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Privacy Policy

Athena International Publishing and all of its subsidiaries and affiliates (hereinafter referred to as “Athena”, “we”, “us” or “our”) are committed to maintaining your confidence and trust with regard to your privacy and to protecting the privacy of the personally-identifiable information that we collect from you as you use the Athena website (hereinafter referred to as the “Site”) or any of our applications, services and products (hereinafter collectively referred to as the “Services” or individually as a “Service”) that post a link to this Privacy Policy and that are provided by any Athena group company worldwide.

The scope of our commitment is detailed in this Privacy Policy (hereinafter referred to as the “Policy”) which describes how we collect, use and share your personal information. Athena endeavors to comply with all laws and regulations that apply to the gathering and use of personal information, including, but not limited to, U.S. privacy laws and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). By submitting personal information through our Site or any of our Services, you agree to our use of such information as described herein. This Policy may be supplemented by additional privacy statements, terms or notices for a particular Service. If you do not agree with this Policy, you are requested not to use our Site or any of our Services and not to provide or submit any personal information through them.

This Policy was last updated on 26 February 2025. Athena reserves the right to change, modify, add or delete portions of this Policy at any time without prior notice. You are therefore requested to periodically review this Policy for any changes. Your continued use of the Site and the Services shall mean that you accept all such changes or deletions.

For more information about our general terms and conditions for accessing and using our Site or any of the Services, please refer to our Terms and Conditions.

1. Information We May Collect

Our Services may collect information from you in two ways: directly from your input or automatically through technology that is integrated in a Service.

The types of personal information that a Service collects directly from you depends on the content and features you use and may include the following:

Contact details, such as your name, email address, postal address and telephone number;
Educational, professional, and other background information, such as field of study, current position, practice and your interests;
Account login credentials, such as usernames and passwords;
Payment information, such as credit or debit card numbers;
Social network information, such as your social media handles;
Contributions, such as comments, feedback, posts and other content; and
Communication preferences, such as e-alerts.

A Service may also automatically collect information about your use of the Service, including:

Computer, device and connection information, such as IP address, browser type and version, operating system, mobile platform, unique device identifier and other technical identifiers;
Usage data, such as click stream data, including date and time stamp and referring and exit pages, search terms you used, and pages you visited or searched for on the Service; and
For location-aware services, the physical location of your device.

We may collect this data through our servers and the use of cookies, web beacons and other technologies. Cookies are small data files stored in your browser which help us identify which browser you are using, where you have been on the Site and on websites to which you may link in order to use some of our features. From time to time, we may 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 information. You can control cookies through your browser's settings and other tools. By accepting our cookies, you will be permitted access to certain parts of the Services without having to log in each time you visit. However, if you choose to block certain cookies, you may not be able to register, login to a Service, access certain parts of a Service or make full use of a Service. For more information about how to reject cookies using your internet browser settings, please consult the “Help” section of your internet browser (or alternatively visit https://www.aboutcookies.org/). For more information on the types of cookies we may use and how we may use them, please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Athena may also receive personal information about you from third parties. For example:

We may receive information about you from third-party providers, for example, when you choose to submit an article to us for publication you will be requested to provide your Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). By providing your ORCID, you are authorizing that third-party provider to share with us certain information about yourself.
We may use third-party providers to verify information provided by you, including via any articles you submit to us for publication. For example, we may use iThenticate or other plagiarism-checking services to check the quality of articles and/or any third-party databases or websites to confirm your publication history.
We may receive information about you from third parties that are referring you to Athena. For example, if you are a co-author or institutional contact of a submitting author, the submitting author will be required to provide us with information about you. If you are the referring party, you warrant that you have obtained the necessary consent to share this information with us.
We may receive information about you from third parties if you have indicated to such third party that you would like to hear from us.

2. How We May Use Your Information

Athena is committed to deliver a relevant and useful user experience. To this end, we may use your personal information to:

Provide a Service, such as allow access or delivery and process or fulfill an order or transaction;
Offer customized content and individualized personalization of a Service to make it more relevant to your interests and geography;
Enhance and improve a Service, such as add new content and features;
Notify you about changes or updates and provide you with special offers, promotions, surveys and other information related to a Service;
Deliver in-Service advertisements and related promotional campaigns relevant to your interests;
Provide you with technical, product and other support and help to keep a Service working, safe and secure; and
Identify, analyze and evaluate usage, including for the purposes of research, audits, reporting and paying royalties and license fees to third-party content providers.

Athena may also use your personal information to:

Respond to your requests, inquiries, comments or concerns;
Conduct and administer surveys;
Enable receipt, review, editing, production and publication of articles;
Comply with our policies, procedures and legal obligations and to enable us to enforce our legal rights, or to protect the rights, property or safety of Athena, our users, employees, contractors or others;
Protect, investigate and deter against fraudulent, unauthorized or illegal activities, including without limitation plagiarism and identity fraud;
Provide you with relevant special offers, promotions and other information about products, events and services of ours, our affiliates and non-affiliated third parties such as academic institutions, societies and sponsors; and
Enhance and improve our products, events and services and develop new ones.

Athena may on occasion also match or combine the personal information that you provide with information that we obtain from other sources or that is already in our records, whether collected online or offline or by predecessor or affiliated group companies, for the purposes described above.

3. How We May Share Your Information

Athena shares your personal information with your consent or as necessary to complete a transaction or provide a Service that you requested or authorized. To assist us with producing and delivering our Services, developing and operating our businesses, systems and applications, processing payments, customer support, marketing, promotion, communications and for other purposes stated in this Policy, we may share your personal information with:

our agents, representatives, joint venturers, and entities for which we are acting as an agent, licensee or publisher, such as academic institutions, societies and sponsors;
our suppliers and service providers, including editors, reviewers, credit card processors, customer support, email service providers, mailing houses, shipping agents and IT service providers; and
our subsidiaries, affiliates and divisions within the Athena group of companies worldwide as well as certain companies which may provide shared services functions to Athena.

Athena may also share your personal information with our affiliated group companies worldwide and with academic institutions, societies, sponsors and other non-affiliated third parties that wish to send you information about their products and services that may be of interest to you as determined by your choices in managing your interests and communications preferences following the process described below.

Athena may need to disclose your personal information if we have a good-faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to:

meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or other legal obligation;
detect, investigate and help prevent security, fraud or technical issues;
protect the rights, property or safety of Athena, our users, employees, contractors or others; and
if Athena, the Service or a related asset or line of business is acquired by, transferred to or merged with another company.

Athena will not sell or lease your personal information to any third party. We may disclose non-personally-identifiable information, such as anonymous usage data reports and aggregated demographic and statistical information, with our business partners for any purpose, except where we are restricted by law.

A Service may let you post and share contributions, like personal information, comments, messages, materials and other content. Any such contributions that you disclose publicly may be collected and used by others, may be indexed by search engines, and might not be possible to remove. Please be careful when disclosing personal information in these public areas.

4. Your Interests and Communication Preferences

5. Your Rights to the Information We Hold About You

6. Data Security

7. Cross-Border Transfer of Information

8. Links to Third-Party Websites and Services

9. Protection of Children

10. Contact