Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Privacy Policy

Last updated: February 21, 2023

Hektoen International (https://hekint.org) is a journal of medical humanities that features writers and works from across the globe. We at Hektoen International use a variety of platforms for outreach, including our mailing list and our social media pages (our “related services”). Hektoen International is hosted through WPEngine, a hosting platform for WordPress, with some of our hosting also done through Cloudflare and GoDaddy. These providers’ legal information and privacy policies can be found respectively at https://wpengine.com/legal/ , https://automattic.com/privacy/ , https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ , and https://www.godaddy.com/legal/agreements/privacy-policy.

 

Contact 

Please contact us with any questions or concerns you may have regarding this privacy policy or your personal data.
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Address:

Hektoen International Journal
1339 S. Wood Street, Suite G
Chicago, IL, 60608

 

What data we collect

Our collection of personal data highly depends on your relation to us. For example, we know and retain more information on a frequent author who has given us their biographical information than we do on a one time commenter who has posted under the username “DogsAndCats123”. As such, not all of the following categories, methods, or types of information may apply to you.

Hektoen International collects your personal data

  • From you, when you:
    • Fill out forms on our website, such as when you leave a comment, sign up for our mailing list, or submit an article or other work for consideration for publication;
    • Communicate with us by email, social media, telephone, postal mail, or in person;
  • And/or from third parties, including those:
    • Who operate the use of our site and analyze your use of our site, such as WordPress, WPEngine, Google Analytics, and Monster Insights;
    • Who analyze and provide your interactions with our social media accounts and newsletter, such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and MailChimp;
    • Organizations or individuals with whom we occasionally collaborate to run contests or other events;
    • Who share your information with us as part of a submission, such as when submissions are shared internally between our editors or your co-author has submitted an article on your behalf;
    • Publicly available sources in order to identify our journal’s cultural impact and potential collaborators, authors, and references for publication, such as in the verification of an author’s identity or in the fact-checking of an article; and
    • WordPress plugins that facilitate the use of our site and our submissions process, such as Forminator Pro, or may link to your work as an algorithmically recommended article, such as TrendMD.

 

Categories of personal data we collect

  • Identification and contact details
    • Biographical information, such as your name, date of birth, age, gender, and title;
    • Images and your likeness;
    • Contact information, such as your email address, physical address, social media identifiers, and phone number;
  • Online and transactional
    • When you visit our website, Google Analytics collects and anonymizes your IP address, location, browser type and version, operating system, and what language you are using to access the site, along with details about how you use our site including the content you access, your length, time, and date of visit, and what method(s) you used to navigate to and away from our site;
      • The Privacy Suite for WordPress by Complianz likewise collects and records browser and device-based consent. For this functionality, your IP address is anonymized and stored in our database. This service does not process any personally identifiable information and does not share any data with the service provider. For more information, see the Complianz Privacy Statement at https://complianz.io/legal/privacy-statement/.
      • Other third party services may record similar types of personal data.
    • Information you provide in your comments, submissions, and communications with us, including your opinion;
      • When you leave comments on our site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, along with your IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
        • To protect against spam in our comments section, the Akismet plugin may also collect your IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by you, such as your name, username, email address, and the comment itself).
      • When you submit through our submissions form, Forminator captures and anonymizes your IP address for spam protection. This plugin also records your email address and other personal data as included in the form’s fields. This personal data is deleted from the plugin’s records two weeks after submission. In the case of a contest, this personal data may be retained in the plugin’s records until the end of the contest.
      • If you submit images to us, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. We do not intentionally record or remove this location data from your submitted images unless you request it.
      • The Smush plugin sends images to the WPMU DEV servers to optimize them for web use. This includes the transfer of EXIF data. The EXIF data will either be stripped or returned as it is. It is not stored on the WPMU DEV servers. Smush uses the Stackpath Content Delivery Network (CDN). Stackpath may store web log information of site visitors, including IPs, UA, referrer, Location and ISP info of site visitors for 7 days. Files and images served by the CDN may be stored and served from countries other than your own. Stackpath’s privacy policy can be found at https://www.stackpath.com/legal/privacy-statement/.
    • Your history of submissions to us; and
    • In the case of a contest, if eligible, we will collect your billing address so as to facilitate your reception of prizes.
  • Professional
    • Your qualifications, licenses, educational experience and degrees, professional experience, and previous and/or upcoming publications;
    • Your institution, place of work, or the society you belong to;
    • Your specialties, if applicable;
  • Special categories/Sensitive data
    • When appropriate, especially upon inclusion with or referenced in your submission(s) for publication, we may obtain personal data related to your background and diversity, such as ethnic origin, race, religious, philosophical, and political opinions, trade union membership, student data, health data, and sex life and sexual orientation, and data concerning or allegations of criminal behavior.
    • We expect our authors to adhere to all relevant laws regarding the sharing of personal healthcare information, including HIPAA.
  • Regarding the data of minors:
    • By using our site and/or related services, you represent that you are at least 18 or that you are the parent or guardian of such a minor and consent to such minor dependent’s use of our services.

