Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research

Privacy policy

About the EQUATOR Network

The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network is an international initiative that seeks to improve the reliability and value of published health research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting and wider use of robust reporting guidelines.
This website (https://www.equator-network.org) is operated by the University of Oxford. We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information (‘personal data’).
This policy (together with our Terms of Use) describes how we collect and use your personal data during your use of our site, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and associated data protection legislation. Where we refer in this policy to your ‘personal data’, we mean any recorded information that is about you and from which you can be identified. It does not include data where your identity has been removed (anonymous data).

Who is using your personal data?

The University of Oxford is the “data controller” for the information that you provide to us when visiting this website. This means that we decide how to use it and are responsible for looking after it in accordance with the GDPR.
Access to your personal data within the University will be provided to those staff who need to view it as part of their work in connection with the operation of this website. It will also be shared with the third parties described below. By visiting our site, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

Types of data we collect about you

We may collect, use, store and transfer the following kinds of personal data about you, when you submit it to us:

When we collect your data

We will collect the vast majority of data about you when you use our site, correspond with us, subscribe to the EQUATOR Newsletter or other social media functions on our site.
When you visit our site, we may also automatically collect technical information about your visit from your computer. You can find out more information about this below.

How we use your data

We process your data for one or more of the following reasons:

Please note that we may process your data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Sharing your data with third parties

We may share your data with third parties who provide services on our behalf, such as for administrative purposes and website hosting. All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your data in line with our policies. We do not allow them to use your data for their own purposes. We permit them to process your data only for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Where your data is shared with third parties, we will seek to share the minimum amount necessary.

Where we store or use your data

We store data collected by the website electronically. The data is stored on secure servers at University of Oxford or on servers of the hosting company used by our website development company Minervation Ltd in the UK.
There may be occasions when we transfer your data outside the European Economic Area (EEA), for example, when we communicate with you using a cloud-based service provider that operates outside the EEA such as MailChimp. Such transfers will only take place if one of the following applies:

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to the website and any transmission is at your own risk.

Third party websites

Our site contains links to and from various third-party websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Retaining your data

We will only retain your data for as long as we need it to fulfil our purposes, including any relating to legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

Depending on the circumstances and the nature of your request it may not be possible for us to do what you have asked, for example, where there is a statutory or contractual requirement for us to process your data and it would not be possible to fulfil our legal obligations if we were to stop. However, where you have consented to the processing (for example, where you have asked us to contact you for marketing purposes) you can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing us at shona.kirtley@csm.ox.ac.uk. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before your withdrawal of consent and you may no longer be able to use the site in the same way as you did before.
If you want to exercise any of the rights described above or are dissatisfied with the way we have used your information, you should contact the University’s Information Compliance Team at data.protection@admin.ox.ac.uk. The same email address may be used to contact the University’s Data Protection Officer. We will seek to deal with your request without undue delay, and in any event in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR. Please note that we may keep a record of your communications to help us resolve any issues which you raise.
If you remain dissatisfied, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.

Cookie Policy

Our site uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our site and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them please see the table below.

Cookie in use on this website

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without them.

 

Name Provider Purpose Expiry Type
CookieControl Cookie Control Cookie Control cookies. This cookie is set to remember the user’s preferences about cookies. 3 Months HTTP Cookie
wordpress_test_cookie WordPress Test cookie used by WordPress to determine whether cookie functionality is available Session HTTP Cookie
wp_lang WordPress User interface language Session HTTP Cookie

Statistic cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.

Name Provider Purpose Expiry Type
__utm.gif Google Google Analytics Tracking Code that logs details about the visitor’s browser and computer. Session Pixel Tracker
__utma Google Collects data on the number of times a user has visited the website as well as dates for the first and most recent visit. Used by Google Analytics. 2 years HTTP Cookie
__utmb Google Registers a timestamp with the exact time of when the user accessed the website. Used by Google Analytics to calculate the duration of a website visit. 1 day HTTP Cookie
__utmc Google Registers a timestamp with the exact time of when the user leaves the website. Used by Google Analytics to calculate the duration of a website visit. Session HTTP Cookie
__utmt Google Used to throttle the speed of requests to the server. 1 day HTTP Cookie
__utmv Google Saves user-defined tracking parameters for use in Google Analytics. Session HTTP Cookie
__utmz Google Collects data on where the user came from, what search engine was used, what link was clicked and what search term was used. Used by Google Analytics. 6 months HTTP Cookie

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

Contact

If you wish to raise any queries or concerns about this privacy policy, please contact us at shona.kirtley@csm.ox.ac.uk.