless confirmed by Frontiers or Hosted Journal Owner.
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 Website content in such a forum, you must remove it immediately on request by Frontiers.
You may also not reproduce any content from any Website in order to denigrate Frontiers, any client of Frontiers or any Journal.
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, and to permit others 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.
It is your responsibility to comply with the conditions of any third-party website on which you may post content originally published on any Website. Frontiers and the owners of Hosted Journals are not bound by the conditions of any third-party website.
Submission of the article
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 Journal’s Website, and will be stored and made public in archives, in repositories and potentially in other places. By submitting, reviewing or accepting editorial responsibilities for an article you consent to a limited amount of your personal data being thus published.
When you submit an article to any Journal, 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;
If rejected by one Journal, your article may be automatically submitted to another Journal 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 or other applicable 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 or other applicable 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 set out below;
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; and
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 and Rejection
Acceptance is at Frontiers’ (or the Hosted Journal owner’s) 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 prior to publication despite having been previously accepted.
Publication
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 the applicable article publication charge (APC), or to ensure that it is paid. Current APCs can be seen here for Frontiers Journals, and on each relevant Website for Hosted Journals.
Peer-review processes are designed to ensure scientific rigour. They do not include checks for the satisfaction of the other requirements (such as copyright permissions on images and graphics, for example).
Disclosure of inventions
You must ensure that all patent applications have been filed prior to submission of your article. Publication of an article is likely to reduce or cancel the patentability of any unpatented ideas in that article.
Time for publication
If Frontiers unjustifiably, for reasons caused entirely by its own negligence, fails to publish an article in a Journal 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.
The Published Article
Once published, an article can not be removed except by decision of the Owner of the Journal, in accordance with accepted retraction processes. The article is likely to be archived and referenced in a number of archives and repositories.
Articles published in Frontiers Journals 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 and Hosted Journals reserve the right to remove any content, and to retract peer-reviewed articles, which in its view breach any applicable conditions and/or which they or we consider to be inappropriate in any way. Such removal does not entitle the author to reimbursement of APCs.
Frontiers and owners of Hosted Journals are not liable for the acts or statements of others.
Disputes
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.
As a user, registered or not, you may use all open functionalities of the Websites if you comply with all applicable conditions and rules. 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 (or other licences as may be indicated for specific Journals or articles) over articles and other content, and from a CC0 licence for certain article metadata, all as described elsewhere in these Conditions.
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 conditions. Frontiers, and/or any Journal owner, may remove any links and/or to require their removal, and you must comply with such a request. Frontiers and Journal owners are 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.
All content submitted to any Website, 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 ethical guidelines of Frontiers or of the Journal in question
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 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 the prior explicit agreement of Frontiers or the owner of the relevant Journal
not give a false impression that it emanates from Frontiers or any Journal or is approved by Frontiers or the relevant Journal owner, 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.
Frontiers and/or another relevant Journal Owner may remove any content, or retract peer-reviewed articles, at their respective discretion. You may also request deletion of content, such requests will be considered in their context. A place-holder may be inserted to indicate that a comment has been deleted. Deleted comments may be retained for the record.
Frontiers and other Journal Owners are not responsible for content posted by their 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 on a Frontiers Website breaches any of these requirements, please contact us at editorial.office@frontiersin.org. Where the suspected breach occurs on a Hosted Journal Website, please refer to that Journal’s Website for the relevant contact address.
Sponsorship programmes: Frontiers has sponsorship programmes for Frontiers 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.
Promotional Messages: Messages and other content promoting a commercial offering are not permitted without the explicit written agreement of the relevant Journal Owner.
Advertising: Frontiers does not currently accept advertisements. Some Hosted Journals may accept advertisements; please go to the relevant Journal Website for information.
Frontiers endeavours, through active maintenance, to ensure that 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. Withdrawn services may or may not be replaced 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 any 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.
The following activities are prohibited on all 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, other Journal Owners and/or to other 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 any Websites
Any activity which is designed to, or is likely to, cause any harm or damage to Frontiers, to other Journal Owners, to any of Frontiers’ suppliers or to any users of Frontiers’ facilities
Any attempt to copy, hack or reverse-engineer the code forming any Website or any functionality offered by any Website
Any act intended or likely to cause any damage to any Website, its availability on the internet, its underlying software or the reputation of Frontiers or any other Journal Owner, including (but not limited to) denial of service attacks
Uploading or placing on any Website, or on any website to which you provide links, of 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 conditions
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 explicit licences or as otherwise specifically permitted by these Conditions or following the specific and explicit agreement of Frontiers.