 

How we use your data, why we use your data, and who we share it with

  • We may use personal characteristics such as geographical location, age, gender, location, role, expressed interests, medical conditions, and previous interactions with Hektoen International to target our communications, newsletters, and social media and website content to a specific audience.
  • We share and disclose personal data to third parties and allow personal data to be stored or handled in countries outside the European Economic Area when these actions are allowed under applicable law, which includes the following bases:
    • Where the transfer operates in accordance with the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) or other appropriate safeguards for international transfers as determined by the European Commission (per Article 46 of the GDPR)—these documents can be provided upon request
    • Where the transfer is made to a country or territory possessing adequate legal protections of personal data, as determined by the European Commission (per Article 45 of the GDPR)
    • Where the transfer is legally allowed under a different reason (for example, when necessary for the performance of a contract or with your explicit consent, per Article 49 of the GDPR)
  • We may process your personal data to pursue our legitimate interests; such as providing, maintaining, and improving our services to meet your needs; or using free or reduced cost programs and site hosting to keep our operating costs low, as we are a nonprofit.

 

How long we retain your information

  • We keep your data for as long as required in order to provide our content to you, to facilitate our submissions process, for the purpose it was collected, to satisfy our legal obligations, or for our legitimate interests.
  • Published submissions, with all of the information they contain, and the contact information you have provided to us, are retained indefinitely in order to maintain our services. Rejected submissions and the information they contain may also be retained indefinitely. These durations ensure we do not receive duplicate submissions and that we maintain the integrity of our submissions process and relationships with our authors. The content of rejected submissions is not used for any other purpose. 
  • Contact information for marketing purposes, especially by email, is retained until you unsubscribe from our mailing list or tell us in some other way that you would no longer like to receive our marketing. Your preference and contact information may be kept on a “do not contact” list to ensure we respect your preference.
  • Comments on our website, with all of the information they contain and that facilitates their posting (such as your username), are retained indefinitely or until you delete them. This is to promote open discussion of an article or other work.
  • Cookies and similar technologies (see next section) can stay on your device for 24 hours, a week, or several months or years, depending on their function. This means that these technologies and the personal data they collect and generate may survive after your browser is closed and can be used by our site and relevant third parties to recognize your device when you reopen your browser later.

 

About cookies, pixels, and server logs

We may collect data about your use of our site and its related services through the use of Internet server logs and online tracking technologies, such as cookies and/or tracking pixels.

  • A web server log is a file where website activity is stored.
  • A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your device when you visit a website that enables us or a third party with whom we collaborate to:
    • recognize your device;
    • store your preferences and settings;
    • understand the web pages of our site you have visited and the referral sites that have led you to our site;
    • enhance your user experience by delivering content specific to your inferred interests;
    • perform searches and analytics; and
    • assist with security administrative functions.
  • Tracking pixels (sometimes referred to as web beacons or clear GIFs) are tiny electronic tags with a unique identifier embedded in websites, online ads, and/or email, and that are designed to provide usage information like ad impressions or clicks, measure popularity of our services and associated advertising, and to access user cookies. If you receive email from us (such as our newsletter) or interact with our social media posts, we and our third parties may use certain analytics tools, such as tracking pixels, to capture data such as whether you open or view our email or post, click on any links or banners our email or post contains, or otherwise interact with what we send. This data allows us to gauge the effectiveness of our communications and marketing campaigns.
  • As we adopt additional technologies, we and our third parties may also gather additional information through other methods.

Please note that you can change your browser settings to notify you when a cookie is being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether. Please consult the “Help” section of your browser (e.g., Internet Explorer; Microsoft Edge; Google Chrome; Mozilla Firefox; Apple Safari) for more information. Please note that by blocking any or all cookies and related technologies, you may not have access to certain features or offerings of our services.

 

Your rights

  • If you are under the GDPR or UK GDPR, you have the right to:
    • Learn easily how your data is collected and processed
    • Request a copy of the personal data we have collected from you;
    • Request to correct the personal data we have collected from you;
    • Request that we delete the personal data we have collected from you;
    • Request that we limit or restrict our data processing activities as they relate to your personal data;
    • Request to retain and reuse your personal data for other services, such as to understand your online habits. You can also ask us to send your personal information to another organization. This right only applies to data you have consented for us to collect or when the processing of your data has been automated
    • Object to our collection and use of your personal data;
    • To not be subject to decisions based only on automated processing, including profiling, with legal or similarly significant effects
    • These rights are not absolute, and exemptions may apply under certain circumstances.
    • If you would like to contact us about your personal data, please reach out to [email protected] or [email protected]. We have 30 days to respond to your request, though the complexity and number of requests may provide us with an extension where necessary. We will inform you of any extension and the reason(s) for it within one month of receiving your request.

 

Thank you for supporting Hektoen International.