Privacy policy

1. Controller

The controller is the Directorate-General for Scientific Research and Technological Development (DGRSDT), a body of the ministry in charge of higher education and scientific research.

Postal address: 128, Chemin Mohamed Gacem, El Madania, Algiers.

The data protection officer can be reached at dpo@dgrsdt.dz.

2. Data processed

Only the data necessary for the purposes described below is collected (art. 9 of law 18-07, minimisation). It falls into four categories:

• Identification data: surname, given name, email address, date of birth, gender, country, telephone number, profile picture, ORCID identifier.
• Professional data: host institution, degree, biography, fields of expertise, keywords, education and employment history.
• Project data: projects submitted, led or joined, team members, deliverables, reports, budgets, reviews received and invitations sent or received.
• Connection data: date and time of sign-ins, IP address, browser type and the operations performed on personal data.

Mandatory and optional answers. Only the name, the e-mail address, the password, the platform and the acceptance of this policy are mandatory: without them the account cannot be created and no project can be submitted.

Optional are the phone number, the date of birth, the gender, the ORCID identifier, the profile picture, the biography, the fields of expertise and the keywords. Leaving them blank prevents neither the creation of the account nor the submission of a project; it only limits how visible the profile is to other researchers and, for the ORCID identifier, the automatic import of the scientific record (art. 32 of law 18-07).

3. Purposes

Each category of data is processed for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes:

• Management of calls for projects: creation and management of the account, formation of consortia, submission and follow-up of research projects.
• Scientific evaluation: appointment of experts, examination of applications, writing and consultation of review reports.
• National statistics: production of aggregated indicators on national scientific research; those indicators do not allow anyone to be identified.
• Security and traceability: keeping the register of operations required by art. 41 bis 3 of law 18-07 and preventing unlawful access.

4. Legal basis

The processing operations related to the management of calls for projects, to scientific evaluation and to national statistics rest on the performance of a public service mission entrusted to the DGRSDT.

Two operations rest instead on your consent, which you may withdraw at any time without affecting the lawfulness of the processing carried out beforehand:

• the import of your public ORCID data (education, employment, keywords), which is only performed if you have expressly authorised it from your profile;
• the sending of invitations to people whose email address is given to us by a project leader in order to form a team.

5. Recipients

Your data is disclosed, and only to the extent necessary for their duties, to the following recipients:

• authorised DGRSDT staff in charge of the management of calls for projects;
• the directors and authorised staff of the scientific platform you belong to;
• the experts appointed to evaluate a project you take part in, for the data needed for that evaluation only;
• the members of the projects you belong to, for your professional profile data.

No data is sold, rented or disclosed for commercial or advertising purposes.

6. Transfers outside the national territory

Data is hosted and processed on the national territory. No personal data is transferred to a foreign State without the prior authorisation of the Autorité nationale de protection des données à caractère personnel, in accordance with articles 44 and following of law 18-07.

The ORCID import, where authorised, is a read of data you have yourself made public on orcid.org; it sends no data from the platform to a third party.

7. Retention periods

Data is not kept longer than the purposes require (art. 9-e of law 18-07):

• User account: for as long as the account is active, then twelve (12) months after its deletion, at the end of which it is irreversibly anonymised.
• Invitations: thirty (30) days; past that, the invitation and the email address of an invited person who did not sign up are erased.
• Register of operations and sign-in logs: twelve (12) months.
• Project files and review reports: for the duration of the project and the statutory retention period for the supporting documents of public funding.

8. Security

The DGRSDT implements the appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data: encryption of sensitive data at rest, encryption of communications, access control by profile, two-factor authentication and logging of operations.

Warning (art. 32, paragraph 3, of law 18-07): the platform is reachable over an open network. Despite the measures in place, the circulation of personal data over such a network cannot be guaranteed against every risk of interception. You are advised not to upload sensitive data that your file does not require.

9. Your rights

You have the following rights over the data concerning you:

• Right of access (art. 32): to obtain confirmation that data concerning you is processed and to receive a copy of it. The "My data" section of your personal space lets you download all of it as JSON at any time.
• Right to rectification (art. 35): to have inaccurate data corrected, completed or updated. Your profile can be edited directly.
• Right to erasure (art. 35): to obtain the deletion of your account and of the data that is not necessary for the traceability of funding decisions.
• Right to object (art. 36): to object, on legitimate grounds, to a processing operation on your data.
• Right not to be subject to an automated decision (art. 37): no decision producing legal effects concerning you is taken on this platform on the sole basis of automated processing.

These rights are exercised from the "My data" section of your personal space or by email to dpo@dgrsdt.dz. You receive an answer within ten (10) days of the request being received (art. 34 of law 18-07).

Should the answer be unsatisfactory, or should none be given, you may refer the matter to the Autorité nationale de protection des données à caractère personnel.

10. Cookies

The platform only sets cookies that are strictly necessary for it to work: keeping the authenticated session, protecting against request forgery and remembering the display language and theme.

No audience measurement, profiling or advertising cookie is set, and no third-party tracker is loaded. These cookies cannot be switched off without preventing the service from working; they are therefore not subject to consent, and the banner shown on your first visit is purely informative.

11. Changes to this policy

This policy may be amended to reflect a change in the service or in the applicable rules. Any substantial change is presented to you at your next sign-in and your acceptance is asked again; the version accepted and the date of its acceptance are kept.