Text and data mining of public content are permitted 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 one or more Websites. If you encounter problems, please feel free to contact our technical support: support@frontiersin.org.
Text and data mined, and content downloaded in bulk or individually from any Website, remain subject to the relevant licence (CC-BY, CC0 or other relevant licence), and all attribution and other conditions of such licences must be complied with. To the extent that any such text or data constitutes or includes Personal Data, all applicable data protection laws must also be complied with. Further information on text and data mining and bulk content downloads for research purposes and for repositories and databases can be found here.
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.
Breach of any of these conditions by Frontiers, another Journal Owner or you would be a breach of our contract.
We expressly reserve the right to refuse applications to register and/or to suspend or cancel the accounts of users, at our discretion.
These Conditions, and other conditions and rules of Frontiers and/or of any Journal or collection of Journals, will be amended from time to time. Amendments will be communicated in the manner appearing most appropriate to Frontiers. This may include email and/or notification at login. For this reason you should log out and log back in frequently from and to your Frontiers account to ensure you are aware of changes to Conditions. 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 AND/OR HOSTED JOURNAL WEBSITES OR ANY WEBSITE TO WHICH THEY ARE LINKED IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. ALL WEBSITES AND THEIR CONTENT ARE PROVIDED FOR USE ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. FRONTIERS AND JOURNAL OWNERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO ANY WEBSITES, THEIR AVAILABILITY OR THEIR CONTENTS AND HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, RELATING TO THE FRONTIERS WEBSITES, HOSTED JOURNAL WEBSITES OR THEIR RESPECTIVE 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 WEBSITE SHALL CREATE ANY WARRANTY NOT EXPRESSLY STATED IN THESE CONDITIONS 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, JOURNAL OWNERS, OR THEIR RESPECTIVE 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 WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT OR ANY WEBSITE TO OR FROM WHICH ANY LINKS MAY BE ESTABLISHED.
Nothing in these Conditions for Website Use shall limit or exclude, or be interpreted as intending to limit or exclude, 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 or any Journal Owner must be brought within one year of your becoming aware of the existence of that claim.
Forbearance from enforcement of rights in the event of a breach of these Conditions does not prevent future enforcement of that right.
Owners of Hosted Journals are third-party beneficiaries of your obligations under these Conditions. Except as stated in the preceding sentence, 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, nor any owner of a Hosted Journal, 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 conditions 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.
These General Conditions for Use of Frontiers websites come into effect on 16th December, 2020.
Frontiers is an award-winning open science platform and leading open access scholarly publisher. Our mission is to make science open, so that all may live healthy lives on a healthy planet. 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 to serve each researcher as best we can. Being able to understand your research interests, speciality and publications helps us in this task.
This Privacy Policy describes how we ensure that you, our users and researchers around the world, understand what Personal Data we collect, how we use it and under what conditions we entrust it to third parties, and it explains the choices you have.
This Privacy Policy is provided by Frontiers Media SA (“Frontiers”, “we”, “us”). We publish our own journals (referred to here as Frontiers Journals) and journals owned by third parties (referred to here as Hosted Journals). When we refer to Journals, we include both Frontiers Journals and Hosted Journals. We are responsible for the processing of personal data (data controller) for the purposes of data protection legislation, except to the extent we are processing personal data on behalf of Hosted Journals, in which capacity we are a data processor.
In these Privacy Policy, Websites (with a capitalised W) refers to all websites owned or managed by Frontiers, including those of Hosted Journals.
This Privacy Policy applies to Personal Data collected by Frontiers, for itself and for Hosted Journals, of registered users, of visitors to the Websites and of other individuals with whom we interact.
These terms are used in this Privacy Policy:
Personal Data: means any information relating to a natural person who can be identified, directly or indirectly, through that information.
Processing: means any operation which is performed on personal data, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, dislosure, adaptation, alteration, deletion or any kind of disclosure or other use.
Registration with Frontiers or a Hosted Journal is effected through Loop, Frontiers’ open research network.
To use certain features of the Frontiers platform (including for Hosted Journals), users must register with Frontiers.
