Privacy Policy

Who We Are

Materials Research Society (‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our’ or ‘MRS’) gathers and processes your personal information in accordance with this privacy notice and in compliance with the relevant data protection regulations and laws. This notice provides you with the necessary information regarding your rights and our obligations, and explains how, why and when we process your personal data.

Information That We Collect

Materials Research Society processes your Personal Information to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our products and services. We will never collect any unnecessary personal data from you and do not process your information in any way, other than as specified in this notice. 

Below is the list of Personal Information that we may request:

• First Name and Last Name
• Home Address or Employer Address
• Employer Name
• Preferred Email Address
• Home Phone Number, Work Phone Number or Mobile Phone Number
• Current Employment Status
• Gender
• Job Title
• Institution Type
• Education Level
• Education Facility Name
• Education Facility Address
• Academic Status
• Current Student Status
• Expected Graduation Date
• Graduation date
• Taxonomic Interests
• Volunteer Experience
• Biography
• Special Category Data

How Is Your Personal Data Collected

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct interactions - You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
  • Apply for our products or services
  • Create an account on our website
  • Subscribe to our service or publications
  • Request marketing information to be sent to you
  • Enter a competition, promotion or survey
  • Provide feedback to us.
• Automated technologies or interactions - As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We may collect this information by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive technical data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies.
• Other sources. We may receive information about you if you use any of the other websites we operate or the other services we provide. In this case, we will have informed you when we collected that data that it may be shared internally and combined with data collected on this website. We are also working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, subcontractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.

How We Use Your Personal Data

Materials Research Society takes your privacy very seriously and will never disclose, share or sell your data without your consent other than as disclosed in this Notice; unless required to do so by law. Where you have consented to us providing you with promotional offers and marketing, you are free to withdraw this consent at any time. 

Purposes For Which We Use Your Data

Your Rights

You have the right to access any Personal Information that Materials Research Society processes about you and to request information about:

• What personal data we hold about you
• The purposes of the processing
• The categories of personal data concerned
• The recipients to whom the personal data has/will be disclosed
• How long we intend to store your personal data
• If we did not collect the data directly from you, information about the source

If you believe that we hold any incomplete or inaccurate data about you, you have the right to ask us to correct and/or complete the information and we will strive to do so as quickly as possible, unless there is a valid reason for not doing so, at which point you will be notified.

You also have the right to request erasure of your personal data or to restrict processing (where applicable) in accordance with the data protection laws, as well as to object to any direct marketing from us. Where applicable, you have the right to data portability of your information.

If we receive a request from you to exercise any of the above rights, we may ask you to verify your identity before acting on the request.  This is to ensure that your data is protected and kept secure.

To ask for a copy of the information we hold, or to ask us to correct or otherwise alter our current processing, please email us at [email protected].

Sharing and Disclosing Your Personal Information

We do not share or disclose any of your Personal Information without your consent, other than for the purposes specified in this notice or where there is a legal requirement. Materials Research Society uses third parties to provide services and business functions.

Materials Research Society works with the following third-party vendors and partners:

Association Consulting Group Incorporated (ACGI): ACGI hosts MRS’s association management system. This system manages all membership information and activities, including meeting registration and volunteer activities.

Springer Nature: Springer Nature is MRS’s publishing partner and receives author information from ScholarOne in order to communicate with authors and publish accepted articles. Springer Nature provides online access to MRS content, sends journal table of content alerts to those who opt in to receive them and fulfills publication orders.

Digitell, Inc: MRS uses Digitell to host our webinars and OnDemand multimedia content.  Users need to have or create an MRS username and password in order to access this content.  Digitell uses the contact information to send confirmation and reminder emails when a user signs up for access to MRS OnDemand webinars and content.

Scholar One: ScholarOne provides workflow management systems for scholarly journals, books, and conferences.  MRS uses ScholarOne Abstracts and ScholarOne Manuscripts for submission and review of meeting abstracts and journal articles.  The system uses author, reviewer, editor, and symposium organizer information to track, organize and schedule abstracts and papers, and to send emails about status.

