Privacy Notice: Early-Career Advisory Group applicant demographic data

We are committed to forming and empowering communities within eLife that reflect the diversity of the international research communities that we serve. As we seek to balance the representation of different career stages, genders and geographies in the group, we collect relevant data to shortlist candidates within relevant quotas.

We also collect demographic information about other individual characteristics to enable us to monitor the participation and experiences of different groups that our programmes are open to. Our collection, storage and processing of this data is based on your explicit consent, and you are under no obligation to provide any of this data.

The information we hold is that supplied by you via the Early-Career Advisory Group Application Form. To be considered for the ECAG elections, you will be required to provide your name and contact details, as well as information about your geographic location and career stage.

In addition to the above, if you’re comfortable to do so – we encourage you to include information related to your gender, disability and long-term health conditions status, ethnicity, neurodiversity status, family educational background, and sexual orientation.

We share this data with eLife staff and the current members of the ECAG, and with organisations required to deliver our services (such as data storage companies). It is never disclosed to other organisations for them to use for other purposes, nor to the journal editors, reviewers or other researchers not involved in the recruitment process.

Some of these individuals and organisations are outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

We will prepare an aggregated report on all received applications from the individual data in a way that does not allow any individual to be identified, and we may share it widely with staff, editors and the public.

We safeguard your data using appropriate administrative, physical and technical security measures.

When we share your data with others, we have contractual arrangements with them that oblige them to safeguard the data, to use it only for the purposes we have requested, and not to disclose it to any other parties without our consent.

The form of these contractual arrangements varies according to the location of the other party, and we employ stronger safeguards for parties outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

We will keep contact information and the application from candidates for up to 2 years.

The demographic data in the 'More about you' section will be reviewed by the current ECAG members and the Community team staff only to aid the application, shortlisting and election process, and will be deleted 3 months after the elections. Prior to deletion, aggregate data will be used to create a report about applications received in the process, as mentioned in the section about the use of your personal data.

You may request a copy of any personal data eLife holds about you, and request to have any incorrect data corrected.

You may object to us processing your data, and may ask us to erase your data.

You may also ask us to stop processing your data in certain specific circumstances.

To exercise these rights please contact data@elifesciences.org.

You may complain about our retention and processing of your personal data to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the supervisory authority for data protection issues in England and Wales.

For more information related to our data policy, please visit https://elifesciences.org/privacy.

March 26, 2024: Revised to improve formating and remove reference to specific years.

April 13, 2023: Revised to add family educational background as a type of data held and to remove a link to a previous application form.