Privacy Policy

This Policy applies when you visit The Academica, communicate with us, create or use a reader account where that functionality is available, submit a comment, enquire about advertising or subscriptions, send us a correction request or news tip, apply to work with us, or otherwise interact with our public-facing services.

The Academica is the publication and service covered by this Policy. Details identifying the legal entity operating the publication and any additional statutory privacy or grievance contact information will be published where required by applicable law.

The information we receive depends on how you interact with us. It may include:

• your name, display name, email address and other account information where reader-account functionality is available;
• information contained in comments or other material you submit through reader-participation features;
• correspondence you send to our editorial, legal, advertising, careers, privacy, subscriptions or general-contact addresses;
• information and supporting material supplied with correction requests, complaints, enquiries, news tips or story leads;
• professional information you provide when approaching us as an academic, expert, advertiser, commercial partner, prospective employee or contributor; and
• payment, billing or subscription information if paid products are made available in the future. Where an external payment provider is used, payment-card information may be processed directly by that provider rather than stored by The Academica.

Please do not send highly sensitive or confidential information through ordinary email unless you understand the risks involved. Ordinary email should not be assumed to provide anonymous or secure communication.

When you access the website, our application, hosting, network and security infrastructure may generate technical information necessary to deliver and protect the service. This may include IP address, device or browser information, request timestamps, pages or resources requested, referral information, security events and similar server or network records.

For readers who are not signed in, we also use a random first-party reader identifier to remember which unique articles have been counted toward the monthly free-reading allowance. The identifier itself does not contain your name or email address. Our application stores a one-way hash derived from it with the articles counted for the relevant calendar month. We do not use device fingerprinting or IP address matching to recreate this reader identifier if the cookie is removed.

We also use cookies where necessary for functions such as authentication, session continuity and protection against cross-site request forgery. More information about these technologies, including their purposes and durations, is provided in our Cookie Policy.

Reader-account registration and production sign-in functionality may be introduced or activated progressively. Where authentication is available, The Academica may use an approved external identity provider rather than storing an ordinary website password itself.

Depending on the authentication provider and permissions configured at the time, we may receive information such as an identifier, name, display name and email address that is necessary to authenticate you and associate you with a reader account.

Authentication also uses security cookies and temporary credentials. These are used to maintain authenticated sessions, renew sessions where permitted, validate authentication state and protect requests against forgery or unauthorised use.

Where comments or similar reader-participation features are available, submissions may be associated with your authenticated reader identity. Information displayed publicly may include your chosen display name, the content of your comment and the date or time associated with it.

Comments may be reviewed or moderated before or after publication. We may retain moderation records, reports or related information where reasonably necessary to enforce our rules, investigate abuse, protect users or maintain the integrity of public discussions.

You should not include personal information about yourself or another person in a public comment unless you are comfortable with that information being publicly visible.

Depending on the circumstances, we may use personal information to:

• operate, maintain and secure The Academica and its services;
• authenticate readers and administer accounts;
• provide functionality requested by a user;
• receive, moderate and administer comments;
• respond to enquiries, feedback, complaints and correction requests;
• evaluate news tips, source material and editorial correspondence;
• administer advertising, commercial relationships, applications and other business communications;
• provide subscriptions, newsletters or other reader services if and when they are introduced;
• detect, investigate and prevent fraud, abuse, unauthorised access, security incidents and violations of our terms;
• maintain records required for operational, legal or accountability purposes;
• establish, exercise or defend legal rights; and
• comply with applicable law and lawful governmental or judicial requests.

We will process personal information only where there is a lawful basis for doing so under applicable law. Where processing depends on your consent, you may withdraw that consent in accordance with applicable law, although withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal.

The Academica is a news organisation. Personal information may therefore also appear in material gathered, assessed, verified or published for journalistic and editorial purposes.

Privacy requests concerning ordinary reader-account information are not necessarily the same as requests concerning information contained in journalism, public records, source material or the historical editorial record. Requests relating to published coverage will be considered in the context of applicable law, accuracy, public interest, freedom of expression, editorial standards and any other relevant rights or obligations.

A request to delete a reader account, for example, does not automatically require the removal of independently lawful published journalism or other records that we are entitled or required to retain.

If you contact our editorial team, the information you provide may be assessed, verified, retained and shared internally with people who need it for legitimate editorial purposes.

