Privacy Policy

Introduction

We care about your privacy and want you to feel confident about how your personal information is stored and used. Our Privacy Policy tells you how we look after, use and share the Personal Information that we collect from you. Please read this carefully. Except where stated below or you agree, we do not share your Personal Information with anyone.

Sparrow is your personalised recommendation platform for scientific content. Sparrow works with you, using your keywords, interactions with content displayed as well as feedback provided by you to educate our platform which then aggregates, distills and recommends scientific content relevant to you – allowing you to keep a bird’s eye view on science.

When you use any of our Services, you are agreeing to our Privacy Policy.

1. How do you protect my Personal Information?

We are serious about guarding the security of your Personal Information and use a secure server to store your Personal Information. We use industry standard organisational and technical security measures to protect your data against unauthorised disclosure or processing. However, like everyone else, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Where you are required to choose a password for your account, you are responsible for keeping that password confidential. This means you should limit access to your computer or device and sign off after you have finished accessing your account. If you think someone has access to your password or unauthorised access to your account, please inform us immediately at ask@sparrow.science

We are not responsible for the misuse of your account or information where you have not kept your password confidential or not reported a breach of security.

2. What information do you collect about me?

We collect Personal Information about you when you register with us, use our Services, answer our questions or provide feedback. We may also record our communications with you.

Information that you provide to us: This may include your name, contact information such as email address, username and more. We may also ask for information such as your preferences, interests, which articles you find relevant / irrelevant and responses to customer surveys or offers. You may choose whether or not to give some information to us. However, not providing certain information may mean that our personalisation features are not optimised for you and you cannot enjoy some features or parts of our Services.

Information that is automatically collected: Whenever you interact with our Services, we automatically record information from your browser or device and usage data. This may include your IP address, operating system, device information (UDID, device type), keywords you have searched for, articles you have requested, the website / webpage that you came from and cookie information. Depending on your privacy settings, we may also receive information from social networks or other third party apps or websites you connect with from our Services, e.g. your profile information from Facebook.

3. How will you use the information about me?

We use the information you give to us to make our Services the best possible experience for you. For instance, we may use your information to:

customise the Services you choose to receive, such as personalised newsfeeds and search results;
manage your account and your queries;
improve our Services, including our algorithms;
contact you with important service announcements;
meet our legal and regulatory obligations and protect our legitimate interests;
carry out research and analysis, training and quality assurance;
if you agree, contact you about other Services and products from Sparrow that we think may be of interest to you;
if you agree, contact you with advertising from other businesses; and
display your article preference information if you choose to make your pinboards public.

4. To whom will you disclose my Personal Information?

Sparrow will not share your Personal Information for marketing purposes with companies outside the Sparrow group of Affiliated Organisations, unless you have given us permission to do so. However, we may share your information in the following ways:

If you login to our Services via a third party website such as Google, you give us permission to share your Personal Information with the third party website. (If you login to a third party website such as Google from our Services, you give us permission to collect your Personal Information from that third party website.)
We may share your Personal Information, where appropriate, with any member of our group of Affiliated Organisations.
We work with trusted partners to perform tasks on our behalf and we may need to disclose your Personal Information for them to provide services to you. However, these companies are bound by confidentiality obligations and do not have any independent right to use your Personal Information beyond what is necessary to assist us.
When the law requires us to disclose your information, we will comply.
When we need to enforce our Terms and Conditions, investigate fraud, reduce credit risk, exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.
When it is necessary for the protection of a person’s well-being or property and when obtaining your prior consent is difficult.
If there is a change in the ownership of Sparrow or any of its assets, we may disclose Personal Information to the new or prospective investor. If we do so, we will notify you before your Personal Information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Sparrow may display targeted advertisements based on anonymised information, personally identifiable information or information you make publicly available. No Personal Information will be provided to the advertiser directly by Sparrow when you interact with or view a targeted advertisement. However, by interacting with or viewing an advertisement you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will collect data from you and/or make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the advertisement.