When you create a Frontiers account, you provide us with Personal Data, including full name, email address, affiliation, your email choices and a password. You also have the option to include certain additional information about yourself in your Frontiers account, such as a brief bio, your publications, secondary email address, profile picture.
You may also choose to connect, via your Frontiers account, with other 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 Frontiers registered users. This service enables you to be kept up to date with new publications in your areas of interest and to connect with colleagues.
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 for or collect any additional information from those platforms, and we do not transfer any information to them as part of the registration process. The external party will know that you are registering with Frontiers. Its use of that information is governed by its own privacy policy.
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 account.
If you, as a Frontiers registered user, undertake an activity with a Journal, such as submitting a manuscript, co-authoring or reviewing an article, or becoming an editor, your contributions will be linked to your Frontiers account. This maximises the impact of your professional achievements and credits you for your contributions.
We do not collect or store any payment information such as credit card numbers. We keep a record of the invoices, which do not include any sensitive payment information. We use an industry–approved secure third-party payment system to facilitate payments on our website.
This information includes:
Geo-location data. We record (via IP addresses and time stamp) from where in the world you are accessing the 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. Your device may send information to any website you visit. We record this information when you visit the Websites. It includes your IP address, the browser used and its settings, the date and time of your visit, and data on how you used the websites you visited.
Device information. We collect information about the type of device you are using, its operating system, browser type and version to ensure that the Websites operate properly with your device. The information is sent by your device, and the type of information will vary depending on the device’s manufacturer.
Registered users’ browsing history data on the Websites. We collect this data only from individuals registered with us to help us understand the interests of our users and personalize their experience.
Information concerning your interactions with us. We remember your interactions with us. This may include emails we receive from you, acceptance of terms and conditions, 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.
We and our analytics service providers use cookies or similar technologies to:
Manage your login preferences,
Administer the Websites,
Analyze and improve your experience on the Websites,
Target our messages so that you only receive information relevant to you.
Cookies do not identify you, but we may link your IP address to a cookie on your browser.
As of 21 January 2021, through the cookie banner on the Websites you will be able to either enable or disable the targeting, functional and performance cookies.
For more information on what cookies we use, please click here.
We collect publicly available information about researchers from subscription services, publications, articles, and conferences. We receive suggestions for potential contributors from our editors who are thought leaders in their areas of academic expertise.
We only collect information relevant to professional research activities, 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.
If you manage a Hosted Journal for its owner, we may collect your full name, email addresses and role for the purpose of managing our publishing relationship.
We use the information we collect for the purposes described below.
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 and/or those of Hosted Journals, particularly to review relevant articles within your area of specialisation, to contribute to cutting-edge research topics or special issues, 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.
Understand the user experience of the Websites and our editorial processes, in order to train our people, improve our services, website and processes, and to imagine new services, so that your experience with Frontiers can be the best possible.
Comply with your privacy and email preferences.
Issue invoices for your APC payments.
Understand the geographical locations and institutional affiliations of our users.
Inform you of Frontiers and Hosted Journal activities, events and opportunities.
Answer your queries and provide you with support and service.
Conduct surveys aimed at providing you with a better service.We do not sell Personal Data to others. We share Personal Data with our contractors only to the extent necessary to permit them to perform their role in facilitating the delivery of Frontiers’ services and subject to suitable protective agreements.
We combine the information obtained from different sources so that we can propose opportunities which are relevant to each user’s research activities, interests and qualifications. While some of this process is automated, decisions are not.
We may collect and process your Personal Data based on:
1. A contractual relationship with you.
2. Your consent to do so for a specific purpose, such as adding additional information to your Frontiers account or accepting to receive our newsletters.
3. Our legitimate business interest, for example in maintaining the publishing record, subcontracting aspects of our operations to third parties, marketing and promoting our services, and potentially in defending ourself in legal disputes.
When you register, some basic information, such as your name and institutional affiliation, is made public on your Frontiers profile. You can choose whether to add other information. Anyone, including non-registered users, can see the information you make public.
You can choose to set your Frontiers profile to Private if you do not wish your data to be visible to the public. When set to private, only your name, affiliation and country will be visible; all other data will be hidden.
