How the Institute of Central Computation and Knowledge Inc. collects, uses, shares and retains personal data from authors, reviewers, editors, members and visitors — and the rights you have over it.
Institute of Central Computation and Knowledge Inc. (“ICCK”, “we”, “us”) is an international academic publisher incorporated in the United States in 2022. We are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy — meaning we decide what is collected and why.
This policy covers www.icck.org, our manuscript submission and peer-review system, our membership services, and the e-mail we send in connection with them. It applies to everyone whose data we hold: authors, co-authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, ICCK members, conference participants, and visitors who have no account with us at all.
What we hold depends entirely on what you do with us.
We do not ask for special category data (health, race, religion, political opinions, sexual orientation, biometric or genetic data). Occasionally a manuscript contains such data about research participants. That data belongs to the research, remains the responsibility of the authors and their ethics committee, and we process it only as part of handling the manuscript. Please do not send us sensitive personal data about yourself that a submission does not require.
Each purpose, the data it uses, and the legal ground we rely on.
| Purpose | Data used | Legal basis (where the GDPR or a similar law applies) |
|---|---|---|
| Running your account | Identity, contact and account data | Contract — we cannot give you an account without it |
| Handling a submission through peer review to publication | Manuscript, author and reviewer data, correspondence, decisions | Contract with the submitting author; legitimate interests in operating a peer-reviewed journal for everyone else involved |
| Inviting you to review or to join an editorial board | Name, e-mail, affiliation, subject expertise, publication record | Legitimate interests in finding qualified reviewers and editors. You may object at any time and every invitation tells you how |
| Checking integrity: similarity screening, authorship and scope checks | Manuscript text and author details | Legitimate interests in research integrity, and our obligations under the COPE core practices |
| Invoicing and collecting article processing charges, membership dues and other fees | Billing and transaction data | Contract, and legal obligation for tax and accounting records |
| Publishing the article and depositing its metadata | Author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs, corresponding-author e-mail | Legitimate interests in maintaining the permanent scholarly record — see section 5 |
| Sending newsletters, calls for papers and other marketing | Name, e-mail, subject interests | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Keeping the site and the submission system secure and working | Server logs, sign-in history | Legitimate interests in security and fraud prevention |
| Investigating suspected misconduct, and handling complaints, corrections and retractions | Whatever the case requires, drawn from the records above | Legitimate interests in the integrity of the published record; legal obligation where one applies |
We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone, and we do not profile you. Automated tools assist our editors — a similarity report, for example — but every editorial decision is made by a person.
We do not sell personal data, and we never have.
We share data with the following categories of recipient, and only as far as each one needs it. Service providers act on our instructions under a written contract and may not use your data for their own purposes.
| Who | What they receive | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Editors and peer reviewers | The manuscript and the author details the journal's review model allows | To carry out peer review. Under double-blind review, author identities are withheld from reviewers |
| Similarity screening services | Manuscript text, which may be retained in the provider's comparison database | To detect plagiarism and duplicate submission |
| AI language-model providers | Manuscript text or extracts, when an editor explicitly runs a scope or integrity check | To assist editorial screening. These checks never run automatically and no decision is made by them alone |
| Crossref, DOAJ, ORCID and indexing services | Published article metadata: author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs and the corresponding author's e-mail | To register DOIs and make published work findable — see section 5 |
| Payment providers | Billing name, address, amount and invoice reference | To take payment. They receive your card details directly; we do not |
| Hosting, CDN, e-mail and IT providers | Whatever passes through the systems they operate for us | To run the website, the submission system and our e-mail |
| Professional advisers and authorities | Only what is necessary in the specific case | Legal, accounting and audit advice, or where the law requires disclosure |
| An acquirer or successor | The records relevant to the transaction | If ICCK or any of its journals is transferred to another organisation. We would tell you before your data became subject to a different policy |
Where we investigate suspected research or publication misconduct, we may need to contact an author's institution, a funder, a co-author, or another publisher, and to share the relevant records with them. We follow the COPE flowcharts when we do. This is a necessary part of maintaining the integrity of the published record, and it is one of the few situations in which we may share your data without asking you first.
