Privacy Statement

Privacy Statement

Privacy Policy

Politics & Security respects the privacy and confidentiality of all individuals associated with the journal, including authors, reviewers, and editorial board members. The journal is committed to protecting personal data and ensuring its responsible and transparent use in accordance with international data protection standards, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Data Collection

Personal data, such as names, email addresses, affiliations, and ORCID identifiers, are collected during the manuscript submission and review process. This information is used exclusively for editorial and publication purposes.

Data Usage

  • Facilitate communication between the journal and authors/reviewers.
  • Assign manuscripts to appropriate reviewers.
  • Ensure accurate attribution of published works.

Data Sharing

Personal data is not shared with third parties without explicit consent, except as necessary for indexing, archiving, and compliance with legal requirements. The journal may share data with trusted indexing services (e.g., Scopus, DOAJ, CrossRef) for publication purposes.

Confidentiality

The personal data of authors and reviewers involved in the double-blind peer review process remains confidential. Reviewer comments and author responses are shared only with the relevant parties in the process.

Rights of Individuals

All participants in the publication process have the right to:

  • Access
  • Update
  • Delete

Their personal data. Requests to exercise these rights should be sent to: editor@politics-security.net

 

Legal Basis for Processing

The Academy of National and Information Security, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, is the data controller for personal data processed through this journal. As the publisher is established in the European Union, all processing is carried out in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR).

Personal data are processed on the following legal bases:

  • Performance of a contract and steps taken at the request of the data subject (Art. 6(1)(b)) — for account registration, manuscript submission, and the conduct of peer review;
  • Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — for maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record, investigating allegations of misconduct, and preventing fraudulent or duplicate submission;
  • Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — for optional communications such as new-issue notifications, which may be withdrawn at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing;
  • Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) — where retention or disclosure is required by law.

Data Retention

  • Author and article metadata of published works are retained indefinitely. This is inherent to scholarly publishing: the published record, including authorship, affiliation and ORCID, must remain permanently available and cannot be erased without compromising the integrity of the scientific record.
  • Peer review records (reports, correspondence and editorial decisions) are retained for ten years from the date of the final decision, to allow investigation of any subsequent allegation concerning the article.
  • Records of rejected or withdrawn submissions are retained for five years from the date of the decision, after which the manuscript files are deleted and only minimal records of the decision are kept.
  • User accounts that have been inactive for five years and are not linked to any published article, review or editorial role are deleted, following notification to the registered email address.
  • Mailing list subscriptions are retained until the subscriber unsubscribes.

Your Rights

You have the right to request access to, rectification of, or erasure of your personal data, to restrict or object to processing, and to data portability. Requests should be sent to editor@politics-security.net and will be answered within one month.

Please note that the right to erasure does not extend to the bibliographic record of a published article. Where an author's name has legally changed, the journal will apply a name change to the published record without issuing a correction notice, in line with current good practice.