Privacy Statement

At IFIS, we are committed to your right to privacy.

The following privacy statement applies to www.ifis.org and www.ifiscollections.org, and it outlines how IFIS collects, uses, and safeguards personal information, including for:

  • Visitors to the IFIS website
  • Visitors to the IFIS website
  • Users of our services, including free emails/e-newsletters/blog subscriptions and whitepaper/ebook/article downloads
  • Applicants for free trials

By using the IFIS and IFIS Collections websites, you consent to the statements in the privacy statement.

1. Important information

1.1. Changes to the privacy statement

This privacy statement may be updated occasionally, and as such, we encourage you to periodically visit this page to review potential changes to ensure that you are aware of how we collect, use, and store personal information, where applicable. We have copies of previous privacy policies on file, should you wish to review in the future. Continued use of the website and provision of personal information is subject to the terms of the then-current privacy statement.

1.2 Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about the privacy statement, please contact us at support@ifis.org or the relevant contact below:

Data Protection Champion

Rhianna Gamble, Head of Marketing and Engagement

Data Controllers

2. Information we collect

2.1. When you visit our websites

You are able to explore the IFIS website without providing any information about yourself. When you carry out specific activities such as requesting product trials or pricing, downloading materials, or asking us to contact you, we request that you provide relevant personal information about yourself. We also collect navigational information about pages visited within www.ifis.orgwww.ifiscollections.org and our other online tools.

2.2. Personal information

Via online forms, you are prompted to enter various pieces of information in order to identify yourself. The data collected is strictly voluntary. However, not providing certain information may affect your ability to use our site and/or our ability to process any requests or orders you may place.

You may be asked to provide some personal data, depending on the service, such as:

  • First name
  • Last name
  • Company/University Name
  • Job Title/Occupation
  • Email
  • Phone Number

Personal information stored can also include content downloads, and information about you that is publicly available online, such as from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, or publicly available information that we acquire from service providers.

We do not gather information about paid transactions or financial information through the IFIS website. Subscription information, including transaction records, are stored in Sage and HubSpot. Credit card payments are processed through the Stripe platform.

2.3. Navigational information

After visitors to www.ifis.org have completed a form and become a contact in our database, we receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. This refers to information about your computer and visits to www.ifis.org only, such as:

  • Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet
  • Geographical location
  • Browser type
  • Referral source
  • Length of visit
  • Date and time of visit
  • Pages viewed and searched for
2.4. Use of the email subscription service

We have used HubSpot to build webpages where visitors can learn more about IFIS, download content, request product trials and pricing, and provide their contact and demographic information.

This information is stored within the secure HubSpot system and we use it to contact visitors about their interest in our products and services, for marketing and lead generation purposes. In our agreement with HubSpot, HubSpot has no ownership over the information and cannot use the information for marketing or lead generation.

2.5. Children

Our websites and resources are not intended for use by children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information about children under the age of 16. If you believe we have collected personal information about a child under the age of 16, please contact us at support@ifis.org so that we can investigate and delete if needed.

2.6. IFIS Collections

The IFIS Collections databases (www.ifiscollections.org) are hosted on the Silverchair platform. The Silverchair admin console is used for user management. Visit Silverchair's Privacy Policy for information on their privacy practices.

To supply a user with individual access to any of the IFIS Collections databases, we create a username and password using the Silverchair admin console. We provide this to the user by email. We instruct the individual to change the password to a password of their choice when they log in, for security purposes.

Please see the IFIS Collections Terms of Use for more information.

2.7. The Nutrition Society

On a monthly basis, we are supplied with a list of membership numbers by The Nutrition Society, in order to verify eligibility for free and discounted access to the Nutritional Science collection. These do not include any personal identifiers (such as names and email addresses). If we need to confirm that a person is a current member of The Nutrition Society, we will ask the individual for permission for us to share personal information with the Society for this specific purpose. 

3. How we use the information we collect

3.1. Compliance with our privacy statement

We use the information we collect only in compliance with this privacy statement.

3.2. We never sell personal information

We will not under any circumstance sell, trade, or rent your personal information to a third party without your specific permission to do so.

3.3. Use of personal information

In addition to the uses identified elsewhere in this privacy statement, we may use your personal information to:

  • Allow you to purchase a product
  • Allow you to sign up for a free product trial
  • Provide you with access details for IFIS Collections on Silverchair
  • Request feedback from you
  • Improve the browsing experience through personalisation of the websites
  • Enable us to carry out internal analyses of customer types, customer and organisation locations, and organisation types
  • Send information to you which we think may be of interest to you by post, email, or other means
  • Send you marketing communications relating to our business, in accordance with your communication preferences and/or in our legitimate interest when not overridden by your data protection interests

If we collect and use your personal information under our legitimate interests, we will make it clear how the information was collected and what our legitimate interests are. 

