Privacy policy
This policy was last updated on September 30, 2024.
This is the privacy policy (“policy”) for Springer.com which is run and provided by Springer Nature (we, us and our).
Responsible partner for customers domiciled or established in the Americas (North America, Central America, South America): Springer Nature Customer Service Center LLC, 233 Spring St, New York, NY, 10013 United States, phone 1-866-839-0194, fax +1 212 460 1700.
Responsible partner for customers domiciled or established in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, Oceania: Springer Nature Customer Service Center GmbH, Europaplatz 3, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany, phone +49 (0) 6221 345 4303, fax +49 6221 345 4229.
We can also be contacted at customerservice@springernature.com.
We will only use the personal data gathered over this website as set out in this policy. Below you will find information on how we use your personal data, for which purposes your personal data is used, with whom it is shared and what control and information rights you may have.
I. Summary of our processing activities
We publish scholarly journals, books, news and data. Some of this material is freely available; some of it is only available to subscribers. The following summary offers a quick overview of the data processing activities that are undertaken on our website. You will find more detailed information under the indicated sections below.
- When you visit our website for informational reasons without setting up an account, only limited personal data will be processed to provide you with the website itself (see III).
- If you are identified as belonging to a customer organisation then we collect information in order to be able to provide usage reporting to that customer.
- In case you register for one of our services, use the submission and peer review systems or subscribe to our newsletters, further personal data will be processed in the scope of such services (see IV and V).
- Furthermore, your personal data will be used to provide you with relevant advertising for our services and products (see VII) and for statistical analysis that helps us to improve our website (see VIII). Additionally, we improve your website experience with third party content (see IX).
- Your personal data may be disclosed to third parties (see X) that might be located outside your country of residence; potentially, different data protection standards may apply (see XII).
- We have implemented appropriate safeguards to secure your personal data (see XIII) and retain your personal data only as long as necessary (see XIII).
- Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise certain rights with regard to the processing of your personal data (see XIV).
II. Definitions
- Personal data: means any information relating to a natural person who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, or an online identifier.
- Processing: means any operation which is performed on personal data, such as collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or any kind of disclosure or other use.
III. Informational use of the website
When you visit our website for informational reasons, i.e. without registering for any of our provided services listed under IV and without providing us with personal data in any other form, we may automatically collect additional information about you which will contain personal data only in limited cases and which is automatically recognised by our server, such as:
Examples might include:
- your IP address;
- your device type, name and IDs;
- the date and time of your requests;
- the content of your requests;
- information on your browser version;
- your screen resolution;
- information on your operating system, including language settings.
We use such information only to assist us in providing an effective service (e.g. to adapt our website to the needs of your device or to allow you to log in to our website), and to collect broad demographic information for anonymised, aggregated use.
If you are identified by IP or equivalent method as belonging to a customer organisation such as university or a company then we will also collect the identity of that organisation and use it to create usage reports which show the organisation how much of the content we publish is being read by their students, members or employees. This information does not contain anything related to a personal login unless (a) you are a nominated administrator for that organisation or (b) your organisation specifically requires it as a part of a usage-based access contract.
The personal data automatically collected is necessary for us to provide the website, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR, and for our legitimate interest to guarantee the website’s stability and security, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
IV. Registration for our services
Access to subscription content is provided via a variety of mechanisms such as IP site licenses, login via third party federated identity providers or by a personal account with us. Using the federated authentication method institutional selection data may be stored locally in your browser and shared with third party websites that you visit to ease the process of institutional authentication. If your access to our content is provided by an organisation or an institution like a university or a company then they choose the access method on your behalf. A personal account is required to purchase content directly from us, or to receive personal services like newsletters and alerts.
If you need to create a personal login with us then we will store and process the following:
- Information (such as your name, user name and email address) that is provided by registration;
- Information in connection with an account sign-in facility (e.g. log-in and password details);
- Communications sent by you (e.g. via e-mail or website communication forms).
The information that is necessary for the performance of the service is labelled accordingly. All further information is provided voluntarily.
We will process the personal data you provide to:
- Identify you at sign-in;
- Provide you with the services and information offered through the website or which you request;
- Administer your account;
- Communicate with you;
- (behavioural) Advertising and profiling;
- Facilitate attendance of a conference;
- Manage manuscript submissions;
- Provide access (where appropriate) to other Springer Nature group content if you so request
For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR. The use of your personal data for behavioural advertising and profiling is done with consent, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR.
We use the personal data and contact data you provide by registration to inform you directly about our additional products and services. The use of your personal data for directly advertising related products and services is with consent, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR.
You can object to the use of your personal data for direct marketing at any time. We will then refrain from any processing to the extent it is related to such purposes. You may opt-out of direct marketing via opt-out links in any marketing communication or via user profile pages on the website (where available). You can also inform us about your objection by contacting our Data Protection Office at dataprotection@springernature.com.
