Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how the Collaborative OPen Omics (COPO) website service collects, stores and uses personal information in operating the website, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 2018 (the Act), the data controller is Earlham Institute (EI), based at Norwich Research Park, Colney, Norwich, NR4 7UZ.

Please view our Terms of Use regarding the rules and requirements for the use of the service.

Lawful basis for processing your data

Under UK data protection law, we must have a 'lawful basis' for collecting and using your personal information. There is a list of possible lawful bases in the UK GDPR. You can find out more about lawful bases on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

COPO has a legitimate interest in processing personal data to facilitate the sharing and brokering of scientific data, particularly in genomics and related fields. By enabling researchers to collaborate, store, and manage datasets more effectively, COPO supports the advancement of scientific research. This aligns with its mission to enhance data accessibility and reproducibility, while balancing the rights of users and contributors. Processing personal data is essential to allow the operation and functioning of COPO.

By using our website, you hereby consent to our Privacy Notice and agree to its terms.

Data Collected

COPO adopts appropriate data collection, validation, storage and processing practices as well as security measures to protect against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction of your personal information, ORCid credentials and metadata provided on our service.

Information collected

Internet Protocol (IP) address
Operating system
Browser
First name, last name and username after you sign into the service with your ORCid credentials
Email address (after you input it in the dialog shown after a first-time access to the service)
Date and time when a profile record and manifests are created or updated
Metadata submitted. Metadata is the essential information about when, where, how and why data has been collected. It can relate to research elements like samples, assemblies, sequencing annotations, barcoding, experiments, reads or runs
If you contact us via email, we may receive additional information about you such as the contents of the message and/or attachments you may send us and any other information you may choose to provide

Usage of information collected

To utilise Google Fonts, an interactive web directory via Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which is embedded in the service
To provide the user access to the service
To answer support request sent by the user
To monitor errors and exceptions that may occur during metadata submission
To register your email address with your COPO user account and to submit your email address to public repositories after manifest submissions
To send email notifications when submitted samples have been accepted or rejected by a sample manager

Storing and Sharing of your information

Your information is shared and stored in the following ways:

Authorised COPO team developers
Public metadata repositories that COPO relies on to provide the service. They are:

Data Retention

Any personal data (name and email address) and metadata obtained from you will be retained as long as the service is live, even if you stop using the service
COPO omits your email address, ORCid identifier (ID) and name from the COPO Application Programming Interface (API) method results after a manifest submission. However, your email address will be submitted to public repositories and will be visible on public records as a metadata submitter.
Access to the web and security logs containing personal data are restricted to the relevant COPO team developers

Cookies

This service uses "cookies" to store information about the web pages on the service that the visitor has accessed or visited. The information is used to log any errors or exceptions that may occur and user sessions.

Your Rights

Which lawful basis we rely on may affect your data protection rights which are set out in brief below. You can find out more about your data protection rights and the exemptions which may apply on the Information Commissioner's Office's (ICO's) website:

Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with. There are some exemptions which means you may not receive all the information you ask for. You can read more about this right on the ICO website .
Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate or incomplete. You can read more about this right on the ICO website.
Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information. You can read more about this right on the ICO website.
Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information. You can read more about this right on the ICO website.
Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. You can read more about this right on the ICO website.
Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you. You can read more about this right on the ICO website.
Your right to withdraw consent - If we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can read more about this right on the ICO website. Please note that some rights may not apply in all situations. If we cannot comply with your request, we will explain why and inform you of your right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office if you are not satisfied with our response.

For more information about your rights, visit the ICO's website: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public. If you make a request, we must respond to you without undue delay and in any event within one month. To make a data protection rights request, please contact us using the contact details at the bottom of this privacy notice.

Questions

If you have any questions about how your personal information is used, or wish to exercise any of your rights, you can do so by contacting us.

For the Earlham Institute, the person with responsibility for advising on compliance with data protection legislation is Sarah Cossey, contact: dpa@earlham.ac.uk.

Published on: 28-10-2023

Last updated: 07-05-2025