The information you provide or we obtain from you via the websites will be held primarily by IFIS.

3.4 Transfer of personal information outside of the EU

Where you have explicitly requested information about a trial or pricing of FSTA, we will share the necessary personal data with the third party vendor of the platform, based on your request. The partner is not allowed to use the data for any other purposes than to fulfil your request, and they are required to safeguard your personal information. These partners include Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science), EBSCO (EBSCOhost), Proquest (ProQuest Dialog), STN and Wolters Kluwer (Ovid).

Please contact us at support@ifis.org if you have any questions about processes and/or data security, and we will be happy to share more details. 

3.5. Use of navigational information

We use navigational information to operate and improve the IFIS website, based on visitor behaviour and needs. We may also use this information to provide you with personalised information.

3.6. Customer testimonials and comments

We post customer testimonials and comments on the IFIS website, which may contain their name and institution. We obtain each customer's consent via email prior to posting this information.

3.7. Blog

We offer a publicly accessible comment facility on our blog posts. Please bear in mind that any information you disclose on this facility may be collected and used by others.

3.8. Security of your personal information

Your personal information is stored on HubSpot's service providers' servers, protected from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For more information about HubSpot's privacy statement and security, please go to www.hubspot.com/legal/privacy-policy and www.hubspot.com/security.

3.9. Social media features

Our website includes social media features, such as the Facebook 'Like' button and 'Share This' button. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our sites, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features are hosted directly on our website, and this privacy statement does not apply to these features. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy statement and other policies of the companies providing them.

3.10. External websites

Our website provides links to other websites, which we believe may be of interest to visitors to www.ifis.org. Our provision of external links does not constitute our endorsement of these other websites, their content, their owners, or their practices.

Our privacy statement applies solely to information collected by IFIS via our website. This privacy statement does not apply to these other websites, which are subject to their own privacy and other policies.

3.11. Retention of personal information

The length of time for which we retain personal information varies depending on the type of information. 

We retain personal information that you provide us as long as we have a legitimate business reason to do so, such as to contact you about our products and to comply with legal obligations. For example, we retain transaction data for six years, plus the current year, which is a legal requirement. 

When we no longer have a legitimate business reason to retain your personal data, we securely delete or anonymise the information. 

Please contact us at support@ifis.org if you wish to request your information to be deleted from our servers. See Section 5 for more details. 

If you have opted in to receive marketing communications from us (such as blog and product updates), we retain your personal information and marketing preferences for two years from when you last expressed interest in our products and services; such as when you last opened an email from us or viewed a webpage. 

3.12. Compelled disclosure

We reserve the right to use or disclose your personal information if required by law or if we reasonably believe that use or disclosure is necessary to protect our rights or to comply with a law, court order, or legal process.

4. Navigational Information

4.1. Cookies

Like many other commercial websites, we use cookies. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web server. Cookies are not used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Only the website where the cookie was setup can read the cookie.

Cookies enable our website to recognise personally identifiable information you have voluntarily given us. This may be used to present you with custom web pages, or to save you time; for example, if you download a whitepaper, a cookie helps us to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. When you return to www.ifis.org, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, saving you time.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies, if you prefer.

4.2. Clear gifs (web beacons/web bugs)

We employ a software technology called clear gifs, that help us better manage www.ifis.org by informing us what content is effective. Clear gifs are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user's computer hard drive, clear gifs are embedded invisibly on web pages or in emails and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

We use clear gifs in HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. We tie the information gathered by clear gifs in emails to our customers' personal information.

If you would like to opt-out of these emails, please use the 'unsubscribe' functionality on the bottom of our emails, or contact support@ifis.org with your request.

5. How to access and control your personal information

5.1. Reviewing, correcting, and removing your personal information

If you provide us with your personal information, you have the following rights with respect to that information:

  • To review the information that you have supplied to us
  • To request that we correct any errors, outdated information, or omissions in information that you have supplied to us
  • To request that your information not be used to contact you
  • To request that your information be removed from any solicitation list that we use
  • To request that your information be deleted from our records

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at support@ifis.org or by mail to IFIS, Ground Floor, 115 Wharfedale Rd, Winnersh, Wokingham, RG41 5RB, Attention: Privacy. We will promptly change, correct, or delete your information, and notify you of the action we have taken.

5.2. To unsubscribe from our communications

You may unsubscribe from our marketing communications by:

  • Clicking on the 'unsubscribe' link located on the bottom of our emails
  • Sending us an email at support@ifis.org
  • Sending us postal mail to IFIS, Ground Floor, 115 Wharfedale Rd, Winnersh, Wokingham, RG41 5RB, Attention: Privacy

Customers cannot opt out of receiving transactional emails related to their account with us or third-party vendors.