Privacy Policy

APS may collect personal information from you when it is needed for services such as signing up for membership or content alerts, registering for meetings, applying for awards, or accessing and purchasing journal and book content.

APS automatically collects certain information about your computer hardware and software. APS uses this information for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of our websites.

The types of personal information that the APS collects directly from you may include:

Contact details, such as your name, email address, postal address, and telephone number;

Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses used to connect your computer to the Internet;

Educational and professional interests;

Tracking codes such as cookies and pixels;

Usernames and passwords;

Payment information, such as a credit or debit card number;

Comments, feedback, posts, and other content you provide to the APS websites;

Communication preferences;

Purchase and search history;

Location-aware services, the physical location of your device in order to provide you with more relevant content for your location.

In order to access certain content and to make use of additional functionality and features of APS websites and services, we may ask you to register for an account by completing and submitting a registration form, which may request additional information.

APS is not responsible for the privacy statements or non-APS content and pages on other websites. When you click on links on our pages that take you to another website, we encourage you to review their privacy statements so you understand how those websites collect, use, and share your information.

APS may receive information about you if you use the websites we operate or the other services we provide. We also work closely with third parties (such as websites hosting APS publications, other business partners and sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, academic institutions and search information providers) from whom APS may receive information about you.

APS collects and uses your personal information in the performance of any contract we enter into with you, to comply with legal obligations, or where APS has a legitimate business interest in using your information to enhance the services and products we provide. Legitimate business purposes include but are not limited to one or all of the following:

Providing direct marketing and assessing the effectiveness of promotions and advertising;

Modifying, improving or personalizing our services, products and communications;

Detecting fraud;

Investigating suspicious activity and otherwise keeping our site safe and secure;

Conducting data analytics.

In addition, we may use your information in the following ways (after obtaining your consent, if required):

To provide you with information about products and services that you request from us;

To provide you with information about other products, events and services we offer that are similar to those you have already purchased or inquired about or related to entirely new products, events, and services;

For internal business and research purposes to help enhance, evaluate, develop, and create APS websites (including usage statistics, such as "page views" on APS websites and the products therein), products, and services;

To notify you about changes or updates to our websites, products, or services;

To administer our services and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, statistical, and survey purposes;

To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service; and

For any other purpose that we may notify you of from time to time.

Personal information will be kept for the purpose for which it was collected or to provide you with the services you requested. This means that, unless information must be retained for legal or archival purposes, personal information will be securely destroyed, put beyond use or erased from APS systems when it is no longer required or, where applicable, following a request from you to destroy or erase your personal information.

APS does not sell, rent or lease your information to third parties. We will not disclose or share your personal information with any unaffiliated third party except as follows:

Where necessary in connection with services provided by third parties who provide us with a wide range of office, administrative, information technology, production, payment, or business management services; and who are required to comply with this policy;

Where you voluntarily provide information in response to an advertisement from a third party;

Where your consent has been provided, with a third party such as an academic institution, school, employer, business, or other entity that has provided you with access to a product or service through an integration or access code, information may be shared regarding your engagement with the service or product, results of assessments taken, and other information you input into the product or service;

Where APS is required to disclose personal information in response to lawful requests by public authorities and government agencies, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; to comply with a subpoena or other legal process; when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, to enforce our copyright, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our services, users, or others; and to investigate fraud; and

Where all or substantially all of the business or assets of APS relating to our services are sold, assigned, or transferred to another entity.

With your consent, your membership data, including but not limited to name, email, mailing address will be provided to all active and grace members via our online Member Directory. To best maintain member privacy, members will have complete control over opting in or out of the Member Directory through their membership profile (https://ebus.the-aps.org/PersonifyEbusiness/My-Account/Communication-Preferences). APS does not verify the information provided by its members for this directory.

APS websites use cookies to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize APS journal webpages or register for APS services, a cookie helps APS to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, etc. When you return to the same APS webpage, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the APS services or websites you visit.

APS websites may use web pixels—a website plugin—and other technologies that allow us to measure the effectiveness of APS advertising efforts by understanding the actions people take on our website. This analytics tool helps APS track actions taken on our website and, based on this, better target users who may be interested in related information about APS products and services.

We may allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our websites. These companies may be placing and reading cookies in the cookie file of the browser on your computer's hard disk or using web beacons or other technologies to collect information in the course of ads being served on our websites. These companies may use information other than personal information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to these and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you.

APS secures your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. APS secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. Personal information (such as a credit card number) that is transmitted is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. Access to your personal data will be restricted to only those who need to know that information and required to perform their job function.

You have the right to make a written request to be informed whether or not we hold or process any of your personal information (by emailing webmaster@the-aps.org). In your written request, you may:

Request that we provide you with details of your personal information that we process, the purpose for which it is processed, the recipients of such information, the existence of any automated decision making involving your personal information, and what transfer safeguards we have in place;

Request that we rectify any errors in your personal information;

Request that we delete your personal information if our continued processing of such information is not justified;

Request that we transfer your personal information to a third party;

Object to automated decision-making and profiling based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest (in which event the processing will cease except where there are compelling legitimate grounds, such as when the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract between the requestor and APS;

Object to direct marketing from us; and

Object to processing for purposes of scientific, historical research and statistics.

Where applicable under your local laws, we will not use your personal information for marketing purposes, nor disclose your information to any third parties, unless we have your prior consent, which we will seek before collecting your personal information. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the consent forms we use when collecting your personal information. If at any point you wish to review or change your preferences, you can use the "opt-out" or unsubscribe mechanism or other means provided within the communications that you receive from us or by sending an email to webmaster@physiology.org. Note that you may still receive transactional communications from APS such as member communications.

APS does not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen. If you are under the age of thirteen, you must ask your parent or guardian for permission to use this website for any feature requesting personally identifiable information (including but not limited to name, email, and/or address).

APS will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect staff, member, and customer feedback. Your continued use of APS websites will be subject to the terms of the then-current Privacy Policy. If we make any material changes, or if otherwise required by applicable law, we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this website prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices and to stay informed of how APS is protecting your information.

APS welcomes your comments regarding this Privacy Policy. If you believe that APS has not adhered to this statement, please contact us at:

American Physiological Society
6120 Executive Blvd., Suite 575
Rockville, MD 20852-4911

301-634-7164
webmaster@physiology.org 

We will use reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem. 


Last updated: May 23, 2018