Privacy Policy

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  MENDELEY PRINCIPLES

  Our mission is to help you manage and share your research data as you choose. You may wish to keep private your account profile details and what you are currently researching or reading, or you may wish to share your research activities or comments with selected colleagues or the entire Mendeley community. You decide what to share and with whom.

  We recognize that protecting user privacy and confidentiality is essential to open inquiry. We are committed to respecting your privacy in your research. Please read this privacy policy carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

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  ABOUT OUR PRIVACY POLICY

  This privacy policy describes how Mendeley Limited (“Mendeley”, “we”, “us” or “our”) will use the personal data collected when you visit the Mendeley websites, applications and mobile platforms that contain a link to this privacy policy (each, a “Service”). A Service may supplement this privacy policy with additional privacy terms or notices in connection with certain features of the Service. This privacy policy does not apply to websites, applications or mobile platforms that are not linked to this privacy policy or to those operated by third parties.

  For the purpose of the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (the “Act”), the data controller is Mendeley Limited with its registered office at White Bear Yard, 144a Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5DF, United Kingdom, Reg. No. Z1344315.

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  INFORMATION WE COLLECT

  The Service collects information from you in two ways: directly from your input and automatically through the Service’s technologies.

  The Service collects directly from you:

  • Registration information. To create a Mendeley Web account, you must provide your first name, last name, email address, password, field of study and academic status. If you choose to register by using a third party account (such as your Facebook account), the Service will collect the “Third party account data” described below and then ask you to provide a password, your field of study and your academic status to complete your registration.
  • Profile information. After you create an account, your first name, last name and field of study will appear in your public profile on which you can post additional biographical information and material, including your CV, and identify any public groups in which you participate. You can choose how much of your information, if any, you want other people to see by changing the privacy levels in your account, except that your first name, last name, field of study and public groups will remain visible and cannot be made private.
  • Articles and papers. If you enter your Mendeley Web account login details when you complete your registration for the Mendeley Desktop software, the publications and papers you catalogue, access, read and manage using the software will be uploaded to your account.
  • Comments and feedback. By participating in groups, you may communicate with other users and post annotations and comments. You may request further services or information, provide feedback, submit questions or report problems by contacting us through web forms, which may request additional information.
  • Upgrade information. If you choose to upgrade your services, your payment card details will be requested by us but handled through our third party partners and not stored in our systems.

  The Service also automatically collects information regarding your use of the Service, such as:

  • Log files and device data. These provide details about your device and application you use to access the Service (including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type) and the nature of your accesses to the Service (including, but not limited to, traffic data and other communication data).
  • Third party account data. If you register for and sign in to your Mendeley Web account with your Facebook account details, the authentication of your login is handled by Facebook and the Service will collect your first name, last name, email address and any other information about your Facebook account that you agree to share with us at the time you give permission for your Mendeley Web Account to be linked to your Facebook account.
  • Usage data. This provides details about the way that you use the Service, including the pages you visit and the time you spend on them, the articles you read, access and download and how long you read them, and the articles you upload and information extracted from them, such as abstract, keywords, full-text and cited references.
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  COOKIES AND WEB BEACONS

  We also collect information through the use of cookies, web beacons and similar technologies. These tools help us to:

  • estimate our audience size and usage pattern;
  • recognize and authenticate you;
  • store your preferences and customise your experience;
  • speed up your searches; and
  • administer, secure and improve the Service.

  You can control cookies through your browser settings and other tools. However, if you block certain cookies you may be unable to access certain parts of the Service or your user experience will be affected.

  For more information about the cookies we set, please read our Cookie Policy.

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  USE OF YOUR INFORMATION

  We use information held about you in the following ways:

  • to provide the Service to you including allowing you to:
    • register, login, create and update your account profile;
    • participate in interactive and social networking features of our service;
    • manage, catalogue and share your academic papers;
    • complete a transaction;
  • to present content from the Service in an effective manner to you;
  • to generate recommendations, such as articles that you may be interested in reading, and individualized statistical information made available to you in your account;
  • to deal with your queries, complaints or concerns;
  • to notify you about changes or updates to the Service and provide you with special offers, promotions, surveys and other information about the Service and products and services of our affiliates and other third parties;
  • for research and development to evaluate and enhance the Service;
  • for pseudonymous analysis to create a profile used to determine the habits, interests or other characteristics of users for purposes of research, analysis and anonymous reporting; and
  • for the Service and system administration, such as for technical support of the Service and its computer system, including processing computer account information, information used in the course of securing and maintaining the Service and verification of Service activity by the Service.

  We may also use aggregate statistical information regarding users' interests, habits and reading patterns, broken down in some cases on an institutional level or other relevant segmenting. This statistical data does not contain any personally identifiable information and some of it is made available to the Mendeley community and other interested third parties (such as institutions and publishers) on an anonymous and aggregated basis. For example, the Mendeley community will be able to see that a certain paper had 7,153 readers and was the most popular paper in Biology last week. However, nobody except you will know whether you were one of these 7,153 readers. Where required by contractual agreements, we will furnish periodic institutional usage data reports to publishers and other content providers but without revealing information about individual users.

  We also use snippets of information extracted from your imported files to help improve the discovery of published research on the Service and to form part of and enhance the search and recommendation results.

  We 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.

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  DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION

  We may disclose your personal information to our agents, suppliers, service providers and affiliates within the Elsevier group of companies, which assist us with developing and operating our systems and applications, processing payments, customer support and marketing, promotion and communications.

  We also may need to disclose your personal information to:

  • comply with any legal obligation or respond to law enforcement;
  • investigate and help prevent security threats, fraud or other malicious activity;
  • to enforce and protect our rights and properties or apply our Terms of Use, Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy and other agreements; or
  • protect the rights, property or safety of our users, employees or others.
  • prospective or actual purchasers of Mendeley, the Service or a related asset or line of business.
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  EDITING AND DELETION OF YOUR INFORMATION

  You can edit and delete any personal data you upload to the Service, except that posts, comments, content, feedback and messages that you share with others may not be deleted.

  If you wish to delete your account you may do so by selecting the “Delete Your Account” function or sending a request to . Some personal information may persist in backup copies for a limited period of time and be retained as necessary to comply with our legal obligations. However, your account profile and information will not be viewable by other users.

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  YOUR CHOICES AND COMMUNICATIONS PREFERENCES

  You can manage your communications preferences when you register with the Service, by updating your account preferences, by using the “opt-out” or unsubscribe mechanism or other means provided within the communications that you receive from us, or by contacting us at . We reserve the right to notify you of changes or updates to the Service whenever necessary.

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  CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER OF YOUR INFORMATION

  Your personal information may be transferred to other countries for processing, and by using the Service you consent to the transfer of information to countries outside of your country of residence, which may have different personal data protection rules than in your country.

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  ACCESS TO AND ACCURACY OF YOUR INFORMATION

  The Service allows registered users to access their registration and profile information and make corrections or updates. The accuracy of such information is solely the responsibility of the user. You may also request access to personal information held about you in the Service. Any access request may be subject to a fee to meet our costs in providing you with details of such information.

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  CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

  We reserve the right to change this policy at any time. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page with an updated revision date.

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  CONTACT

  If you have any questions, comments or requests regarding this privacy policy or our processing of your information, please contact or

  Mendeley Ltd.
  Ground Floor
  White Bear Yard
  144a Clerkenwell Road
  London, EC1R 5DF
  United Kingdom

  This privacy policy was last updated on 6 February 2014