5. Will I receive marketing information from you?

We would like to send you information about new products or services, special offers or other information relating to our Services and those of other companies in our group of Affiliated Organisations which may be of interest to you. We may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. If you don’t like this, we are happy to stop at any time. Just click on the ‘unsubscribe’ link in our email or contact us at ask@sparrow.science

Please note that our service announcements which we send to you are not marketing messages. You cannot opt out of receiving service announcements (unless you delete your account and stop using our Services) as this is the only way we can contact you to let you know about important updates.

6. How do I access or change my Personal Information?

If you want to see, or change, your Personal Information, go to your Account Settings or contact us at ask@sparrow.science. Please note that certain information may not be easily changed once you have entered it. For instance, there should be no reason for a user to change their date of birth. This is to discourage users from engaging in unlawful activities.

In certain jurisdictions, you may be entitled to request access to your Personal Information that we hold, by writing to us at ask@sparrow.science or at our postal address (see below). A small fee may be applicable for using this service, to cover administrative costs.

7. How long do you keep my Personal Information for? How can I delete it?

We store your Personal Information for as long as your account is active and for as long as is required solely for our business purposes. If you wish to delete an account, you can do so by following instructions within the relevant Service, and/or by contacting ask@sparrow.science.

If you wish to delete the Personal Information that we hold on you, you may do so by contacting us at ask@sparrow.science. When you do this, we will deactivate your account and/or delete or anonymise (which means you cannot be identified from the information) relevant Personal Information, unless we have to retain it for legal reasons. A limited amount of anonymised data may be retained for archive purposes only.

Keep in mind: The impact factor system is not flawless. This is because science is competitive and top-tier journals may prioritize publications based on how trendy the topic is versus how well the research is done. That means some high-quality research may end up in lower-tier journals based on the topic. That being said, one can usually trust the claims made in journals in top-tier journals.

8. What are cookies? Do you use cookies?

Cookies are small files that we place on your device to allow our Services to respond to you as an individual. Our cookies store your settings and usage data so that our Services can tailor its operations to your preferences and needs, gathering and remembering information about your previous activity such as which articles you find useful and which you do not.

We may also place cookies on your device if you click on our search results or advertisements outside our Services. These cookies help us in a number of ways, including allowing us to audit the effectiveness of our advertising and for content and advertising personalisation. Third parties may also transmit cookies to your computer or device, e.g. when you click on embedded third party content that appear on our Services. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the use of cookies by third parties. Please read their privacy policies for more information.

A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the websites below tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases, some of the features on our website may not function as a result. If you would like to know more, visit https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies.aspx

9. Where is my Personal Information?

We may transfer your Personal Information to countries outside of the European Economic Area EEA (such as the US), but only to companies we trust. This includes Sparrow group of Affiliated Organisations or carefully selected business partners that agree to “Safe Harbor” certification or equivalent protections. We do this for our data storage, infrastructure and business purposes, in particular, for outsourced data processing by organisations on our behalf (for example, using Amazon Web Services). We take appropriate steps to ensure your information is adequately protected. If you do not agree to this, please do not use our Services.

10. Does this Privacy Policy apply to services, apps or websites provided by other companies?

Our Services may contain links to other apps or websites. Our Privacy Policy applies only to how Sparrow uses your Personal Information. If you use these links to leave our Services, you should note that we do not have any control over other apps or websites. If you disclose your Personal Information to other companies, they are responsible for their use of your information.

11. Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of such changes by posting an announcement on our Services. You are bound by any changes to our Privacy Policy when you use our Service after you are notified of these changes.

12. How do I contact you?

Please contact us if you have any questions about the information we hold about you or about our Privacy Policy:

Send an email to ask@sparrow.science
Write to us at Sparrow (Distylled Ltd), Gravita, Finsgate, 5-7 Cranwood Street, London, England, EC1V 9EE

13. Definitions

“Affiliated Organisations” means any subsidiary, subsidiary undertaking or holding company of Sparrow and any subsidiary or subsidiary undertaking of any such holding company for the time being.

“Personal Information” means anything that can be used to identify you, including information you give to us when you register and anything that we collect as you use our Services.

“Service” or “Services” means the products and services provided by Sparrow, including our recommendation engine, personalised newsfeeds and a rich collection of online resources which can be accessed via our website located at www.sparrow.science, our widgets and our applications via various platforms, media and devices.

Date of last revision: 16 September 2022