Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Privacy Policy:
Collection and Use of Personal Data

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Press is committed to protecting the privacy of authors and others who use its manuscript submission systems and journal websites. The limited personal data that are collected are never shared with advertisers. They are shared only with organizations such as site hosting services with which CSHL Press partners to fulfill its publishing mission. All reasonable practices are followed to ensure the ongoing protection of author, referee, and user personal data that may be collected and used during article ingestion, review, editing, production processing, publication, printing, posting, and delivery of information related to all aspects of publication operations.

Your use of our websites and manuscript submission systems indicates your acceptance of this Privacy Policy.

To enable the processing of papers submitted for journal review, CSHL Press collects personal data such as author names, ORCID IDs, email addresses, affiliations, phone and fax numbers, and other details in order to accurately identify authors as well as the individual submitting a manuscript, should that person not be a coauthor of the paper.

The terms noted below provide an accounting of how personal data are collected and used for the express purposes of preparing and publishing content, which include but are not limited to reviewing, editing, processing, publishing, hosting, billing for, and indexing content as part of routine publication publishing processes, as well as online article purchasing services through secure measures. In using CSHL Press journal sites, as well as the submission system known as BenchPress and operated by HighWire Press Inc., authors and users agree to the privacy terms stated below and to BenchPress's own Acceptable Use Policy.

As an author, referee, or site user, if you have any objections to any of the policies noted herein, you should not use our journal sites or any related services, including the manuscript submission system related to our sites.

Specifics related to the collection and use of personal data:

• Personally identifiable information: The collection of author and referee details is required for accurate identification in the manuscript submission system, and is necessary for communication with editorial and production staffs. Personal data collected at the time of submission are also used to register authors and referees for accounts within the submission system. Visitors may choose not to supply personally identifiable information, but this may prevent the use of some or all of the features and functionality of the sites.
• Non-personally identifiable information: This is information that is neither used nor intended to be used to personally identify an individual and is neither associated with nor linked to personally identifiable information. These are data collected via Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press-branded websites, and include information such as your Internet protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser language, and the date and time of your visit.
• Cookies: “Cookies,” which are used on our sites, are small pieces of information that a website sends to your computer’s web browser while you are viewing a website. We may use both session cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and persistent cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personalized and interactive experience. Persistent cookies can be removed or blocked by following the help file directions in your Internet browser. We also use login cookies that allow you to retain access for a specified period. When your cookie expires, you may need to log in again to regain access. There are also third-party cookies that may be set on the sites to deliver analytics data.
• Aggregated data: Data about the collective behavior of visitors to our sites may be aggregated and displayed. However, personally identifiable information is never disclosed other than as described herein.

• Accessing and removing personally identifiable data: Users can access the personally identifiable data we have collected about them at any time, by signing into the BenchPress manuscript submission system for sites to which they have registered and clicking on their names in the header of the website. This will bring them to an Edit Personal Information page, where they can review and update their personal information. Users can request that any data they have provided to us be removed from our servers and computer networks by clicking the "contact us" link in the footer of the website and making the request.
• Referee data: The collection of details about manuscript reviewers in each journal's manuscript submission system is required for proper solicitation of reviewers as well as appropriate editorial staff engagement in the processing of decisions on manuscripts submitted.
• Author data: Author details are captured from our manuscript submission system and used in the processing of early-release papers for immediate publication online. They are also shared with CSHL Press production staff and third-party prepress vendor(s) to permit article composition, including metadata capture, delivery of page proofs to the corresponding author, resolution of queries as processed by CSHL Press production staff, and the sharing of metadata as part of routine indexing of published content in professional publishing databases, such as PubMed, PubMed Central, Web of Science, Crossref, ORCID, etc.
• Third-party sharing: Author metadata are shared with third-party prepress vendors for the creation of article pages, printer partners for the delivery of print publications, and indexing services. Search engines index content directly from published or posted content on our journal websites.
• Personal data stored in manuscript submission systems: Author and reviewer account profiles, with identifiable personal details, are preserved in each journal's manuscript submission system after the processing of a specific article and are visible to authorized staff within BenchPress, HighWire Press Inc. (our online hosting service), and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Email addresses or other personal information are never sold to third parties.
• Publication site hosting: Author and site user emails are collected by our online hosting service (HighWire Press Inc.) as part of Alerts/Announcements signup for the receipt of new-content Alerts and Announcements; emails collected for this purpose are not used for any other purpose except for the delivery of journal Alerts and Announcements.
• Invoice/billing cycle: Author's financial details are used by the Finance Department of CSHL Press expressly to collect author fees related to article publication and the purchase of individual articles. Credit card and purchase order information is used solely for the processing of payments for such purchases. Credit card information is not stored by CSHL Press.
• IP addresses are used to allow institutional subscribers to activate and access their online journal subscriptions.
• At times, information may be disclosed to CSHL Press consultants as required for internal business reviews.
• All other personal information collected at the manuscript submission stage, at any point during the journal article production process, or on pages that offer to authors or site users additional alerting, announcement or other services is used expressly for the stated purpose.