Privacy Policy and Terms

Terms of use

These terms of use (together with the documents referred to on it) (Terms) set out the terms for use of the Animal Welfare Research Network (AWRN) website (our/the site), which apply to all visitors to our site. Please read these terms of use carefully before you start to use the site. By using our site, you indicate that you accept these Terms and that you agree to abide by them. If you do not agree to these Terms, please refrain from using our site.

Our site is operated by AWRN (we or us). AWRN is run by staff based at University of Bristol, Langford House, Bristol, BS40 5DU. For more information about AWRN see About us.

Accessing our site

Access to our site is permitted on a temporary basis, and we reserve the right to withdraw or amend the service we provide on our site without notice (see below). We will not be liable if for any reason our site is unavailable at any time or for any period.

From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of our site, or our entire site, to users who have registered with us.

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any third party. We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these Terms.

When using our site, you must comply with the provisions of our acceptable use policy as outlined below, as well as our blog rules when using the Blog or Forum section of the site.

You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to our site. You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our site through your internet connection are aware of these terms, and that they comply with them.

Intellectual property rights

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our site, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.

You may print off one copy, and may download extracts, of any page(s) from our site for your personal reference and you may draw the attention of others within your organisation to material posted on our site.

Copyright material from our site may be reproduced in print or electronically for educational and research purposes provided that:

you seek our permission in advance
the source is clearly credited
you do not alter the text or images nor separate images from accompanying text
you retain the full context of any document, text or image

You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.

Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of material on our site must always be acknowledged.

You must not use any part of the materials on our site for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors.

If you print off, copy or download any part of our site in breach of these Terms, your right to use our site will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.

Use of images

Unless otherwise noted, all images (GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF or other formats) on the AWRN website are the copyright of AWRN.

Images must not be downloaded, reproduced or retransmitted from this website, and while images may be used for personal use, prior consent must be obtained from AWRN.

If you believe that any material on the Site infringes upon any copyright that you own or control, please contact the awrn-manager@bristol.ac.uk

Reliance on information posted

Commentary and other materials posted on our site are not intended to amount to advice on which reliance should be placed. We therefore disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by any visitor to our site, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents, to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Our site changes regularly

We aim to update our site regularly, and may change the content at any time. If the need arises, we may suspend access to our site, or close it indefinitely. Any of the material on our site may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update such material.

Our liability

The material displayed on our site is provided without any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to its accuracy. To the extent permitted by law we and any third parties connected to us hereby expressly exclude:

All conditions, warranties and other terms which might otherwise be implied by statute, common law or the law of equity
Any liability for any direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage incurred by any user in connection with our site or in connection with the use, inability to use, or results of the use of our site, any websites linked to it and any materials posted on it, including, without limitation any liability for:
- loss of income or revenue
- loss of business
- loss of profits or contracts
- loss of anticipated savings
- loss of data
- loss of goodwill
- wasted management or office time; and
- for any other loss or damage of any kind, however arising and whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise, even if foreseeable

This does not affect our liability for death or personal injury arising from our negligence, nor our liability for fraudulent misrepresentation or misrepresentation as to a fundamental matter, nor any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Information about you and your visits to our site

We process information about you in accordance with our privacy policy. By using our site, you consent to such processing and you warrant that all data provided by you is accurate.

You may contact us at any time to request a copy of all the data we have on file about you, or to ask us to delete the information we store. We may need to verify your identity, and once we have done so we will complete your request within 30 days. You can also request we stop processing your information at any time. If you would like us to update the data we have on file about you, you can again contact us or for an immediate result you can log in to your account and update your information there.

We never sell your data to 3rd parties, and will tell you if ever we need to share it with other companies in order to carry out the running of our service. Our web developers and hosting company have access to your data but will not need to process it other than when requested by us in order to keep the site operational.

Uploading material to our site

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload material to our site, or to make contact with other users of our site, you must comply with the content standards set out in our acceptable use policy. You warrant that any such contribution does comply with those standards, and you indemnify us for any breach of that warranty.

Any material you upload to our site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary, and we have the right to use, edit, copy, distribute and disclose to third parties any such material for any purpose. We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any material posted or uploaded by you to our site constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any materials posted by you or any other user of our site.

We have the right to remove any material or posting you make on our site if, in our opinion, such material does not comply with the content standards set out in our acceptable use policy.

Acceptable Use Policy

Prohibited uses

You may use our site only for lawful purposes. You may not use our site:

In any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation
In any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect
For the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way
To send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with our content standards
To transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam)

You also agree:

Not to reproduce, duplicate, copy or re-sell any part of our site (except as otherwise provided for in these Terms)
Not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:
- any part of our site
- any equipment or network on which our site is stored
- any software used in the provision of our site, or
- any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party

Interactive services

We may from time to time provide interactive services on our site.

