Privacy & Data Protection Policy

Research Book Foundation ("we", "us", or "our") is dedicated to protecting the privacy, confidentiality, and data integrity of all researchers, academicians, students, authors, reviewers, and institutional members who utilize our academic portal, digital library (DLIB), and Journal Management System (JMS).

This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, process, store, and safeguard your personal data in accordance with India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act), the Information Technology Act 2000, and global scholarly publishing ethical norms.

1. Personal Data We Collect

We collect only the personal information necessary to deliver educational, scholarly publishing, and research analytics services:

• Account Identification Data: Full name, institutional email address, phone number, institutional affiliation/department, ORCID identifier, and account credentials.
• Academic & Authorship Data: Research manuscripts, contributor lists, co-author affiliations, peer-review comments, and publication records.
• Subscription & Transaction Details: Billing address, plan tier, transaction IDs, and invoice records processed via secure PCI-DSS compliant gateways (Stripe, Cashfree). We do not store complete credit card or debit card numbers on our servers.
• Technical & Telemetry Data: IP addresses, browser fingerprint, session cookies, and timestamped audit logs for digital rights management (DRM) and license validation.

2. Lawful Grounds & Purposes of Processing

We process personal data based on your explicit consent, contractual performance, and legitimate academic publishing purposes:

• Providing access to digital book collections, interactive tools, and the academic performance indicator (API) calculator.
• Facilitating double-blind peer review, editorial management, and Crossref/Zenodo DOI registration.
• Verifying student/faculty memberships against institutional site licenses.
• Preventing platform abuse, multi-device credential sharing, and unauthorized bulk scraping.

3. Data Protection Principles (DPDP Act 2023)

In adherence to statutory data protection standards:

• Purpose Limitation: Personal data is processed solely for specified educational and publishing purposes and never sold, leased, or rented to third-party marketing brokers.
• Storage Limitation: Inactive accounts and transient scratch files are automatically purged pursuant to institutional retention schedules.
• Data Minimization: Reviewers and editors only receive data essential for blind scholarly evaluation.

4. Your Rights as a Data Principal

Under Chapter III of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, you have the right to:

• Right to Access Information: Request a summary of your personal data processed by us and the processing activities undertaken.
• Right to Correction & Erasure: Request the correction of misleading or outdated data, or the deletion of your account (subject to statutory archiving obligations for published scientific literature).
• Right to Grievance Redressal: Access readily available mechanisms for filing grievances regarding data handling.
• Right to Nominate: Nominate an individual to exercise your rights in the event of incapacity.

5. Security Safeguards & Data Transfers

We employ enterprise-grade security controls including 256-bit TLS/SSL encryption in transit, cryptographic password hashing, access-controlled role permissions, and regular vulnerability scanning. All database backups and manuscript repositories are securely hosted within authorized cloud infrastructure.

6. Grievance Redressal & Data Protection Officer

If you have inquiries, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal data rights, please contact our designated Grievance Officer: