To create an account on Humanities Commons, you must provide us with information that verifies your identity and handles your log-in process. That verification and log-in process can be managed by a trusted source such as your university or a social identity provider such as Google or Twitter, or you can provide the information directly to our servers. We then use that information to determine the areas within the network to which you should be provided access. In what follows, we describe each of those scenarios, and how we use the information that we receive. No other user information sent by an identity provider will be collected or stored during the authentication process.
i. Google. When you use Google to create and authenticate your account, the log-in process takes place on Google’s servers. Humanities Commons receives the following information:
That information is recorded in our user database, but only your Google identifier is used to connect to your account. Google may send additional information, including your Google profile URL, your profile picture, and your name; this information is not recorded and is not used by Humanities Commons.
ii. Twitter. When you use Twitter to create and authenticate your account, the log-in process takes place on Twitter’s servers. Humanities Commons receives the following information:
Your Twitter identifier is recorded in our user database and is used to connect to your account. Your screen name is not recorded and is not used by Humanities Commons.
iii. Your Institution. When you use your institution’s identity provision service to create and authenticate your account, the log-in process takes place on your institution’s servers. Institutional identity providers federate with Humanities Commons through their membership in InCommon and eduGAIN. Humanities Commons, as a registrant in the REFEDs Research and Scholarship Entity Category, receives the following information:
Your institution may additionally send your affiliation (i.e., staff, student, faculty member). Your shared user identifier is recorded in our user database and is used to connect to your account. Your name and e-mail address are not recorded and are not used by Humanities Commons.
iv. Our Servers. When you opt to create a log-in identity on the Humanities Commons servers in order to create and authenticate your Commons account, we require you to give us the following information:
Your HC identifier is recorded in our user database and is used to connect to your account. We store your HC identifier and password to authenticate the account, and we store your e-mail address to allow you to reset your password.
When you register (and periodically thereafter), we will check to see if you have a membership in a Participating Society by searching for your e-mail address in its membership database. If you are a member of a Participating Society, Humanities Commons may retrieve the following information from your Society membership record:
If this information is retrieved, we will use your full name associated with your Society membership to create your account, and your full name, position, and institutional affiliation, if any, will be made publicly visible on your Humanities Commons account profile (“Profile”). Information about your membership in any official Society groups will be used to automatically place you into the associated groups on Humanities Commons. Except as provided in this Privacy Statement, the rest of the information taken from your Society membership record is used only for our authentication, debugging, and other internal purposes and will not be shared with any third parties.
Humanities Commons is a professional scholarly network designed to promote collaboration and discussion among scholars, students, and practitioners in humanities fields, as well as dissemination of members’ work to the broader intellectual community online, and as such, it counts openness among its primary values. The purpose of the MLA and the Participating Societies in collecting User Information is to operate Humanities Commons and allow our members to connect and interact with one another. As a result, much of your activity and communication that takes place within Humanities Commons is openly visible to any visitor to Humanities Commons, whether or not the visitor is a Commons member or is logged in, and is likewise visible to search engines. This section describes how certain User Information will be made available on Humanities Commons.
You may choose to provide information to complete additional fields in your Profile. Any such User Information you volunteer for your Profile, such as your photo, your professional history, your Twitter username, your ORCID identifier, your interests, status updates, and your Web site URL, will also be visible to any visitor to Humanities Commons, whether or not the visitor is a Network member or is logged in. If you do not wish to share this User Information, do not add it to your Profile. Please do not post any personal identification numbers or other private information not required for registering for or using the Network.
Similarly, except as specifically described below, all of your activity on Humanities Commons will be viewable by any visitor to Humanities Commons, including through your Profile, whether or not the visitor is a Network member or is logged in.
Limited portions of your activities on Humanities Commons are private. Your activity in these sections will not be publicly visible in your Profile, and only certain other Humanities Commons users, as described below, will be able to see this activity.
