Privacy

Draft of 6 November 2026, to be confirmed by the site operator. Items in [brackets] are still open.

This notice explains what personal data sustainablemetallurgy.org collects, why, how long we keep it and what you can do about it. We collect as little as we can: the site has no advertising, no analytics and no tracking cookies.

Who is responsible

The site is run by [legal name of the operator, e.g. SM Media BV, on behalf of the Sustainable Metallurgy Association], [postal address]. For anything about your data, write to [privacy@sustainablemetallurgy.org] or use the contact form.

What we collect and why

• Member account. Your name, email address, password (stored only in scrambled form), affiliation and, if you give it, your ORCID iD. We use them to run your account and to sign what you publish here (comments, opinion pieces, working-group posts). Legal basis: our agreement with you when you join (the terms).
• Sign in with ORCID. If you connect your ORCID iD, ORCID tells us your iD and name and confirms that the iD is yours. We receive nothing else from your ORCID record. ORCID's own privacy policy covers what happens on orcid.org.
• Comments and contributions. What you write is public under your name, except preprint comments you choose to post anonymously: those show "Anonymous reviewer", but the editors can see who wrote them. Opinion pieces, preprint submissions and working-group proposals are read by the editors before anything is published. Legal basis: our agreement with you.
• Working groups. If you join a group, its chair and the editors see that you are a member, and you receive the group's updates by email.
• Newsletter. Your email address and, if you give it, your first name. You receive the newsletter only after you click the link in our confirmation email, and every issue has an unsubscribe link. We do not track who opens the newsletter or clicks its links. Legal basis: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• Contact form. Your name, email address and message, kept so the editors can answer. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in answering you.
• Spam protection. Forms that visitors can send use Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that a person, not a program, is sending them. For that check Cloudflare processes your IP address and technical details of your browser; it sets no cookies. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the site free of spam. See Cloudflare's Turnstile privacy notice. Signed-in members do not see the check.
• Server logs and security. Like every website, our server records the IP address, time and page of each request. We use these records only for security (for example, to block an address after repeated failed logins) and to fix problems. They are deleted after [14] days. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a secure site.

We never sell your data and do not use it for advertising. The fonts are served from our own server, so viewing the site does not send your address to font services.

Who else sees your data

• Our hosting company, [Papaki, Greece], which stores the site and its database in the European Union.
• Cloudflare, for the spam check described above.
• [The email delivery service used for the newsletter, if any.]

They act on our instructions only. Public contributions are, by their nature, visible to everyone.

How long we keep it

• Account data: until you delete your account.
• Newsletter: until you unsubscribe. Sign-ups never confirmed are removed after [30] days.
• Contact messages: as long as needed to answer and follow up, and no longer than [two years].
• Published contributions stay published, as part of the public record of the discussion. When you delete your account, your comments stay without your name.

Your rights

You can see and correct your profile in your member area, and delete your account there at any time; this also removes you from the newsletter. You also have the right to ask us for a copy of your data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to its use, and to receive it in a portable format. Write to [privacy@sustainablemetallurgy.org]; we answer within one month. If you think we handle your data wrongly, you can complain to a data protection authority, for example [the authority of the operator's country].

Cookies

We use only the cookies needed to keep you signed in. See the cookies page.

Changes

If we change how we use personal data, we update this page and, for important changes, tell members by email. Last updated: [date].