Privacy Policy
Cureus values your privacy. If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please feel free to email us at [email protected] or write to us at Cureus, 1227 14th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94122.
Your Information and How We Use It
Registration
In order to author, review, rate or comment on articles, you must first create an account on our website. When creating an account you are required to create a password and provide the following information: your full name, email address, specialty, current medical institution, department, and its city and country location.
Profile Information
You may enter additional information in the Profile section once you have registered as a user. Cureus utilizes the registration and profile information along with IP address to verify the identity and affiliations of users who author, review, rate or comment on articles on the Cureus publishing platform.
Advertisements
- Cureus uses technology from third-party ad network providers to serve ads.
- In order to enhance the user experience, this technology may customize the advertisements that you see based upon: (i) the information that you knowingly provide; (ii) geographic location which can be determined through your IP address; (iii) data received from third parties; and (iv) your behavior on Cureus or other sites.
- In the course of serving advertisements to Cureus, such third-party advertising technology may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.
- You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings in your browser.
- Cureus, along with other advertisers and sponsors on Cureus, may use cookies, web beacons (also called single pixel gifs or action tags) or similar technologies (and, in the case of cookies, access them on your computer if you choose to have cookies enabled in your browser), to (i) serve you advertisements tailored to interests you have shown by browsing Cureus and other sites you have visited; (ii) determine whether you have seen a particular advertisement before; (iii) avoid sending you duplicated advertisements; and (iv) understand the usage patterns of people who see advertisements.
- In doing so, the provider collects non-personal data such as your browser type, your operating system, web pages visited, time of visits, content viewed, ads viewed and other clickstream data. Ad networks may connect information about your visit on Cureus with information about your visit on other sites and show you advertising based on this combined information.
- The advertisement may appear when you are visiting a different section of Cureus or any other sites on the Internet if such other sites also have a relationship with our ad network providers.
- The use of third-party cookies, web beacons and similar technologies by these ad network providers is governed by each third party's specific privacy policy, not this one.
- Please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ to learn more about the information collection practices of network advertisers and if you wish to "opt-out" of participating in advertising programs conducted by third-party ad network providers.
Sponsored Emails
We may use your email address to send you emails sponsored by our partners. We will also process information about your interaction with such emails, for example, whether you opened the email and/or clicked on content within the email.
Upon creating an account on the Cureus platform, where we request consent, that is the legal basis for sending you sponsored emails. You can unsubscribe from receiving sponsored emails at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link within any such email. At Cureus, our primary goal is to bring you closer to the latest in medical and scientific innovation. Through sponsored emails, we aim to introduce you to cutting-edge products, pharmaceuticals, and opportunities from our partners. These dedicated communications allow us to monetize our platform and consequently support our mission to keep our platform accessible to all, ensuring that we continue to deliver the valuable, open-access research that Cureus is known for.
IP Address and Cookies
When you enter Cureus platform, we collect your browser type and IP address, as well as the URL of the site from which you came. This information is gathered for all Cureus visitors and is used to analyze overall trends, in turn helping us to improve our services and run our business. In addition, we store certain information from your browser using "cookies." A cookie is a small data file that resides on your computer and allows Cureus to recognize you as a user when you return to our site with the same computer and web browser. You can remove or block Cureus cookies in your browser settings at any time.
The IP address is obtained by the HTTP headers when the user makes a request using a browser. All other information is provided by the user or submitting author on behalf of the user - name, email address, affiliation, location, specialty, qualifications, etc.
Cureus also uses third-party products that set cookies, for example: Google Analytics, which helps us monitor site usage and therefore improve user experience.
The majority of the data that we request from users are publicly accessible with the exception of email and passwords, which are encrypted using bcrypt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt). IP address and other information is retained until the user deletes their account. Users have the right to erase all personal data (by deleting their account and contacting us with this request).
