Security

Scholar Indexing Society (SIS) maintains this site. For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, we use software programs to monitor traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage. Causing damage to federal computer systems is a violation of U.S. Nigeria and Ghana law and is subject to criminal prosecution in federal court. In the event of authorized law enforcement investigations, and pursuant to any required legal process, information from SIS web logs may be used to help identify an individual.

Social Media Comments Policy

We encourage and welcome your comments on SIS’s social media properties, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and Blog. In accordance with the Federal Government's other social media comment policies, SIS has instituted the following policy in an effort to maintain respectful interaction:

• All viewpoints are welcome, but comments should remain relevant to SIS. We respect the varying opinions; however, intentionally spreading misleading or false information is prohibited.
• Personal attacks, profanity, and aggressive behavior are prohibited.
• No spam, advertising, or promoting of products/services. This includes repeated posts of identical or very similar content in a counter-productive manner.
• SIS does not provide medical advice. Please refrain from seeking medical advice.

Comments and/or links will be hidden if they contain:

• Unfair/unsubstantiated partisan political views
• Commercial endorsements
• Discriminatory, racist, offensive, obscene, inflammatory, unlawful, or otherwise objectionable statements, language, or content.
• Personally identifiable information. This refers to information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, either alone or when combined with other personal or identifying information that is linked or linkable to a specific individual. To protect your privacy, please do not share personal information, such as your address, email, or telephone number, in the text of your comment.

Records of posts and comments will be kept. We reserve the right to block or hide offenders of this policy. Do not submit copyrighted or other proprietary material in any form unless you clearly indicate that you have permission to do so. By posting your comments or other work, you grant SIS and anyone viewing the SIS website permission to copy, distribute, make derivatives, display or perform the commenter's work publicly and free of charge.

Copyright

Attribution and Rights for Government Works:  Works produced by the U.S. Nigeria and Ghana governments are not subject to copyright protection. Any such works found on Scholar Indexing Society (SIS) Web sites may be freely used or reproduced without permission in the U.S. Please acknowledge Scholar Indexing Society (SIS) as the source of the information by including the phrase “Courtesy of the Scholar Indexing Society (SIS)” or “Source: Scholar Indexing Society (SIS).”

Copyright Protections for Non-Government Works: When using SIS Web sites, you may encounter documents, illustrations, photographs, or other content contributed by or licensed from private individuals, companies, or organizations that may be protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. You can sometimes tell if the content is copyrighted if it has the copyright symbol, the name of the copyright holder, or the statement "All rights reserved." However, a copyright notice is not required by law, and therefore not all copyrighted content is necessarily marked in this way. Transmission or reproduction of copyrighted items (beyond that allowed by fair use as defined in the U.S. copyright laws) requires the written permission of the copyright holders.

User Responsibility: It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when using materials that are not in the public domain. SIS cannot guarantee the copyright status of any item.

How we use the data we collect about you

The following explanations will provide you with information about how we use the personal data that we collect about you, and our legal basis for doing so under the GDPR. Generally speaking, we may, pursuant to Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR uses your data based on our legitimate interests.

• to provide and improve our Service;
• to perform internal quality checks;
• to prevent, detect, process, and investigate malfunctions, incidents, fraudulent or other illegal activities, or mitigate the risk of occurrence of the aforementioned events;
• to ensure network and information security;
• to create statistics on access channels and the use of our Service;
• to contact you, if requested by you or if necessary to fulfill the contract or permitted by law;
• to enforce obligations owed to us, and contractual terms and conditions; and
• for accounting, risk management, and record-keeping purposes.

Submission policy: who can deposit items

1. Items may only be deposited by accredited members of the University of Edinburgh or their delegated agents.
2. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.
3. Administrators only vet items for the eligibility of authors/depositors, and for relevance to the scope.
4. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions are the sole responsibility of the depositor.
5. Items can be deposited at any time, but will not be made publicly visible until any publisher's embargo period has expired.
6. Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
7. If administrators receive proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately, as per the stated Notice and Take-Down policy.

Data policy: what you can do with our content

1. Anyone may access full items free of charge.
2. Copies of full items generally can be:
• reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium
• used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the content is not changed in any way
3. Some full items are individually tagged with different rights permissions and conditions.

Metadata policy: what you can do with our metadata

1. Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
2. The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record is given.
3. The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission.

Preservation policy: how we will try to make content remain accessible

1. Items will be retained indefinitely, and we will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
2. Regularly back up its files according to current best practices.
3. The original bit stream is retained for all items, in addition to any upgraded formats.
4. Items may be removed at the request of the author/copyright holder, but this is strongly discouraged.
• Proven legal violation or plagiarism
• National Security
• Falsified research