(a) Private and Hidden Groups. Humanities Commons allows Commons members to create private and hidden groups, in addition to public groups. All Network visitors can see that a private group exists, and membership in those groups is visible in their members’ profiles, but only Commons members who have been permitted to join a private group by the administrator of the group will be able to see other Commons members’ activity in the group. Hidden groups are similar, except that only Commons members who have been invited to join the group can see that the hidden group exists, and membership in hidden groups is not publicly visible in their members’ profiles.
(b) Restricted Sites. Humanities Commons allows Commons members to restrict access to sites they have created or administer; only those Commons members identified by the site administrator will be able to see the content posted on the sites, though the administration of the site will be visible in the administrator’s profile.
(c) Private Messages. The Network allows Commons members to send private messages to other Commons members; these messages and the fact that Commons members have sent or received them will not be viewable by anyone except the sender and the recipient.
If you create a site or group on the Commons, that space is still subject to the policies and guidelines that govern the network as a whole, and you as owner/moderator are responsible for complying with relevant policies, including policies related to visitors’ personal data.
We may use your User Information to send you important messages about the Network through e-mail or through other means available through Humanities Commons. For example, we may send you important messages about the operation of Humanities Commons (e.g., if we add or change Network functionality or change our Terms of Service or this Privacy Statement). Other e-mail preferences can be set in a member’s Settings.
Like most Web sites, Humanities Commons uses cookies and may use other technology that obtains nonpersonal data (“Nonpersonal Data”) from visitors. For instance, we use cookies during the registration and log-in processes or to remember certain preferences. This data may include browser type, IP address, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. You can remove or block cookies using the settings in your browser, though doing so may affect your ability to use the Network.
While we use Google Analytics to assess aggregate statistics about the Network’s traffic, we do not enable Google Analytics to record IP addresses or other identifying personal information from visitors.
We may use Nonpersonal Data to help diagnose and repair issues with your use of the Network, administer the Network, monitor Network usage, provide customization options, understand how our visitors use Humanities Commons, make decisions about how to change and adapt the Network, and create anonymous Network statistics. From time to time, we may release Nonpersonal Data in aggregate form (for instance, by publishing trends in Network usage). We will not release individual information, only aggregate information.
Our server logs record information about visits to the site, which we keep for a period of time in case we need to investigate an error, help a user fix a problem, or review how the site is being used. These logs are retained in accordance with our data retention policy (see below).
Sites created by members of the Commons may include embedded content or use plug-ins that may collect personal data of visitors. Please be aware, when you visit such a site, that your personal data could be collected in one of the following ways:
You can review the information you provided for your Profile and make changes to that information at any time by clicking on the “Edit My Profile” link on your Profile or in the navigation bar drop-down menu below your name in the top right corner of every page of the Site. After your change is processed, the MLA may retain residual copies of the old information in its backup and archival copies of its database for a limited period of time.
If you believe that other personal data of yours are inaccurate or incomplete in our records, please contact us and we will correct it.
You can control the e-mails you receive by selecting your preferences on the E-mail page of your Settings.
You have the right to request a copy of your personal data. To do so, contact us in writing at hello@hcommons.org (or by mail at the address below). Please make clear that you are requesting a copy of your personal data. You may need to prove your identity with an e-mail confirmation or otherwise verify your identity. We will provide the data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.
If you wish to close your account, please contact us at hello@hcommons.org. We will delete or anonymize all information associated with your account in a timely matter, so long as there is no legal obligation to retain it for longer. You may need to prove your identity with an e-mail confirmation or otherwise verify your identity.
Please note that, to maintain the continuity and integrity of the discussions, groups, and other interactive features on Humanities Commons, your submissions to those sections will not be removed in connection with the closing of your account, though your identifying User Information will be removed from them. If you ever wish to use the social-networking features of the Network again, you will need to resubmit all information associated with your account and reestablish all connections with other Commons members.
Other visitors may request we erase their personal data by contacting us in writing. We will delete or anonymize all personal data in a timely matter, so long as there is no legal obligation to retain it for longer. You may need to verify your identity.
We hope you will contact us with any questions or complaints in relation to how we process your personal data. However, you do have the right to contact the relevant supervisory authority directly.