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Protecting your privacy is important to us. Please take a few moments to review this Policy. Please note if you are subscribing to Evidence Based Nursing you will be subject to the Royal College of Nursing's Privacy Policy.

Introduction
This policy consists of the following sections:

1. The information we collect and how we use it
2. How is personal information stored
3. Cookies
4. Contact Us
5. Linking to external sites
6. Your consent

1. The information we collect and how we use it For online renewals, data is collected within the UK and certain data may then be transferred to Highwire our hosting provider of BMJ Journals When you visit the BMJ Journals site, any data collected will be initially collected by HighWire within the US. This may then be transferred to and from the US as necessary. As certain parts of BMJ Journals are subscription only, you will either a registered or non registered user. There are various sections of the website, for which we collect different information. What we collect and how this is used is as follows:
   • 1.1 Non Registered Users. As you browse the website, we collect information about your use of the site for usability studies and marketing. Essentially this will be what pages you have visited and how long you stay online. We will not be able to identify who you are, but we will be able to identify where you are located (see point 1.3 below).
   • 1.2 Registered Users When you first subscribe online to any paper and/or online journal or should you subscribe to email alerts, you will be asked to submit a personal email address as well as your name and contact details including address and phone number. Some of this information is mandatory so we can fulfil our obligations to you. Renewals information will be as indicated. We then use this information to set up a customer number and username or to renew your subscription and generally fulfil our obligations to you. In addition, we may contact you so you can get the most out of the Services that the BMJ Publishing Group Limited provides. You will have an opportunity to opt out/opt in of receiving such other information, as appropriate.
   • 1.3 What else do we use personal information for? Other than fulfilling our obligations to you (where these exist), on some occasions we use the information provided to produce aggregate statistics in relation to pages being accessed. We may also use it to monitor usage patterns of the website in order to improve navigation and design features to help you get information more easily. This information is provided to us as daily logged files. In order to help us develop the website and our services, we may provide such aggregate information to third parties. The statistics however will not include any information that can be used to identify any individual.
     Each time you use the internet, an IP address is assigned to your computer via the internet service provider. This number may either be the same or different each time. Each time your computer requests information from our website, we log your IP address on our server. We may use this in order to gather information about the website traffic and usage.
     Whether you are a registered user or not, our web server collects certain information such as (a) IP address; (b) host names (c) domain name (d) time and date information as requested (e) the browser version and platform when it is requested, (f) a record of which pages have been requested, but we do not identify any individual from this data.
   • 1.4 To whom will personal information be disclosed? We will not disclose your personal data to any third party, other than our contractors or co-owing societies (as some of our journals are jointly owned). Corporate location information however may be shared.
   • 1.5 Can you change information we hold about you? Where you have provided us with an email address for an alert, you may change this information if it becomes outdated, and you should do so online by going to the home page of the journal you subscribe to and clicking on the 'Email alerts' link.
2. How is personal information stored and protected? Your personal data is stored in our subscriptions manager which is only available to the web administrators, our Fulfilment department and our consortia sales people. This is protected by username and password. IP addresses for an institutional subscription are entered in by the subscription administrator of that institution. Usage statistics for those IP addresses are protected under username and password and are only available to the subscription administrator. We cannot access your password for your subscription but are able to reset it for you if needs be. Other subscription information is held on a database not linked to the internet or this website.
   • 2.1 Security The information we collect about people visiting the site is stored in secure environments that are not available to any other individual or party. We have mechanisms in place to protect data, such as our 'firewall'. A firewall is a barrier that allows only authorised traffic through to our servers. It safeguards our computer systems and your information. We also use system and application logs to track all access. We review these logs periodically and investigate any anomalies or discrepancies.
     We understand that the security of your information is important to you. We also understand that our continued success as a publisher on the web relies on our ability to communicate with you in a secure manner. We adhere to the highest standards of decency, fairness, and integrity in our operations. We use several measures to authenticate your identity when you visit our site. We also take steps to protect your information as it travels the internet, and to make sure all information is as secure as possible against unauthorised access and use (for example, by hackers). We review our security measures regularly. By using this Website you agree to your data being held in the USA and then transferred to and from the USA. The USA does not have exactly the same privacy protection as the EEA but we do our best to ensure HighWire keep data secure. Despite our best efforts, and the best efforts of other firms, 'perfect security' does not exist on the internet, or anywhere else. As a result, whilst we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot warrant that the security of the information you transmit to us online. You therefore do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best efforts to ensure its security on our system.
   • 2.2 Authentication You should not share your username and password with other people. If you think you might lose or forget these identifiers write them down and keep each in a separate place. If you forget your details you may alter/retrieve them by going here: My account
   • 2.3 Email Any email between you and BMJ Publishing Group Limited is not encrypted. However, it will be stored securely behind our corporate firewall (see above).
3. Use of Cookies Access to our website is dependent upon the use of Session Cookies. Most browsers allow the users to control the cookies including whether or not to accept them and how to remove them. If users disable cookies on their computers some of the more sophisticated features on our website will be unavailable to you.
   Session Cookies are stored, in memory, by your browser. Session Cookies have a life of 30 minutes from the time you last accessed a page on our site. If you have not used our site for more than 30 minutes the cookie will be destroyed by your browser and you will have to login again to view certain areas.
   In addition where you purchase a 'Pay Per View’ or 30 day ‘Site Pass’ a cookie will be used for the relevant period. For help and our use of cookies please go here: http://journals.bmj.com/help/aboutcookies.dtl More information about cookies, including how to block them and/or delete them, can be found at About Cookies.
4. Contact us If you have any concerns or queries about the information we hold about you or wish to send feedback about this site, please contact us by using the feedback button at the top of this page.
5. Linking to external sites Occasionally, you will encounter links to other sites that are not related to BMJ Journals. Please be aware that once you click to one of these sites, you are subject to that site’s privacy policy and not to ours. You may wish to review the privacy policy for each site you visit.
6. Your consent By using this website, you consent to the use of any data we collect as set out in this policy. You should review this privacy policy regularly, to note any changes relating to how we collect and use information.

Date of document: January 2007