Following the recommendations of Prof. Dr Petra Gehring, topical editor of ing.grid, and also in conformity with DFG recommendations on scientist tracking, we took some actions to improve the policy of the journal. These are the steps taken by ing.grid:

1 - The use of ORCID and ROR are no longer required for submitting to the journal.

2 -The developers of Janeway, the publishing platform ing.grid relies on, vehemently believe in General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) and have once again stressed that they will continue to follow it, regardless of whether it remains in force beyond the exit of the UK from the EU or not.

3- Besides that, the University and State Library of Darmstadt (ULB), responsible for TUjournals, in which ing.grid is hosted, and OLH/Janeway agreed on a new section being added to section 1.3.1 of the Hosting Agreement, addressing the issue of scientist tracking:

  [...] specifically OLH shall not track usage data that allows conclusions about reading or download history of individual readers except in the event of demonstrable misuse of Services.

These actions are in line with our statement of keeping research transparent and ethical for all the people involved in it, and also reinforce that ing.grid is committed to data protection and the privacy of our community. We are especially grateful to our publishers at ULB and the developers of Janeway who provide the publishing platform for their support.

In case of questions regarding any of these steps, the community is welcome to contact the managing editors.

Tags  

FAIR Data Open Review Process Engineering Sciences Scientist tracking Privacy Policy OA Diamond journal Open Access Research transparency