PRIVACY PROTECTION STATEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

The University of Cologne takes the protection of personal data very seriously. We want you to know when we store which data and how we use it when you visit the website of the University of Cologne. Personal data are collected on the central web server of the University (www.uni-koeln.de) only to the necessary extent.

The following statement in accordance with Chapter 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives you an overview of how we guarantee this protection and what kinds of data are collected for what purposes.

Personally Identifying Information (PII), or Personal Data: any information that can potentially be used to identify a person, such as their name(s), email address, mailing address, phone number, social network posts, or an IP address.

Responsible Controller for the processing of personal data for the operation of this website is:

The University of Cologne
Public Body (Körperschaft öffentlichen Rechts)
represented by the Rector

Albertus-Magnus-Platz
50923 Köln
+49 221 / 470-0
online-redaktion(at)uni-koeln.de
 http://www.uni-koeln.de

Our Data Protection Commissioner can be contacted at:
Data Protection Officer of the University of Cologne
Albertus-Magnus-Platz
50923 Köln
+49 221 / 470-3872 dsb(at)verw.uni-koeln.de

When you contact us by electronic mail or via a contact form, the personal data submitted (your email address and, if applicable, your name and your phone number) will be stored by us to answer your questions. We will erase personal data that arise during this connection as soon as storage is no longer required or restrict the processing if legal obligations to retain the data exist.

 

Your rights

You have the right, per legal provisions, to request free information or confirmation from us regarding the personal data stored about them.

You have the right to immediate correction or deletion of incorrect personal data concerning you, to restriction of the processing, or to object to the processing.

You can revoke your consent to the processing of personal data at any time. This does not affect the legality of the University’s processing of your personal data based on your consent until your revocation.

You have the right to request information regarding your personal data in a structured, conventional, and machine-readable format and to transmit it to other persons responsible.

If you have questions that this data protection statement could not answer, or if you would like more detailed information on a particular point, contact us, preferably using our contact address: webmaster(at)uni-koeln.de. If you communicate by email, we cannot guarantee the complete confidentiality of the provided information. If your message is confidential, please send it to us by post.

In addition, without prejudice to any other administrative or judicial remedy, an appeal may be lodged with a Member State supervisory authority if there are doubts as to the lawfulness of the processing of personal data. The regulatory authority of the University of Cologne is:

The State Officer for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein- Westfalen)
Postfach 20 04 44
40102 Düsseldorf
+49 211/38424-0
Fax: +49 211/38424-10
poststelle(at)ldi.nrw.de

 

Purposes, duration, and legal basis of the processing of personal data

 

Server log files

When you do not register or submit other information, we will only save the personal data that your browser sends to our server for requests:

• browser type and version
• computer name or IP address of the accessing computer date and time of access
• requested web page referring web page
• status of access/HTTP status code
• data volume transmitted

The data are stored in our server’s log files. They cannot be related to individual persons and will not be combined with other data sources. We reserve the right to check these data later on if concrete indications of unlawful use become known.

The legal basis for the temporary storage of log files is Chapter 6 Art. 1 (f) of the GDPR, because the University of Cologne has a legitimate interest in identifying and eliminating malfunctions and in optimizing its website.

 

Cookies

We use so-called cookies on our website. Cookies are data records that your browser stores on your computer and sends to our server when you visit our pages. Cookies do not cause any damage to your computer and do not contain any viruses. They make our website more user-friendly, effective, and secure.

We only use so-called session cookies, which are automatically deleted at the end of your visit to our site. Our session cookies contain a session id, which allows the server to identify a combined set of requests. We use this information for users to sign in, and for session settings (i.e. the preferred language).

By changing the settings in your browser, you can deactivate or restrict the use of cookies. You can delete cookies that have already been saved in your browser at any time. However, if you deactivate cookies related to our website it may no longer be possible to use all its functions.

 

User Registration (authors or reviewers)

If you want to submit or review an article you need a user account. For this at minimum the following personal information is processed and stored:

• first and last name affiliation
• country
• email address
• username and password

Personal information will solely be used for the purposes mentioned in this privacy statement. Personal information allows the editorial communication between authors, editors, and reviewers. Please note that during the editorial process additional data are processed and stored. These include:

• All actions taken on a submission, and by whom
• All notifications sent regarding a submission (including who sent and received the notification)
• All reviewer recommendations
• All editorial decisions
• All files uploaded as part of the submission process, including files that may have personally identifying information in the form of file metadata or in the files themselves

The legal basis is your consent, which you give when registering as author or reviewer (Chapter 6 Art. 1 (a) of the GDPR). You can revoke your consent to the processing of personal data at any time. This does not affect the legality of the University’s processing of your data based on your consent until your revocation.

By asking to be notified of new publications and announcements during your registration you have given a separate consent (Article 6 (1) lit. a) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) to the inclusion into our mailing lists. You also have the right to revoke this consent at any time. The revocation of consent does not affect the legality of the processing carried out based on the consent until the revocation.

If you choose not to validate your account, we will not automatically delete the entered information. To delete an account, contact the journal editors.

As submitting author you also have to provide the names and email addresses of your co-authors. By submitting these personal data you declare to have received their consent for its processing and storage.

Co-authors do not use their own accounts (if any) during the editorial process. They will only be contacted by the editorial team once their manuscript is submitted, an editorial decision is made, the manuscript is published, or misconduct is suspected. Author and co-author names (and affiliations) are displayed publicly alongside published manuscripts. Email addresses are not published on the website, but author contact data is included in the downloadable manuscript file as provided and approved by the authors. The rights mentioned above also apply to the co-author(s).

 

Transmission of Personal Data to Third Parties and Erasure of Personal Data

This journal’s editorial team uses the stored data to guide our work in publishing and improving the journal.

Data that will assist in developing our publishing platform (Open Journal Systems) may be shared with its developer, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), but only in an anonymized and aggregated form, with appropriate exceptions such as article metrics.

Metadata of published manuscripts including author names are shared with third parties for DOI registration and for indexing of published content in scholarly databases such as Scopus, DOAJ, ProQuest and the like. Apart from that, the personal data will not be shared nor will it be used for purposes other than those stated here.

Data will be stored for the purposes stated in this data protection statement and will be deleted if storage is no longer necessary for the purposes mentioned above, Article 17(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).