Registration data is kept until such time as an account deletion request is made. If such a request is received we will erase your data within 30 days. Statutory storage obligations or the need for legal actions that may arise from misconduct within the services or payment problems can lead to a longer retention of your personal data. In this case, we will inform you accordingly.
V. Information about the specific uses that require registration/identification
1. Blogs
You can publicly comment on our blog where we post a variety of articles to inform you about our activities. When posting a comment your name or user name will be made public. To be able to comment on our blog you will have to register as described in IV.
In addition to the extent of processing described under IV, when you post a comment we will retain some of your personal data such as your IP address and name and other metadata such as time of posting. This is necessary to defend ourselves from possible liability claims that may arise from unlawful comments posted by you and reflects our legitimate interest with regard to the legal justification of this processing activity in Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
We reserve the right to delete comments that are off-topic, spam, abusive, use excessive foul language, include ad hominem attacks or offend against legal regulations.
2. Web shop
For the use of our web shop you have to set up an account as described under IV. Your customer account retains your personal data for future purchases. To delete or deactivate an account please contact Customer Service (customerservice@springernature.com). This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b. We may send an abandoned cart email as a reminder after you leave the checkout page before completing the purchase. The legal basis for contacting you about the item or items in your cart is legitimate interest, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
By statutory law we are required to retain the provided financial data in relation to transactions (including address, payment and order information) for ten years. However, after 2 years we will restrict the processing of your personal data to comply with the statutory requirements and will not process the personal data any further. Regarding this, the retention of your personal data is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. c GDPR.
3. Article alerts and newsletters
With your email address you can subscribe to our newsletters that provide you with the latest news about our products and services if you consent to receiving such newsletters. The legal basis for this processing is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR. Your email address will be retained as long as you subscribe to our newsletters.
You can unsubscribe from this service by opting out via the link provided in each newsletter.
You can sign up for newsletters and request to be contacted about our products and services via Facebook. For this purpose, we are using Facebook Lead Ads, a service by Facebook Inc., 1601 South California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 U.S. ("Facebook"). Lead Ads makes it even easier for you to sign up to newsletters and request to be contacted as the form will already be pre-populated via Facebook with your data and you only need to submit the form. Of course, you have the opportunity to amend and review the data before submission. For more information on how lead ads works see here - https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/lead-ads.
The legal basis for this processing is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR. Your email address will be retained as long as you subscribe to our newsletters or until you request the removal of your email address.
You can unsubscribe from newsletters by opting out via the link provided in each newsletter. If you inquired about a product or service and no longer wish to be contacted, you can email onlineservice@springernature.com, citing the name of the product or service, and request that your email address be removed.
4. Manuscript submission and Peer Review
Our Submission and Peer Review System offers the services of peer review, content preparation and proofing, publication and dissemination of research. In order to use the aforementioned services you have to set up an initial account. Where optional paid services may be engaged, you will be prompted to set up an additional, or enhance an existing account.
With regard to the registration of an account and its subsequent use, we process the following information.
- Information that is provided by registration such as your name, user name and email address.
- Information in connection with an account sign-in facility, e.g. log-in and password details;
- Communications sent by you, e.g. via e-mail or website communication forms.
- Content files and covering letters provided by you
- Grants, funding, membership, institution, society, committee registration
- Billing or invoicing information
- Information received from societies we work with, e.g. address, name, email address
The information that is necessary for the performance of the service is labelled accordingly.
We will process the personal data you provide in order to:
- Identify you at sign-in;
- Administer your account;
- Provide you with the services and information offered through the Submission and Peer Review System or which you additionally request;
- Communicate with you;
- Process payments
- Provide information to you as an Author about other publishing opportunities, with the Springer Nature group, you can stop these communications at any time by clicking the link in each email or contacting customer services;
- Communicate with you in your capacity as a current or potential Peer Reviewer, Editorial Board Member, or external Editor to provide information about the journal (s) and content you have worked on; you can stop these communications to you as a Peer Reviewer, Editorial Board Member, or external Editor at any time by clicking the link in each email or contacting Customer Service at customerservice@springernature.com . Stopping these communications will not affect your status as Peer Reviewer, Editorial Board Member or external Editor with respect to the journal.