The part of this policy that is hardest to undo — please read it before you submit.
Academic publishing is, by design, permanent and public. When an article is published, the following become part of the public scholarly record:
This metadata is deposited with Crossref when the DOI is registered, and from there it is distributed to indexing services, search engines, reference managers and library systems worldwide. Those third parties keep their own copies.
Once an article is published, we cannot remove you from it. The scholarly record must stay stable and citable; removing an author would corrupt it, and we could not recall the copies already held by indexers, libraries and readers. We can correct an error in your name, affiliation or ORCID iD, and we will issue a formal correction where that is the right course. Articles are withdrawn only through retraction, under the COPE guidelines, and a retracted article stays online and visible with a retraction notice attached.
Editorial board members are listed publicly by name, institution and country, as the Principles of Transparency require. If you leave a board, we remove you from the current listing — but issues published while you served continue to name you.
ICCK is established in the United States, and our editors, reviewers and service providers are spread across many countries. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or another region with transfer restrictions, your data will be transferred outside it — that is inherent in international peer review, not an incidental feature of our systems.
Where we transfer personal data out of a region that restricts it, we rely on an adequacy decision where one covers the destination, and otherwise on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (or the UK Addendum) with the recipient, together with additional safeguards where our assessment finds they are needed.
You may ask us for a copy of the safeguards that apply to a particular transfer by writing to [email protected].
We keep personal data only as long as the purpose it was collected for requires.
| Record | Kept for | Why that long |
|---|---|---|
| Published articles and their metadata | Permanently | The scholarly record is permanent by definition — see section 5 |
| Submission and peer-review records for published articles | 10 years from publication | Misconduct allegations and authorship disputes can arrive years after publication, and we must be able to reconstruct what happened |
| Records of rejected or withdrawn submissions | 5 years from the decision | To handle appeals, duplicate-submission checks and integrity enquiries |
| Account data | While the account is open, then 12 months | So an account can be restored if closed in error. Accounts dormant for 5 years are reviewed and may be closed |
| Invoices, payments and tax records | 7 years | Tax and accounting law |
| Server and security logs | 12 months | Security investigation and abuse prevention |
| Marketing contact lists | Until you unsubscribe | We then keep your e-mail address on a suppression list indefinitely, for the sole purpose of making sure we do not contact you again |
| Misconduct case files | 10 years from the conclusion of the case | So that a decision can be explained and defended if it is later challenged |
Where a period above has passed but the data is still needed for an active dispute, legal claim or regulatory enquiry, we keep it until that concludes.
This site sets essential cookies only. We do not use advertising cookies, analytics cookies, or social-media tracking pixels, and we do not share browsing data with advertising networks.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to provide a service you have asked for, they do not require consent under the ePrivacy rules. You can still block or delete them in your browser, but the submission system will not work if you do.
Which of these you have depends on where you live, but we extend them to everyone wherever we reasonably can.
Write to [email protected] to exercise any of these. We respond within 30 days, and we will tell you if a request is complex enough to need longer. We may ask you to confirm your identity first — we are not going to hand your data to someone who claims to be you. Exercising these rights is free; we charge only for requests that are manifestly unfounded or excessive, and we will say so before doing any work.
Please come to us first — most problems are a misunderstanding we can fix quickly. But you do not have to. If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection supervisory authority, and you may do so without contacting us at all. Residents of California and other jurisdictions with their own privacy statutes have equivalent rights of complaint to their state authority.
The site is served over HTTPS. Passwords are stored hashed, never in a form we could read. Access to the submission system is limited to the editorial staff and volunteers whose role requires it, and that access is logged. We keep backups, and we patch the systems we run.
No system is perfect, and we will not claim ours is. If a breach puts your rights at risk we will notify the relevant supervisory authority within 72 hours where the law requires it, and we will tell you directly when the risk to you is high.
Our services are intended for researchers and professionals. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us data, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.
We update this policy when our practices change. The effective date at the top of the page always tells you which version you are reading. If a change materially affects your rights, we will tell account holders by e-mail before it takes effect rather than relying on you to notice a new date.