PHM Society Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION

The Prognostics and Health Management Society (PHMS) is dedicated to protecting your personal information and will make every reasonable effort to handle collected information appropriately. All information collected will be handled with care in accordance with PHMS’ standards for integrity and objectivity and respect for your privacy. PHMS endeavors to comply with all laws and regulations that apply to the gathering and use of personal information, including but not limited to US privacy laws, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield. As used in this policy, “we” and “us” includes PHMS and our officers, directors, volunteer editors and reviewers, vendors, and independent contractors under contract with us. “PHMS Sites” includes the following: the web pages and content on the PHMS websites, journal sites, and the tools, software, submission systems, web forms, registration system, and any other means through which we interact with you.

YOUR USE OF AND INTERACTION WITH THE PHMS SITES CONSTITUTES YOUR UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY, AS THEY MAY BE MODIFIED FROM TIME TO TIME. WE WILL INFORM YOU ABOUT ANY CHANGES TO THIS POLICY IN DUE TIME. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH AND ACCEPT ALL OF THE PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY POLICY, DO NOT USE THE PHMS SITES AND DO NOT PROVIDE OR SUBMIT ANY PERSONALLY-IDENTIFYING INFORMATION BY MEANS OF OR WHILE USING THE PHMS SITES. BY PROVIDING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO US, YOU CONSENT TO OUR COLLECTION, USE AND DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY.

INFORMATION WE MAY COLLECT

Personal Information

While interacting with the PHMS Sites, we may request personal information from you, which may include items such as your name, mailing address, job title, email address, company name, institutional affiliation, telephone number, and credit card or other payment information. Your provision of such information is strictly voluntary. You can generally visit the PHMS Sites without disclosing such information. If you register on a PHMS website, we will gather and store your user name and password.

If you are an author who is submitting or has submitted a manuscript or other research outputs to PHMS for our consideration or for posting on our sites or as a preprint, we will require you to provide the above types of information so that we may consider, process, and possibly publish your paper, in conformance with accepted publishing standards. When your paper is published or posted as a preprint, your name, affiliation, job title, and any contact information that you provided in the paper will appear as part of the paper. Likewise, when you register on a PHMS site for updates or to receive other types of notifications from us, we will ask for your email address at a minimum to enable us to send you the information you have requested.

If you are attending the conference or one of the short courses offered by PHMS, we will require you to provide the above types of information so that we may correspond with you, arrange for your attendance, and process payment for associated fees. Your name and affiliation may appear as part of the printed, online, or interactive (e.g., a conference phone application) conference brochure if you have a paper at the conference, are on a panel, or are a speaker in some other capacity.

Some services available on the PHMS Sites permit you to participate in interactive discussions, post comments, opportunities, or other content to a bulletin board or exchange, or otherwise engage in networking activities. Some of these services are moderated, all may be accessed for technical reasons (for example, for improvements or fixes) by us. PHMS does not control the content that users post to these forums or social networks. You should carefully consider whether you wish to submit personal information to these forums or social networks and tailor any content you submit appropriately and in accordance with the relevant terms of use. You should also review any additional terms and conditions that may govern your use of these services, including terms related to sharing your personal information and receiving communications.

We may communicate with you via email or through your account on PHMS sites about a meeting, conference, or event hosted or co-sponsored by PHMS or one of our business associates. This may include information about the event’s content, event logistics, payment, updates, and additional information related to the event. Information you provide when registering for or participating in a conference managed or co-sponsored by parties, other than or in addition to PHMS may be shared with those parties, and the treatment of such information is further subject to the privacy policies of those parties. PHMS and its conference co-sponsors may contact you after the event about the event, subsequent iterations of the event and related events. Please note that PHMS conference, meeting or event organizers, co-sponsors, exhibitors, and other third parties may directly request your personal information at their conference booths or presentations. Providing your information to them is optional and is not a subject to this privacy notice, and you should review their privacy policies to address your particular needs and concerns about how they will treat your personal information.

Technical Information

Additionally, by means of your interactions with the PHMS Sites, we may collect, have access to, store and use your computer’s IP address, the URL/domain name of any referring website, the time and date of your visit to the PHMS Sites, and certain information known as “clickstream data” to enable us to understand how people interact with the PHMS Sites, to analyze data for trends and statistics, to help diagnose and solve issues with the PHMS Sites and our technologies, products, and services, and to optimize the performance of the PHMS Sites. We also use session cookies, small data files stored in your browser so you don’t have to log in each time you visit any of our web pages. From time to time, we use software tools to play back user sessions for purposes of assessing our customers’ interactions with our software, and these sessions may be linked to your user account. If you do not want session cookies stored on your computer, you may be able to adjust your browser settings to prevent this, but note that by not accepting cookies, some pages may not fully function and you may not be able to access certain information on the PHMS Sites.

Protection of Children

Use of the PHMS Sites is intended for adults at least eighteen (18) years of age, and we will not knowingly collect personally-identifying information from children under the age of thirteen (13). PHMS endeavors to adhere to the provisions of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA”).

By using the PHMS sites you confirm that you are at least 18 years old. If you are not you must stop using PHMS sites and services immediately.