Where we do provide any interactive service, we will provide clear information to you about the kind of service offered, if it is moderated and what form of moderation is used (including whether it is human or technical).

Content standards

These content standards apply to any and all material which you contribute to our site (contributions), and to any interactive services associated with it.

You must comply with the spirit of the following standards as well as the letter. The standards apply to each part of any contribution as well as to its whole.

Contributions must:

Be accurate (where they state facts)
Be genuinely held (where they state opinions)
Be relevant
Comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted

Contributions must not:

Contain any material which is defamatory of any person
Contain any swearing or any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory
Promote sexually explicit material
Promote violence
Promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age
Infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person
Be likely to deceive any person
Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence
Promote any illegal activity
Be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety
Be likely to harass any other person
Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person
Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case
Advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse
Disclose the name, address, telephone, mobile or fax number, e-mail address or any other personal data in respect of any individual
Be in contempt of court
Contain a statement which you know or believe, or have reasonable grounds for believing, that members of the public to whom the statement is, or is to be, published are likely to understand as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism
Contain any advertising

Suspension and termination

We will determine, in our discretion, whether there has been a breach of this acceptable use policy through your use of our site. When a breach of this policy has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate.

Failure to comply with this acceptable use policy constitutes a material breach of these Terms upon which you are permitted to use our site, and may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:

Immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our site
Immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any posting or material uploaded by you to our site
Issue of a warning to you
Legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach
Further legal action against you
Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary

We exclude liability for actions taken in response to breaches of this acceptable use policy. The responses described in this policy are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

Viruses, hacking and other offences

You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack.

By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of our site or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.

Linking to our site

You may link to our site, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it, but you must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.

You must not establish a link from any website that is not owned by you.

Our site must not be framed on any other site.

We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice. The website from which you are linking must comply in all respects with the content standards set out in our acceptable use policy.

If you wish to make any use of material on our site other than that set out above, please address your request to awrn-manager@bristol.ac.uk.

Links from our site

Where our site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.

Jurisdiction and applicable law

The English courts will have exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising from, or related to, a visit to our site although we retain the right to bring proceedings against you for breach of these conditions in your country of residence or any other relevant country. These terms of use are governed by English law.

Variations

We may revise these terms of use at any time by amending this page. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we made, as they are binding on you. Some of the provisions contained in these terms of use may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on our site.

Your concerns

If you have any concerns about material which appears on our site, please contact awrn-manager@bristol.ac.uk.

Thank you for visiting our site.

Privacy policy and cookies

Animal Welfare Research Network (‘AWRN’) (we or us) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

Overview

In order to operate the Animal Welfare Research Network (‘AWRN’) website, we may collect and store personal information you submit to the AWRN via this website. Please read the following privacy policy (alongside our Terms of Use) to understand how the AWRN uses and protects the information that you provide via this website.

The AWRN is run by staff at The University of Bristol. By submitting your personal information, you are consenting to the University of Bristol and the AWRN holding and using it in accordance with this policy. The policy is subject to change and any changes to it in the future will be notified on this page. By continuing to use this website you are agreeing to such changes. We recommend that you check the privacy policy and Terms of Use each time you visit this site.

This privacy policy applies to all of the pages on the website www.awrn.co.uk.

Policy contents

1. Who we are

2. What personal data we collect

3. How we use your information

4. Cookies

5. How we handle the data submitted by you

6. Links to external websites

7. How to contact us

1. Who we are

We are the Animal Welfare Research Network (AWRN), based at The University of Bristol Veterinary School, Dolberry Building, Langford, BS40 5DU.

Our website address is: www.awrn.co.uk.

We can be contacted on: awrn-manager@bristol.ac.uk

2. What personal data we collect

The information that we may collect and process from you includes:

A. Information you give us

Information that you provide by completing forms on our website, including registration for membership, subscribing to newsletters, posting material or requesting further services (please see sections of Third Party Data Processors and Cookies).

If you contact us we may keep a copy of the correspondence.

B. Automatic Information Gathering

We automatically receive and save certain types of information whenever you interact with this website. We use this information to monitor website traffic, to assist with user experience and ensure the security of the website.

Information that may automatically be gathered includes:

– Requested URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

– IP (Internet Protocol) address (this may or may not identify a specific computer)

– Domain name from which you access the internet

– Referring URL

– Software (browser / operating system) used to access the page

– Date and time pages were visited

– Further details are given in the sections on Cookies and How we use your information.

3. How we use your information

A. Viewing of web-pages

This site uses Google Analytics to track user interaction. We may use and analyse the information we collect so that we can manage and improve the services on the website. Demographic and statistical information about user behaviour may be collected and used to analyse the popularity and effectiveness of the website. Any disclosure of this information will be in aggregate form and will not identify individual users.