DMD Healthcare Communications Network Participation Disclosure
Cureus and this website is a member of the DMD Healthcare Communications Network (the “HCN”). HCN is owned and managed by DMD Marketing Corp (“DMD”) and is designed to enable DMD and HCN members to provide medically relevant business communications to authenticated health care professionals.
Your registration at this website includes registration with HCN. As a result, your contact and other professionally relevant information will be disclosed to DMD and each HCN member to provide you medically relevant content as described in the HCN privacy policy available at https://HCN.health/privacy-policy. The HCN privacy policy provides details on how to manage your information, including opting out of participation in the HCN.
To the extent that this site’s privacy policy conflicts with the HCN privacy policy, with respect to the use of this information by HCN, the conflict will be resolved in favor of the HCN policy.
Third Party Email Addresses and Contacts
In order to invite your colleagues to connect with you on Cureus, you must enter their names and email addresses. These names and email addresses will be used only to send your invitation and related information – they will not be sold to any third parties for any reason.
Website Use
As a registered Cureus user, you may submit draft articles, edit articles, publish articles, review articles and rate/discuss articles. In most cases, we retain this information to enhance your experience with Cureus. When you provide updated information, we generally keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time, to enable reversion to the prior version if necessary.
While using the Cureus service and website, you will have opportunities to post ratings, opinions or other information. Information collected in conjunction with such uses of the site will not be used to personally identify you outside of the Cureus community. By registering as a Cureus user, you agree not to contribute content that is a) defamatory, libelous, obscene, indecent, abusive, threatening or illegal. You also agree to indemnify Cureus and its officers and employees from and against all liabilities, judgments, damages and costs (including attorney's fees) incurred by them which arise out of, or are related to, content you contribute.
Minors
Cureus complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). COPPA and its regulations protect the privacy of children using the internet and as such we do not knowingly contact or collect information from persons under the age of 13. The Cureus website and services are not intended for the use by persons under the age of 13 and we ask that such persons not submit any personal information to Cureus. In the case that this occurs, and is verified, Cureus will delete all associated personal information.
Information Sharing
Cureus reserves the right to share personal information (including author names, email addresses and institutional affiliations) with Clear Skies Ltd. for the purpose of screening article submissions for paper mill activity. This data will not be shared or used for any other purpose by Clear Skies Ltd.
The Clear Skies Ltd. privacy policy provides additional details: https://clear-skies.co.uk/privacy-policy/. To the extent that this site’s privacy policy conflicts with the Clear Skies Ltd. privacy policy, with respect to the use of this information by Clear Skies Ltd., the conflict will be resolved in favor of the Clear Skies Ltd. policy.
With the aforementioned exception of Clear Skies Ltd., Cureus may share aggregated de-identified demographic information with Cureus partners. This is not linked to any personal information that can be used to identify individual users. We do not provide contact information to third-party marketers without your permission.
Cureus will share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances when it is 1) legally required or 2) necessary to run our business in cases of fulfilling contracts, providing services such as scholarly indexing or otherwise running our operations efficiently using third-party providers.
Cureus will never sell, rent or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to any third parties for marketing purposes.
Legal Disclaimer
It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information when required by law. We will disclose such information wherein we have a good-faith belief that it is necessary to comply with a court order, ongoing judicial proceeding, or other legal process served on our company or to exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.
Links
The Cureus website may contain links to other sites. The linked sites are not necessarily under the control of Cureus and therefore are not protected by the stated Privacy Policy. Please be cautious when leaving the Cureus website and read the privacy policies of any websites you link to should you have any concern.
Other
Notification of Changes
Cureus reserves the right to change our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use at any time. The date the policy was last modified will always be posted in connection with the policy.
Termination of Service
If at any time you wish to terminate your account with Cureus, you may do so via your Account Settings page. Please note that previously collected data will be removed as well.
Sale of Assets, Merger, Acquisition or Bankruptcy
Information collected from you may be transferred to a third party as a result of a sale or acquisition, merger or bankruptcy involving Cureus.
