Open Access, Privacy and Personal Data Policy

1. Open access commitment

All published articles are available online immediately without subscription or registration barriers. Readers may access, download, share, and reuse content under the applicable Creative Commons licence, subject to attribution, share-alike conditions, third-party rights, privacy, and ethical restrictions.

No embargo is applied to the published version of record. Bibliographic metadata and post-publication notices remain openly accessible.

2. Author rights and repository use

• authors retain copyright and grant SINTHOP the right of first publication;
• authors may deposit submitted, accepted, or published versions in institutional or subject repositories, subject to accurate citation and licence information;
• the DOI and link to the SINTHOP version of record should be included after publication;
• third-party material may have separate restrictions and must not be relicensed without permission.

3. Personal data collected

OJS may collect names, usernames, email addresses, affiliations, countries, ORCID identifiers, biographies, IP and technical logs, submission files, review reports, editorial correspondence, declarations, payment/waiver records, and other information necessary for journal operation.

Special-category or sensitive information should be collected only when necessary for ethics assessment, conflict management, waiver processing, legal compliance, or protection of the scholarly record.

4. Purposes and access

• managing accounts, submissions, peer review, decisions, production, publication, indexing, preservation, and correspondence;
• verifying authorship, conflicts, ethical compliance, permissions, and research-integrity concerns;
• administering fees or waivers separately from editorial decisions;
• maintaining security, preventing abuse, and complying with legal or contractual obligations;
• sharing only the information necessary with authorised editors, reviewers, service providers, registries, preservation services, and indexers.

5. Published personal information

Author names, affiliations, countries, ORCID iDs, correspondence details where designated, contribution statements, funding, conflicts, ethics declarations, and article metadata may be published as part of the scholarly record. Authors must not include unnecessary personal information about participants or third parties.

Reviewer identities remain confidential under double-blind review unless the journal and reviewer explicitly adopt another arrangement for a specific publication.

6. Retention, security, and rights

• access is limited according to editorial and administrative roles;
• reasonable technical and organisational safeguards are used to prevent unauthorised access, loss, alteration, or disclosure;
• records are retained as long as necessary for journal operation, scholarly integrity, legal obligations, disputes, and preservation;
• registered users may request access, correction, or deletion of personal data, subject to legal, security, and scholarly-record limitations;
• published scholarly metadata or integrity records may not be deleted when retention is necessary to preserve the record.

7. Website logs, cookies, and third-party services

The website may use essential cookies, server logs, security services, analytics, DOI registration, email delivery, indexing, and preservation providers. Only services necessary for operation, security, discoverability, or improvement should be used, and personal data should be minimised.

8. Privacy concerns and incidents

Privacy requests or suspected data incidents should be reported through the official contact page. The journal will assess scope, protect affected records, notify relevant parties where required, and document corrective action.

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