Although Google Analytics records data such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, none of this information personally identifies you to us. Google Analytics also records your computer’s IP address which could be used to personally identify you but Google do not grant us access to this. Google Analytics privacy policy can be found here.

This site also uses the Wordfence firewall to protect the website from malware and hacking. Wordfence was created by Defiant and they may record details such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, this is only used to ensure the technical functionality and security of the website. The privacy policy for Defiant can be found here.

B. Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. Any videos on the website use Vimeo and their privacy policy can be found here. The blogs on the website use Soundcloud and their privacy policy can be found here.

C. Comments and Forums

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. When visitors leave comments on the site or participate in a forum, we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. This information will be shared with Akismet which is used to protect the website from annoying or harmful spam comments. Akismet was created by Automattic and their privacy policy can be found here.

D. Uploading Text and Images

If you choose to upload information regarding a Job, PhD, Recent Research Article or Funding Opportunity please note that this information will be added into the sections of the website which are publicly accessible and these will be retained indefinitely. By using one of our online forms to upload material to our website you are giving us permission to store and display that information indefinitely on our website. If you upload images to the website, you are responsible for ensuring that embedded location data (EXIF GPS) has been removed, else visitors to the website may be able to download and extract any location data from images on the website. Should you wish for us to remove any items that you have uploaded to the website, please do get in touch and we will comply as soon as we are able to do so.

E. Contact forms

If you choose to contact us using the contact form on our Contact us page the data you supply will be collated into an email and sent to us, it will not be stored on the website. reCaptcha is used on the Contact Us form to protect us from spam. You can read the privacy policy for reCaptcha here.

F. Membership application forms

If you choose to complete and submit our membership application form and provide personally identifying information (typically your name, company name, e-mail address and research interests), this data is stored on this site, which is hosted on a secure server, with an SSL certificate and is also downloaded and stored in a database on University of Bristol secure servers. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information. Other members of the AWRN may see some elements of your profile when logged into the website.

If you agree to a security screening, some of your personally identifying information will be shared with our screening company Horus Security Consultancy Ltd which will be processed, all information will be securely stored by Horus Security Consultancy Ltd and the AWRN, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation. Details of Horus Security Consultancy Ltd privacy policy can be found here.

If you agree to receive our newsletter your contact details (name and e-mail address) will also be shared with Mailchimp, the company we use to compose our newsletters. The privacy policy for Mailchimp can be found here.

4. Cookies

When you visit some pages on this website, your computer may be issued with a small file – a ‘cookie’. A cookie is a piece of information in the form of a very small text file that is placed on the hard drive of your computer. The information the cookie contains is set by the server (this website) and it can be used by that server whenever you visit this website. The server uses cookies to recognise your browser session if you visit multiple pages during your interaction with this website.

You can set your browser to refuse cookies or warn you before accepting them. However, some parts of this website may not function properly without accepting cookies. AboutCookies.org gives some helpful information about how to adjust your browser settings in relation to cookies.

A. First-party cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt in to saving your name, e-mail address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

B. Third party cookies

When you visit the website you may notice that some cookies are not related to the AWRN or the University of Bristol. We use a number of external web services on this website, to display content or gather information on the use of the website. The following third parties may place cookies on your computer.

Google Analytics also places cookies on your computer, the information generated by these cookies about your use of this website will be transmitted to and stored by Google. We will not use the statistical analytics tools to track or to collect personally identifiable information of visitors to this website. The University will not associate any data gathered with any personally identifying information from any source as part of our use of the statistical analytics tools. If you do not wish us to do this, you can opt out of the Analytics service by installing an extension for your browser. Alternatively you can delete/restrict the cookies as for any other cookie. Google Analytics privacy policy can be found here.

Wordfence uses cookies to determine is someone is a human or robot, to identify repeat visitors, to bypass Country Blocking and a session cookie to remembers if someone is a logged in user. The privacy policy for Defiant (the creators of Wordfence) can be found here.

reCaptcha uses cookies to determine is someone is a human or robot. The privacy policy for reCaptcha can be found here.

We use a number of external web services on the AWRN website, mostly to display content within out web pages. For example we use Vimeo to display videos and Soundcloud to play podcasts. We cannot prevent these sites, or external domains from collecting information on your usage of this embedded content. If you are not logged in to these external services then they will not know who you are but are likely to gather anonymous usage information eg number of views, plays, loads etc.

C. Cookies for social media

We have a Twitter account (@AnimalWelfareRN). Twitter uses cookie technology. For more information, please see the Twitter privacy policy here.

5. How we handle the data submitted by you

A. Data Protection Legislation

The University of Bristol is your data controller. As your data controller the University has notified its activities to the Information Commissioner’s Office as required under the GDPR and is listed in the Public Register of Data Controllers. Personal information will only be collected and / or processed by the University in accordance with the GDPR.