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 may share your information with our contractors , with appropriate data protection safeguards, to assist us in performing some of our processes (for example, a contractor may host Frontiers’ servers, help our teams support you and answer your requests, assist us in delivering our typesetting and copy-editing services or facilitate relationship management). Contractors have access on a “need to know basis” and only to specific, relevant sets of data necessary to help us deliver our services to you. We require contractors to agree to maintain the confidentiality and security of your information and not to use it for other purposes.
We work with numerous public research repositories, scholarly databases and other organisations to archive research articles and/or their metadata, as well as databases to enable plagiarism checks. These relationships provide additional discoverability and a further guarantee of a permanent record of those articles, or 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.
Personal Data of registered users of each Hosted Journal is available to both the Hosted Journal’s Owner and to Frontiers.
We enable our Hosted Journals to identify suitable expert reviewers for articles and help them build editorial boards.
Frontiers cooperates with research institutions and national consortia to make publishing and payment processes easier for them and their researchers. We share information concerning article titles, authors and fees. The data provided is shared securely and only with the authorized personnel of the institution.
If we are required by law, or we are served with a warrant, court order, or subpoena, we may be asked to provide your information to regulators, enforcement agents, courts and/or other government entities. When this happens we will assess the validity of the request and comply where required to do so.
In the unlikely event were are involved in disputes or court proceedings, we may provide your information if we need to do so in connection with legal proceedings. We will only do so in a lawful manner. We may also use and share your information to enforce our Terms and Conditions (including investigation of potential violations). To the extent possible in the relevant situation, we will promptly provide information about any such disclosures to you.
If Frontiers is involved in a merger, acquisition, joint venture, dissolution, merger or other corporate restructuring, we will give you notice (by posting on the Frontiers Website and those of Hosted Journals), and the option to opt-out of the transfer, before your data is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
Frontiers operates globally, and your information may be transferred to other Frontiers entities and to third parties 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. These include relying on the European Commission and Swiss government’s adequacy decisions issued for certain countries, as applicable, for data transfers to countries outside the EEA. Additionally, in the absence of an adequacy decision we include the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission and the Swiss data protection authority in our contracts with non-EEA third parties that receive information from us.
By using the Websites, or creating an account and/or subscribing to mailing lists, or permitting the deposit and/or publication of Personal Data on or through your Frontiers account, you agree that (i) your Personal Data may be transferred to our facilities and those of the third parties with whom we share it as described in this Privacy Policy and (ii) any claims of any kind that you have regarding this Privacy Policy and our use and sharing of data shall be resolved in accordance with the procedures set forth in section 10.1.
Except for certain limited basic information as described above, you control the settings for visibility and sharing of the information on your Frontiers account. To that end, we provide you with multiple choices about your privacy and the ability to control how your Personal Data is used. Your Frontiers Account has built-in Privacy Settings that will enable you to control the visibility and use of your data.
If you are a registered user, you decide how much information is displayed on your Frontiers profile and whether to keep the profile private or public. Additionally, you can decide how journals you registered with will be using your information.
You should review your Personal Data and your privacy settings regularly. To do that, go to the privacy settings in your Frontiers account.
In addition to the privacy settings in your Frontiers account, you also have the right to:
Be informed of the Personal Data we collect, process and store. This Privacy Policy, which is accessible via the Frontiers webiste, provides you with all of this information in an accessible way.
Request access to your Personal Data stored by us or a third party, where this is technically feasible. Our intention is to respond to any request for information within a month of the request.
Require that your information be corrected. If you are registered, you can directly update your registration information by logging in to your Frontiers account.
Object to us processing your Personal Data. You can ask us to stop using your Personal Data, including when we use your Personal Data 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.
Request that your Personal Data be deleted. In certain circumstances, we may consider we have an overriding need to retain all or some information to continue to provide our services as a responsible publisher.
Withdraw the consent for the processing of your Personal Data which is based on your consent.
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.
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.
Your access to some of our services and content may be password protected. You share the responsibility of maintaining the security of your information. You will be responsible for any action, activities, and access to the Websites and platform that were taken through your username and password, and which occur before you notify us of their loss or having been compromised. Please follow best practices to help keep your information secure, such as:
Keep your username(s) and password(s) strictly confidential and do not disclose them to anyone
Use unique passwords for each website that you use, including Frontiers
Sign out of your Frontiers account at the end of each session and close your browser window when you have finished your work, especially if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place.
