Last updated: March 27, 2023

ivySCI is a literature management software developed for you by Nanjing Qingteng Gezhi Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Developer). As our user, your privacy and personal information are very important to us. We understand the importance of protecting your personal information and privacy in the digital age, so we are committed to protecting your privacy and data security. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, and share your personal information to earn your trust and ensure a mutually beneficial relationship between us.

About Our Privacy Policy

This privacy policy applies to the ivySCI Android application, including projects and activities that refer to or link to this privacy policy (collectively, "Services"). This policy may be supplemented by other privacy statements, terms, or notices provided to you. Nanjing Qingteng Gezhi Information Technology Co., Ltd. owns and manages this privacy policy and assumes corresponding responsibilities.

Information We Collect

We collect your information in three ways: your input, third-party sources, and technical collection.

When you create an ivySCI account, you have a personal library to save your personal research data, such as the literature you save, literature citations, and you can take notes for your literature and add tags to literature and notes.

By logging into the ivySCI account through WeChat, WeChat will authorize us to obtain your WeChat nickname and avatar information, as well as the personal identification ID (WeChat openid) provided by WeChat. We use the WeChat nickname and avatar to help you distinguish your account information so that you can correctly distinguish your account when switching accounts.

By logging in through your mobile phone, we will collect your mobile phone number. The mobile phone number will not be sold or shared with third parties unless required to be shared by the government or legal departments where ivySCI operates.

With an ivySCI account, you have an ivySCI identity. After creating an account, we will randomly assign you a nickname, which can be changed in the desktop version, and we will synchronize it to the Android device after the change.

Information You Provide to Us

The types of personal information we collect directly from you depend on the content and features of the services you use and how you interact with us, and may include:

Contact information, such as your name, email address, phone number.
Other account registration and profile information, including education, professional and other background information, such as your research field, current position, practice area and interest area, gender, ORCID, and photo.
Content you upload and share or store in your account, such as literature, literature citations, notes, tags, annotations (colors, etc.), handwritten notes.
Payment information, such as WeChat payment records and Alipay payment records.
Information you communicate with us, such as questions or information you send to customer support.
Data you provide to us as part of interacting with the service, such as your favorites and search queries.

How We Use Your Information

We are committed to providing you with a relevant and useful experience. Depending on how you interact with us and the services, we use your personal information to:

Provide, activate, and manage your access to and use of the services.
Process and fulfill requests, orders, downloads, subscriptions, or other transactions.
Enhance and improve the services, such as adding new content and features.
Notify you of changes, updates, and other announcements related to the services.
Provide technical, product, and other support, and help keep the services operating, secure, and protected; and/or
Identify usage trends and conduct data analysis, including for research, auditing, reporting, and other business operations purposes, such as paying royalties and license fees to third-party content providers, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, evaluating our business performance, or otherwise conducting as described in customer agreements.

We may also use your personal information for

Responding to your requests, inquiries, comments, or concerns.
Conducting and managing user testing and surveys, as well as sweepstakes, contests, and similar promotions.
Providing you with relevant promotional information and other information about our and third-party (such as associations and sponsors) products, events, and services.
Enhancing and improving our products, events, and services, and developing new products.
Complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing our agreements.

Collection and Use of Clipboard Information

We collect and process your phone's clipboard information to enhance your user experience, but we only use it in the following situations:

Copying Paper DOI: When you click to copy the DOI, we will write the DOI to the clipboard so that users can quickly search for literature information in the browser through the DOI. This feature is designed to help you efficiently find and obtain relevant academic resources.
Copying Paper Text or Translated Text: We collect clipboard information to facilitate you in quickly pasting important text (such as paper content or translation results) into notes or other text editing areas within the application. This feature makes it more convenient for you to record and organize information.
Creating Your Notes: The content you copy to the clipboard can be pasted when creating notes or tags.

We strictly collect and use clipboard information according to the above purposes. We will not use your clipboard information beyond the above scope without your consent.

Sharing Your Information

We share your personal information in the following ways and situations.

Our Service Providers

Depending on the services provided, we may share your personal information with the following service providers:

Internal departments or affiliated companies within ivySCI that provide technical, customer service, and other shared service functions.
Vendors and service providers, including editors, reviewers, payment processors, customer support, email service providers, access and authentication service providers, event venues and service providers, mailing companies, shipping agents, and IT service providers. To provide services, complete transactions, or fulfill your requests, or to process this information on our behalf in compliance with this privacy policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

Legal Reasons If we have sufficient reason to believe that disclosing your personal information is necessary, we will also disclose your information.

To comply with any applicable laws, regulations, legal processes, or other legal obligations.
To detect, investigate, and help prevent security, fraud, or technical issues.
To protect the rights, property, or safety of ivySCI, our users, employees, or others. And as part of a corporate transaction, such as transferring products or other assets to another company, or being acquired or merged with another company.

Administrator Data If you are an administrator of an institution that subscribes to a service, we will use your details to communicate with you about your institution's subscription and related services. If you provide us with your colleagues' contact information, we may mention you when communicating with these individuals about the service.

Accessing and Updating Your Information The service may allow registered users to directly access their account information and correct or update it at any time. It is the user's responsibility to keep this information up to date. Registered users can also close their accounts directly through the service or by contacting the service's customer support. Under European and other applicable privacy and data protection laws, you have the right to request the following actions free of charge:

Access, correct, and delete your personal information.
Restrict or object to our processing of your personal information;
Portability of your personal information. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us through ivySCI Feedback or our support email: help@ivysci.com. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable laws. To protect your privacy and security, we may require you to verify your identity. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf, but proof of identity and authorization is required.

Account Closure

If you wish to close your account, after the account is closed, we will delete all the literature information you submitted, including literature citations, documents, notes, etc. However, your account information, including mobile phone number, account nickname, WeChat OpenID, and account avatar information will be retained due to regulatory requirements. After you declare the closure of your account, we will immediately execute the deletion operation, and it cannot be restored.

Data Retention

We retain your personal information for the time necessary to provide services and complete the transactions you request, or for other necessary purposes, such as complying with our legal obligations, maintaining business and financial records, resolving disputes, maintaining security, detecting and preventing fraud and abuse, and enforcing our agreements.

Data Security

We take precautions to protect your personal information from loss, theft, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction by using appropriate technical and organizational measures.

Processing Locations

Your personal information may be stored and processed in your region or other countries where ivySCI companies and their service providers maintain servers and facilities, including China, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We take steps, including through contracts, to ensure that information continues to be protected in accordance with applicable legal standards wherever it is located.

Reasons for Processing

When we collect any personal information from you within the scope of European data protection laws, we do so:

When necessary to provide services, complete transactions, or otherwise perform our contract with you, or at your request before entering into a contract.
When necessary to comply with applicable laws or other legal obligations.
When necessary to perform tasks in the public interest.
Where applicable, with your consent;
When necessary to operate our business, protect our systems, customers, and users, detect or prevent fraud, or achieve other legitimate interests described in the above sections, unless our interests are overridden by your privacy rights.

If we rely on your consent to process personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

Changes

We will update this privacy policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this webpage and the updated revision date will be indicated. If we make any significant changes, we will provide notice through the service or other means.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments, complaints, or requests regarding this privacy policy or our handling of your information, please contact us through ivySCI Feedback.

Version Update Notes

August 19, 2022: First version of the privacy policy.
August 20, 2024: We added the clipboard usage policy.

ivySCI Android Application Privacy Policy