Privacy Statement

The Bulletin of Legal Medicine recognizes the importance of protecting the privacy of information provided by members and visitors of our web site. We have constituted this privacy statement in order to explain about the types of information we might collect about you, how we may use it, and to address your concerns.

About us
This website at www.adlitipbulteni.com is owned and operated by the Association of Forensic Medicine Specialists. Principal activities of the Association of Forensic Medicine Specialists could be mentioned as holding meetings, conferences or congresses, and publishing scientific journals. This privacy statement relates solely to the online information collection and use practices of our web site located at www.adlitipbulteni.com, and not to any subdomains of this web site.

Website Usage
The use of this website indicates to us that you have read and accept our privacy practices, as outlined in this privacy statement. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our privacy policy, please contact: privacy@adlitipbulteni.com

In general, you may visit the BLM Journal website without identifying yourself or revealing any personal information. As you use the site, the site records the IP address of your computer, and other standard tracking data that the Journal use to evaluate site traffic and usage patterns. This information is aggregated with tracking data from all site visitors and is used to get demographic information about visitors and which sections or articles of the journal they are interested.

Information Collection and Use
We collect information from you in several different ways. Specifically, we collect information directly from you (during registration), from our web server logs and through cookies or other tools that collect information about your utilization of the site. 

Personal Information Collection
Registration and login are required to submit items online and to check the status of current submissions. Likewise, the reviewers are selected among the members of the advisory board, and they need to log in to the journal website in order to make a peer review. During registration, users are required to give their contact information (such as name, e-mail address, mailing address and phone number). We also collect demographic information (such as job title and company information). For internal purposes, we use this information to communicate with users and provide requested services.

Non-Personal Information Collection
Our web server automatically recognizes and collects the domain name and IP address of visitors to our web sites as part of its analysis of the use of this site. This information is only collected by reference to the IP address that you are using, but does include information about the county and city you are in, together with the name of your internet service provider. These data may also include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our Web Site, the referring search engine, and the Web sites visited just before and just after our Web Site. These data enable us to become more familiar with whom visit our site, how often they visit, and what parts of the site they visit most often. In addition, we collect aggregate tracking information derived mainly from tallying page views throughout our site. This information is collected automatically and requires no action on your part.

Cookies
We use "cookies," a special type of file which is put on the user's hard drive by the browser, and contains information about the user. Cookies benefit the user by requiring login only once, thereby saving time while on the journal web site. It tells us when a computer that has previously visited our site returns, and it identifies your computer's browser and operating system to help us make the best connection. If users reject the cookies, they may be limited in the use of some areas of our site. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. They are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a Web server in the domain that issued the cookie.  In brief, cookies are required to log in to the journal web site, verify the identity of returning visitors, and maintain session status of the users.

Publication ethics
The Bulletin of Legal Medicine is committed to practice the publication ethics and takes all possible measures against any publication malpractices. All authors submitting their works to the journal for publication as original articles attest that the submitted works represent their authors' contributions and have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or in part from other works. The authors acknowledge that they have disclosed all and any actual or potential conflicts of interest with their work or partial benefits associated with it. In the same manner, The Bulletin of Legal Medicine is committed to objective and fair double-blind peer-review of the submitted for publication works and to prevent any actual or potential conflict of interests between the editorial and review personnel and the reviewed material. Details on this subject have been explained in the authors guide and reviewers guide respectively.

COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers
Basic principles to which peer reviewers should adhere

Peer reviewers should:

• only agree to review manuscripts for which they have the subject expertise required to carry out a proper assessment and which they can assess in a timely manner

• respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the journal

• not use information obtained during the peer-review process for their own or any other person's or organization's advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others

• declare all potential conflicting interests, seeking advice from the journal if they are unsure whether something constitutes a relevant interest

• not allow their reviews to be influenced by the origins of a manuscript, by the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, or by commercial considerations

• be objective and constructive in their reviews, refraining from being hostile or inflammatory and from making libelous or derogatory personal comments

• acknowledge that peer review is largely a reciprocal endeavor and undertake to carry out their fair share of reviewing and in a timely manner

• provide journal with personal and professional information that is accurate and a true representation of their expertise

• recognize that impersonation of another individual during the review process is considered serious misconduct

Communication
Just after the registration, we send a welcoming message containing username and password. If not registered else, all new users are assigned the author role, and might submit their manuscript just after registration. The reviewer role is assigned to the users upon their request, following the approval of the Editorial board.

When relevant to them, the authors or reviewers are notified by email at every step during submission and review of a manuscript. An email is usually sent to the registered users of the Journal Web site when the journal publishes a new issue.

You may also communicate with us for account-related issues via e-mail or phone. The information regarding support contact has been provided in the Contact section of the about pages.

Security
We use reasonable precautions to protect our users' personal information and to store it securely. Access to all of our users' information, not just the sensitive information mentioned above, is restricted. The users require both a personal username (log-in name) and a password in order to access their Personally Identifiable Information and make any changes on them. Your password is saved in the encrypted form at database level, so we cannot recover your password as it was recorded. In case of forgetting your password, you need to request a new one, and a reset link will be sent to your registered email address.

However, you are responsible for keeping any confidential passwords or other login or access details which you select or which we allocate to you secret. Despite our efforts to ensure the security of your information, there is always some risk that any information transmitted over the Internet and stored on a computer may be intercepted or accessed by an unauthorized party. If you are using a public computer, you should never save passwords on that computer, and immediately log out after finishing your job. If you think that someone has accessed your information held by us without your permission or gained unauthorized access to your login details, you must notify us at support@adlitipbulteni.com

Links
Our website might contain links to other sites. The Journal is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of such external sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each website to which we may link that may collect personally identifiable information.

Notification and Changes
The Journal reserves the right to change, revise or update this privacy policy by posting changes on this page of The Journal website at any time. This Privacy Statement was last revised and is effective as of March 11, 2017

Updating your information
If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as affiliation or academic degree), the user can log in using his/her username and password, and may make necessary changes on his/her personal information. 

Disclosure to Third Parties

We maintain this information as private to the best of our ability. Personal information you provide us with (such as your name and postal address or email address) will be used by us for correspondence only or for the purposes for which you gave us the information. The Journal does not sell email addresses of registered users, share user information with an advertiser or another web site. We treat our readers' information as private and confidential, and we will not disclose your data to third parties without your express permission or unless required by law.

Contact us
The use of this website indicates to us that you have read and accept our privacy practices, as outlined in this privacy statement. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our privacy policy, please contact: privacy@adlitipbulteni.com