We keep your Personal Data to enable your continued use of our platform and publishing services, and for as long as it is required in order to fulfill the relevant purposes described in this Privacy Policy, to comply with our obligations as a scholarly publisher or as may be required by law.
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.
Upon the explicit consent of the child’s parents or guardians Frontiers collects only the first name, the age and the avatar picture of the young reviewer. This data is solely used to acknowledge the young reviewer’s contributions to the review of the article when it is published on the Frontiers for Young Minds website.
If you have questions about our Privacy Policy and if you would like to know more about your data processed by Frontiers, please contact us at data.protection@frontiersin.org.
If you are facing any technical difficulties, cannot make changes to your Frontiers account and data, or wish to remove your Frontiers account, please submit a ticket to Frontiers’ Support team. We aim to respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe, not to exceed one month. The deletion of your account will not affect the maintenance of the publishing record concerning any articles of which you are an author, reviewer or editor. It may happen that we need to retain some of your information for specific business needs connected with your interactions with Frontiers, in which case we will inform you of that.
If we make changes to this Privacy Policy, those changes will come into effect upon their posting on the Websites. 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
This revised Privacy Policy comes into effect on 16th December 2020.
Frontiers publishes its own journals (referred to here as Frontiers Journals) and journals owned by third parties (referred to here as Hosted Journals). When we refer to Journals, we include both Frontiers Journals and Hosted Journals.
In this Copyright Statement, Websites (with a capitalised W) refers to all Frontiers websites, including those of Hosted Journals. An Owner means Frontiers as owner of all Frontiers Journals, or the respective owner of a Hosted Journal.
All content included on these Websites (including Loop), such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, video/audio clips, downloads, data compilations and software, is the property of the person or entity who or which owned it prior to submission to Frontiers or to a Hosted Journal. If not owned by Frontiers or an Owner of a Hosted Journal, it is licensed to Frontiers Media SA (“Frontiers”), such Owner or its or their licensees and/or subcontractors.
The ownership of copyright in the text of individual articles (including research articles, opinion articles, book reviews, conference proceedings and abstracts) is not affected by its submission to or publication by Frontiers, whether for itself or for a Hosted Journal. Frontiers benefits from a general licence over all content submitted. Hosted Journal Owners benefit from a general licence over all content submitted to their respective Hosted Journals. Frontiers, Hosted Journal Owners and all their 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 and 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, and the look and feel of the Frontiers websites, is the property of Frontiers Media SA.
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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/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 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 25th May 2018: Please note that reproduction of third-party graphics and other third-party materials contained in articles published prior to 25th May 2018 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 carries only a non-commercial licence and you wish to obtain a commercial licence, please contact Frontiers at editorial.office@frontiersin.org.
Article metadata, as defined in Frontiers’ terms and conditions, are the property of Frontiers or the Owner of the respective Hosted Journal, and are licensed under Creative Commons CC0 terms.
All software used on this site, and the copyright in the code constituting such software, and all intellectual property in all such elements, 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.
Please also see the Frontiers Terms and Conditions.
Copyright Statement updated with effect from 16th December 2020.
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Will be replaced by Cerberus in 2018
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See NewRelic Documentation
Frontiers also uses third-party cloud services for blogs (blog.frontiersin.org, hosted by Wordpress) and customer support (zendesk.frontiersin.org, hosted by Zendesk).
Frontiers does not run any cookies on those pages.
For information on what cookies Wordpress and Zendesk run on those respective pages, please consult Wordpress Documentation or Zendesk Documentation, as applicable.
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.
Changes in the December 2020 versions compared with the May 2018 versions.
Both the Ts&Cs and the Copyright Statement have been updated to reflect that we now also host journals owned by others.
The Ts&Cs now also provide that, in addition to the CC-BY licence applying to most published articles, including abstracts, other article metadata is now subject to a Creative Commons CC0 licence.
Main changes in the December 2020 version:
To reflect that Frontiers now also publishes and operates journals for third parties.
Explanations of certain key terms.
Inclusion of invoice management as an explicit purpose for which we process personal data.
Clarification of the legal grounds on which we process personal data.
Explicit confirmation that we do not sell personal data.
Clarification that while some data processing is automated, the decisions resulting from processing of data are not.
Updating of information on who we share information with, in particular adding in the owners of hosted journals.
We have clarified the choices you have concerning the privacy settings on your Loop profile.
Frontiers Media SA
December 2020
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