HOW WE MAY USE AND DISCLOSE YOUR INFORMATION

Use by PHMS

PHMS uses your personal information as described above, and to customize your experience on the PHMS Sites and to facilitate our interactions with you. For example:

a) if you are an author, we will use your personal information for the purpose of processing, reviewing, communicating about, facilitating editorial review and peer review and for publishing;

b) if you are an editor or reviewer, we may use your personal information to contact you about your potential or actual role as an editor or reviewer, to request and facilitate your review and handling of manuscripts, and to update you on news and developments at PHMS as it may affect your work with us;

c) if you simply come to PHMS websites to read content, we will use information such as your URL and cookies to provide a good experience, as described above.

d) if you are a conference or short course attendee, we will use your personal information for the purpose of arranging for your attendance, and process payment for associated fees.

e) we may use your personal information to contact you about your potential or actual role as a session chair, panelist, keynote speaker, lecturer, or other type of conference speaker.

Except as where necessary to provide services to you, PHMS does not typically take note of your personal information.

Potential Disclosure to Third Parties

If you submit a manuscript to us for possible publishing, we will send the title and abstract of your paper, and your name, to one or more potential editors and reviewers, to gauge their interest in reviewing your paper. If they agree to handle your paper, we will send them your full manuscript and any revisions and relevant comments you have provided relating thereto.

We may disclose personal information as discussed above and as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy to third parties under contract with us, including vendors, volunteers, independent contractors, and consultants, to financial institutions for the purposes of facilitating payment of fees owed, web and technical support providers, other publishers and/or content hosting providers under contract with us, third parties authorized by you to receive such information, and as may be required or permitted by law. As described above, we may also share information regarding you and your manuscript or other research content as reasonably necessary with parties such as external editors and reviewers.

If you choose to have your manuscript published as a preprint, we will send your manuscript to our preprint partner(s) for posting of your paper.

If you attend the conference or one of the short courses, we may publish your affiliation on the PHMS Sites or in the printed, online, or interactive (e.g., a conference phone application) conference brochure. We may disclose personal information as discussed above and as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy to third parties under contract with us, including vendors, volunteers, independent contractors, and consultants, to financial institutions for the purposes of facilitating payment of fees owed, web and technical support providers, conference management providers under contract with us, third parties authorized by you to receive such information, and as may be required or permitted by law.

We share only the information necessary for third parties to provide the intended products and services. In some cases, the applications or user interfaces you encounter while on our sites are managed by third parties, who may require that you provide your personal information and who have assured us of their compliance with applicable laws.

No Sale or Leasing of Your Information

Except as described in this privacy policy, we will not disclose your personal information to third parties without your consent. We will not sell or lease your personal information to any third party. We will process your personal information in order to produce anonymized data, which we then may disclose as aggregate demographic and statistical information with our business partners; this information is not specific to the identification of you as an individual.

HOW LONG WE RETAIN YOUR INFORMATION

We keep your personal information for as long as is necessary to provide services to you, and for as long as your account and/or registration with PHMS is active. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements.

We will stop processing, storing and delete all your personal information once you delete your account or registration with PHMS, except the personal information already published in papers, documents and conference materials.

ADDITIONAL REASONS WHY WE MAY GATHER, USE, DISCLOSE, AND STORE PERSONAL INFORMATION

In addition to the reasons stated above, we may use your personal information to comply with contracts, legal agreements, our terms of use and privacy policies, and to comply with applicable laws. We also process and disclose personal information as and to the extent compelled by court order or a law enforcement agency.

PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We endeavor to protect the personal information we receive, gather and store, by such means as password protection, firewalls, encryption, and other means. The information is mainly stored on or by our computers, computer networks, servers, tools, and systems at the web hosting companies we use:

• Holistic Solutions, Inc. – http://www.teamholistic.com/

• Bluehost – https://www.bluehost.com/

and also at our event management and email marketing service providers:

• Whova – https://whova.com/

• Aventri – https://www.aventri.com/

• Constant Contact – https://www.constantcontact.com/

THIRD PARTY WEBSITES

If, in your interactions with the PHMS Sites, you are linked or directed to, or click on, a third party website, we cannot control what information you may provide to that party or on/at that website, or how that party may use or disclose any information you may provide to them. As such, we urge that you exercise caution before providing them with your personal information.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the right to request us for copies of your personal information. We may charge you a small fee for this service.

You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate and complete the information you believe is incomplete.

You have the right to withdraw your consent for collecting and processing your personal information by us at any time, by deleting your account on our PHMS sites.

You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, except the data already published with your documents, papers and presentations in PHMS sites.

You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information, however it may result in the cessation of our service to you and deletion of your account on PHMS sites.

You have the right to request that our company transfer the data that we have collected to another organization or directly to you.

You have a right to lodge a complaint with the Supervisory Authority in a country of your residence.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us via email provided in the last section of this Notice.

CONSENT TO RECEIVE EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS

Except in countries or jurisdictions where it is not be permitted by law, we may from time to time send you email communications regarding our business, products or services in response to your use of the PHMS Sites, and by providing your email address, you consent to receive such communications. Where required by law, we will request that you opt-in (consent) to receive such communications from us before sending you such information.

You may opt out of receiving such communications by contacting us at privacy@phmsociety.org or by using the unsubscribe link(s) in emails we send you.

INFORMATION ABOUT US AND HOW TO CONTACT US REGARDING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

All your personal information will be collected, stored and processed by the PHM Society Communications Chair, available at privacy@phmsociety.org

If you wish to discuss what personal information we may have pertaining to you, or the handling or potential disclosure of the same, or you wish to withdraw consent regarding these matters or to ask us to delete your personal information, you may contact us at privacy@phmsociety.org