ResultsDirect: ResultsDirect is MRS’s meeting event app. ResultsDirect leverages the user profile from Association Anywhere to provide access to the functionality of the app – such as being able to create your own schedule.  It also calls on the taxonomic data that the user may have provided to suggest sessions for them.  We also use the ResultsDirect mobile app to deliver messages from MRS, from other attendees, and from proximity beacons.

External Links

This Notice only addresses MRS’s use and disclosure of your Personal Information. The MRS website or apps may contain links to other websites, so please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites, and we are not liable for their misuse of Personal Information.  Links to other sites do not imply MRS’s endorsement of the products or services, or privacy or security practices of those websites.  We encourage you to be aware that when you go to another website you should carefully read their privacy policy.

Safeguarding Measures

Materials Research Society takes your privacy seriously and takes every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure your personal data. We work hard to protect you and your information from unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure or destruction and have several layers of security measures in place,including:

• 2 Factor/Multifactor Authentication were possible
• Secure connections using SSL or TLS where possible
• Encryption of data in transit and at rest
• Restricted access to personally identifiable information
• Next generation firewalls with advanced security systems for preventing unauthorized access
• Antivirus and anti-malware software

We use commercially reasonable efforts to make our collection of data consistent with all applicable laws and regulations.  We exercise care in providing secure transmission and storage of data.  However, no data transmission or storage is 100% secure.  We cannot warrant that all data we transmit, store and collect will be completely secure.  We take commercially reasonable efforts to create and maintain firewalls, restricted access and other appropriate safeguards to ensure that, to the extent we control information, it is used only as authorized by us and consistently with this Notice.

Information Outside the EU

Materials Research Society utilizes some products or services (or parts of them) that may be hosted/stored in the United States of America, which means that we may transfer any information which is submitted by you through the website outside the European Economic Area ("EEA") for the below purposes:

• Website Hosting
• Email Servers
• Membership Management System
• Mobile App

Therefore, when you use our website/send us an email/sign up to our newsletters, etc., the Personal Information you submit may be stored on servers that are hosted in the United States of America. Where this is the case, we will take steps to ensure that those providers use the necessary level of protection for your information and abide by strict agreements and measures set out by Materials Research Society to protect your data and comply with the relevant data protection laws.

Consequences of Not Providing Your Data

You are not obligated to provide your Personal Information to Materials Research Society; however, as this information is required for you to receive the all benefits of joining the Materials Research Society we will not be able to offer some/all our services without it.

How Long We Keep Your Data

Materials Research Society only retains Personal Information for as long as is necessary, and per this Privacy Notice, you have the rights to request your personal data at any time or request that we delete your data.

Where you have consented to us using your details for direct marketing, we will keep such data until you notify us otherwise and/or withdraw your consent.

Special Categories Data

Owing to the products or services that we offer, Materials Research Society sometimes requests sensitive personal information (known as special category data) about you, to improve our website, member benefits, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences. Where we collect such information, we will only request and process the minimum necessary for the specified purpose.  The special category data is optional at all times and does not affect the services Materials Research Society provides to its members.

Marketing

Consent
Occasionally, Materials Research Society would like to contact you with valuable information regarding opportunities provided to you by MRS. If you consent to us using your contact details for this purpose, you have the right to modify or withdraw your consent at any time by using the opt-out/unsubscribe options provided to you through the My MRS website portal.

Legitimate Interests
Materials Research Society will occasionally send you information regarding your MRS Membership that has been identified as being beneficial to our members and in our interests. Such information will be relevant to you as a member and is non-intrusive.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of our website may become inaccessible or not function properly.

Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improve the user experience. They can also help to ensure that adverts you see online are more relevant to you and your interests.

Our website sets cookies which remain on your computer or device for differing times. Some expire at the end of each session and some remain for longer so that when you return to our website, you will have a better user experience.

We use the following cookies:

• Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
• Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
• Functionality cookies. These are used to recognize you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalize our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
• Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests.

Updates to Privacy Notice

MRS reserves the right to modify this Privacy Notice at any time without prior notice.  Your continued use of this website and MRS services shall constitute your acceptance of the Privacy Notice.

Contact Us

Materials Research Society
Attn: Privacy
506 Keystone Drive
Warrendale, PA 15086
724.779.3003
[email protected]