- Create a profile of your publication record based on publicly available data, such as published books and articles, citations and grants awarded. This information will not be used to determine article acceptance, nor will it be used for automated decision making (see section VI for more information on automated decision making). This information will be used to personalise communications and provide you with the latest news about our products and services;
- To ensure the accuracy of content attribution and the quality and integrity of the peer review process
- Provide you with e-alerts
- Offer to transfer your submission to an alternative Springer Nature title if applicable
- Authorise and process Article Publication Charges (APCs)
For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR, and for our legitimate interest in optimizing our services and preventing fraud, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
Your personal account registration data is, in the absence of exceptions within the specific services mentioned, retained for as long as your account is used. Non-activity is defined at a minimum of three years, to facilitate ease-of-return for account holders. Content and communications, associated with submissions, reviews or decisions made by an account holder is held for a period of 12 months following final decision before being stored within long term limited-access archiving. Content may be engaged in relation to the services provided and in the interests of the integrity of published material. Such a decision will be made under the oversight of the Springer Nature Research Integrity Group. The need for legal actions within the services or payment problems can lead to a longer retention of your personal data.
In order to ensure the high quality of our journals and publications as well as the significance of the scientific research published, we have implemented a peer review procedure.
In order to find and contact suitable and qualified peer reviewers within the relevant research community, editorial team members may process some of your basic personal data (i.e. Email address, name and research interest) to register you for our Peer Review System. The legal basis for processing your personal data is our and the Publisher’s or the respective editor’s legitimate interest in finding and contacting suitable and qualified peer reviewers to ensure the high level of papers and articles published in our journals, Art. 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
As a Peer Reviewer or external Editorial Board Member we will contact you from time to time about the journal(s) and content that you have worked on, Art. 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. f.
If you do not wish to be contacted any longer, you can contact us at customerservice@springernature.com. Please note that we may keep some of your personal data to recall your explicit wish to not be contacted for any peer review procedure in the future and thus, to prevent any future processing of your data in this regard. The legal basis for this is our and your legitimate interest in recalling your wish and preventing any future contacting, Article 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
5. Author and instructor services
If you use the author and instructor services the required data are retained for the duration of the process plus a security period. Regarding this, the retention of your personal data is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR.
If you have qualified for an author discount for purchasing books, the retention periods of the web shop are applicable (see above).
To request a free online review copy of a book we use the contact data in your account to process the request.
6. METIS Program
In order that they can receive a distribution from VG Wort for legally permitted reproductions of their texts available on the Internet, authors can participate in the METIS distribution of VG Wort. In order to be able to make the necessary notification to VG Wort within the framework of the so-called regular METIS distribution for our book authors, we collect and process (if you provide us with this data for this purpose) your name, your e-mail address, your VG Wort card number and the number of relevant retrievals of your eBooks available on SpringerLink and transmit this data to VG Wort. The legal basis for this processing is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR. Your consent to us sharing your data with VG Wort as part of the METIS program.
For the counting of accesses to the eBooks available on SpringerLink, which is necessary for the regular METIS procedure, our website and our mobile web offer use the "Scalable Central Measurement Procedure" (SZM) of Kantar Germany GmbH for the determination of statistical key values to determine the copy probability of texts. Anonymous measured values are collected in the process. The access number measurement uses alternatively a session cookie or a signature, which is generated from various automatically transmitted information of your browser, for the recognition of computer systems. IP addresses are only processed in anonymous form. The procedure was developed in compliance with data protection. The sole aim of the procedure is to determine the probability of individual texts being copied. At no time are individual users identified. Their identity always remains protected. You will not receive any advertising via the system.
7. Customer service
If you contact us by either
- e-mail or physical mail
- telephone or fax
- Chat/messaging support
- through a website communication or submission form
we will process the personal data you provide to process and fulfil your request. For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a and b GDPR.
To provide the requested service your data may be stored in a ticketing system and/or on a support platform to enable data access by the relevant customer support team member. Where appropriate the data will also be forwarded to a different team to fulfil the request (e.g. to update your data) or be used on physical data records, e.g. invoices. We may use generative AI to support us in providing the response or service requested; any output is subject to human oversight before being used.
We use Freshdesk (provided by Freshworks GmbH, Neue Grünstraße 17, 10179 Berlin, Germany) as a ticketing system to store and process your requests. Depending on the region you call from and team providing support we use different telephony solutions. For the most part, customers contacting customer service are directed to our level 1 teams at our Philippines-based data processor Straive (77 Robinson Road, # 13-00 Singapore 068896), if necessary, the service ticket is forwarded to a local level 2 Springer Nature Customer Service team or another relevant team at Springer Nature.
We do not process any sensitive data unless provided by you because you e.g. need support in coping with access issues due to a disability or reveal any protected characteristics during communication. For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR.
We share anonymous, aggregated data within the business. We forward emails internally, or provide access to tickets for other teams to e.g. share positive feedback with a stakeholder, or for review by internal teams seeking to improve the products and services. For this the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to improve our service quality and provide tailored solutions to the customers.
We store your data until completion of the request and, if applicable, as long as required by statutory retention requirements (e.g. for 3 years after completion to prove adequate handling of service requests or subject access requests made under the GDPR).
VI. Automated decision making
We do not use your personal data for automated decision making which produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you; however we do use your personal data to offer you content and services which we believe may be of interest.