Material submitted as a news tip may contain information about people other than the sender. We ask contributors to provide information responsibly and not to submit unlawfully obtained material merely because a submission channel is available.

We recognise that confidential-source communications can require additional protection. Until The Academica expressly provides a dedicated secure-source channel, ordinary email should not be treated as guaranteeing confidentiality, anonymity or protection against interception.

The Academica currently uses cookies that are necessary for functions such as secure authentication, session management and request protection where those functions are used.

The Academica uses Google Analytics 4 only when a visitor chooses to accept analytics through our privacy choices. If a visitor chooses Essential only, the Google Analytics tag is not loaded. Advertising and social-media tracking technologies are not described as active merely because they may be introduced in the future.

See our Cookie Policy for more detail.

The Academica may display advertising. The presence of an advertising placement does not by itself mean that behavioural advertising or cross-site tracking is being used.

For audience measurement, The Academica uses Google Analytics 4, provided by Google, after the visitor has chosen to accept analytics. The service may process information about website visits, navigation, engagement, browser or device characteristics and related usage data. Further information about the technologies and controls involved is provided in our Cookie Policy.

Commercial relationships do not give advertisers the right to determine The Academica's independent editorial decisions.

We do not make personal information available to third parties without a legitimate reason. Depending on the service involved, information may be shared with:

• hosting, infrastructure, security and technical service providers that help us operate the website;
• an authentication or identity provider where reader sign-in is enabled;
• email, communications, payment, subscription or other operational providers where those services are used;
• professional advisers such as lawyers, accountants, auditors or insurers where reasonably necessary;
• regulators, courts, law-enforcement bodies or other authorities where disclosure is required or permitted by law;
• another organisation in connection with a genuine merger, financing, restructuring, acquisition or transfer of all or part of the business, subject to appropriate safeguards; or
• another person where you have asked us or validly authorised us to make the disclosure.

Service providers are expected to process information only for authorised purposes and subject to appropriate contractual, organisational or legal safeguards where required.

Some technology or service providers used by The Academica may operate infrastructure outside India. This means personal information may in some circumstances be processed or stored in another country.

Where cross-border processing occurs, we will take measures required by applicable law and will observe any restrictions that apply to the transfer or processing of personal data outside India.

We retain personal information for no longer than is reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it is being used, subject to applicable legal, security, accounting, evidentiary and editorial requirements.

Different records require different retention periods. Short-lived authentication credentials may expire within minutes or hours, while account, security, moderation, legal, financial or editorial records may need to be retained for longer.

Information may also be preserved where reasonably necessary to investigate misuse, resolve a dispute, establish or defend legal claims, comply with law or maintain the integrity of the published editorial record.

We use technical and organisational measures intended to protect personal information against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, loss or misuse. These measures may include access controls, secure authentication, request-forgery protections, restricted administrative privileges, logging, backups and other security controls appropriate to the service.

No website, network, storage system or transmission method can be guaranteed to be completely secure. We therefore cannot promise absolute security.

Depending on the circumstances and the law applicable to you, you may be entitled to request information about personal data we process, seek correction or updating of inaccurate information, request erasure in appropriate cases, withdraw consent where processing is based on consent, or raise a grievance concerning our handling of personal information.

We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. A request may also be limited or refused where permitted or required by law, including where information must be retained for legal, security, fraud-prevention, evidentiary or legitimate editorial reasons.

Privacy and personal-data requests can be sent to legal@theacademica.com.

The Academica is a general-audience news publication and is not designed as a service directed specifically to children.

Where applicable law imposes additional requirements for processing children's personal data, we will apply those requirements to services that knowingly process such information. Features that require age verification or parental consent may be restricted until suitable safeguards are available.

Articles and other pages may link to websites, documents, platforms or services operated by other organisations. Their privacy practices are controlled by them, not by The Academica.

We encourage you to review the privacy information of a third-party service before providing personal information to it.

We may update this Privacy Policy as our services, technology, business operations or legal obligations change. The date at the top of this page indicates when the Policy was most recently updated.

Where a change materially affects how personal information is processed, we may provide additional notice or seek consent where required by applicable law.

For questions about this Privacy Policy, requests concerning personal information, or privacy-related grievances:

Email: legal@theacademica.com

Please provide enough information for us to understand your request and, where relevant, identify the account, communication or information concerned. Do not send passwords, authentication credentials or unnecessary sensitive information as part of a privacy request.