B. Disclosure of your information

Except as set out in this policy or as required by law, your personal data will not be provided to any third party without your prior written consent.

The information you provide to us will be held on our computers in the UK. It may be accessed by or given to third parties some of whom may be located outside of the European Economic Area who act for us for the purposes set out in this policy or for other purposes approved by you. Those parties process information and may provide support services to the AWRN or the University or on the AWRN or University’s behalf.

Countries outside of the European Economic Area do not always have strong data protection laws. However, we will always take steps to ensure that your information is used by third parties in accordance with this policy.

C. Monitoring use of University systems

In order to protect the security and workings of University network and computer systems, it may be necessary to monitor or log the use of these systems. If there are indications of abuse of systems or that individuals may be using systems in excess of their authority, files, messages and any or all uses of the systems may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected and disclosed to authorised University and law enforcement personnel.

6. Links to external websites

This website may contain links to other websites that are outside of the AWRN / University of Bristol’s control and are not covered by this privacy policy.

7. How to contact us

Should the information we hold about you be incorrect, you can change and update your personal information and you can have your information corrected by contacting us.

Where requested, we will provide you with a readable copy of the personal data we keep about you, by contacting us. We may require proof of your identity before supplying you with this information to ensure confidentiality.

We allow you to challenge the data we hold about you and where appropriate you may have the data erased, rectified, amended or completed. For complaints or queries about the privacy policy or data protections queries generally please contact either:

AWRN Manager: awrn-manager@bristol.ac.uk

or University of Bristol Data Protection Officer (please indicate that your enquiry is in reference to the AWRN)

University of Bristol, Senate House, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TH

E-mail: data-protection@bristol.ac.uk

We also take this opportunity to remind you of your right to complain to the Information Commissioner who can be contacted at the following:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Tel: 0303 123 1113

Blog and Forum Rules

These rules (Rules) set out the terms for use of the blog or forum sections of the site (the Blog and forum), which apply to all users. By registering to use the forum or blog, you accept, and agree to abide by, all the terms and conditions of these Rules, including our Terms of use use and our Privacy and cookies.

Moderation

The Blog and Forum are fully moderated. Every comment submitted to the Forum will be checked by us for compliance with our Content Standards and we reserve the right to remove inappropriate comments.

Although the Forum and Blog is fully moderated, we are under no obligation to you or any other person to oversee, monitor or moderate the Blog and Forum or any other service we provide on our site and we may stop moderating the Blog and Forum at any time. We reserve the right to remove, or to disable access to, any comment which we deem to be potentially defamatory of any person or which we deem unlawful or in violation of any third party rights. We expressly exclude our liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of the Blog or Forum by any person in contravention of these Rules.

Submission of comments to the forum

To add a comment to a discussion:

you must first log on to the members-only area
once logged in, click ‘Forum’ and select the forum you wish to add a comment to
Add a new topic if applicable, or conitune a thread by adding a new comment to an existing topic

Content standards

In making comments, you agree to comply with the provisions of our Terms of Use regarding Content Standards.

Copyright

By submitting a contribution to the Blog or forum, you agree to grant AWRN a non-exclusive licence to use that contribution. Although you will still own the copyright in this contribution, AWRN will have the right to freely use, edit, alter, reproduce, publish and/or distribute the material contained in your contribution. This licence will be free of charge, perpetual and capable of sub-licence. AWRN may exercise all copyright and publicity rights in the material contained in your contribution in all jurisdictions, to their full extent and for the full period for which any such rights exist in that material.

Please also note that, in accordance with the Content Standards, you must ensure that your contribution does not infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person. By submitting your contribution to the Blog or forum, you are warranting that you have the right to grant AWRN the non-exclusive copyright licence described above.

If you are not in a position to grant such a licence to AWRN, please do not submit the contribution to the Blog or Forum.

Breach of these rules

When we consider that a breach of the Content Standards has occurred, we may at our discretion take such action as we deem appropriate. Failure to comply with these Rules constitutes a material breach of the terms of use on which you are permitted to use the Blog or forum, and may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:

Immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use the Blog or forum
Immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Comment already posted on the Blog or forum
Issue of a warning to you
Legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach
Further legal action against you
Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary or as required by law

We exclude our liability for all action we may take in response to breaches of these Rules. The actions described above are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

Complaints

If you wish to complain about any Comment posted to the Blog of Forum, please contact us at awrn-manager@bristol.ac.uk. We will then review the Comment and decide whether it complies with our Content Standards. We will deal with any Comment which, in our opinion, violates our Content Standards as described above (see section “Breach of these Rules”). We will inform you of the outcome of our review within a reasonable time of receiving your complaint.

Changes to these rules

We may revise these Rules at any time. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we make, as they are legally binding on you.