Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how the Collaborative OPen Omics (COPO) website service collects, stores and uses personal information in operating the website, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Please view our Terms of Use regarding the rules and requirements for the use of the service.

Lawful basis for processing your data

COPO has a legitimate interest in processing personal data to facilitate the sharing and brokering of scientific data, particularly in genomics and related fields. By enabling researchers to collaborate, store, and manage datasets more effectively, COPO supports the advancement of scientific research. This aligns with its mission to enhance data accessibility and reproducibility, while balancing the rights of users and contributors. Processing personal data is essential to allow the operation and functioning of COPO.

By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Notice and agree to its terms.


Data Collected

COPO adopts appropriate data collection, validation, storage and processing practices as well as security measures to protect against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction of your personal information, ORCid credentials and metadata provided on our service.

Information collected:

  • Internet Protocol (IP) address

  • Operating system

  • Browser

  • First name, last name and username after you sign into the service with your ORCid credentials

  • Email address (after you input it in the dialog shown after a first-time access to the service)

  • Date and time when a profile record and manifests are created or updated

  • Metadata submitted. Metadata is the essential information about when, where, how and why data has been collected. It can relate to research elements like samples, assemblies, sequencing annotations, barcoding, experiments, reads or runs

  • If you contact us via email, we may receive additional information about you such as the contents of the message and/or attachments you may send us and any other information you may choose to provide

Usage of information collected:

  • To utilise Google Fonts, an interactive web directory via Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which is embedded in the service

  • To provide the user access to the service

  • To answer support request sent by the user

  • To monitor errors and exceptions that may occur during metadata submission

  • To register your email address with your COPO user account and to submit your email address to public repositories after manifest submissions

  • To send email notifications when submitted samples have been accepted or rejected by a sample manager


Storing and Sharing of your information

Your information is shared and stored in the following ways:

  • Authorised COPO team developers

  • Public metadata repositories that COPO relies on to provide the service. They are:


Data Retention

  • Any personal data (name and email address) and metadata obtained from you will be retained as long as the service is live, even if you stop using the service

  • COPO omits your email address, ORCid identifier (ID) and name from the COPO Application Programming Interface (API) method results after a manifest submission. However, your email address will be submitted to public repositories and will be visible on public records as a metadata submitter.

  • Access to the web and security logs containing personal data are restricted to the relevant COPO team developers


Cookies

This service uses “cookies” to store information about the web pages that the visitor has accessed or visited. The information is used to log any errors or exceptions that may occur and user sessions.


Your Rights

You have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, to request a correction and to request that your personal data is deleted. In some cases, we may not be able to agree to your request, however if this is the case, we will tell you the reason and your right to complain to the Information Commissioner if you are unhappy with our decision. You have a range of other rights under the GDPR.

If you would like more information, please see the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website (see For the public).


Questions

If you have any questions about how your personal information is used, or wish to exercise any of your rights, you can do so by


Published on: 28-10-2023

Last updated: 24-09-2024


Footnotes