Privacy Policy 

"Research in Focus" is a trading name of Research in Focus Limited. In this Privacy Policy, references to "Research in Focus" or “RiF” are to Research in Focus Limited, registered as company number: 08780358, with registered address: Innovation House, 4 Molly Millars Close, Wokingham, Berkshire, RG41 2RX and contactable via [email protected]

Research in Focus is committed to ensuring your privacy is protected. Our general approach is to collect as little information as possible, just that required to deliver our products and/or services, to hold all of our information securely, and to dispose of any data as soon as it is no longer required.  This Privacy Policy sets out details of the information that we may collect from you and how we may use that information. Please take your time to read this Privacy Policy carefully. When using our website/s, this Privacy Policy should be read alongside the website terms and conditions and our courses disclaimer.

The privacy policy governs your access to and use of www.researchinfocus.com and our online courses platform https://research-in-focus.mykajabi.com/ including any content, functionality and services offered on or through either/both websites whether as a guest or as a registered user.  This policy ALSO incorporates our products/services delivered offline or via online platforms but in real time e.g. Zoom/Teams hosted events such as facilitated workshops or training sessions.

Please read this privacy policy carefully before you start to use the websites. By using the websites or by clicking accept/agree to the Terms of Use whenever this option is made available to you, you accept and agree to be bound by and abide by the privacy policy, ours Terms and Conditions and our Courses Disclaimer.

IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO AGREE TO THE PRIVACY POLICY YOU MUST NOT USE EITHER OF OUR WEBSITES.

1. About us

In this Privacy Policy references to "we" or "us" or "Research in Focus" are to Research in Focus Ltd.

We are the data controller of any personal information you provide to us. This means that we are responsible for complying with data protection laws. This Privacy Policy describes what personal information we may collect from you, why we use your personal information and more generally the practices we maintain and ways in which we use and protect your personal information.

We are registered as a data handler with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and we have appointed a data protection officer to oversee our handling of personal information. If you have any questions about how we collect, store or use your information, you can contact our data protection officer using the details set out above.

Children Under 13

None of our products/services/websites are intended for children under 18 years of age. No one under age 18 may provide any information to or on the websites. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If you are under 18, do not use or provide any information on any of our websites (listed above) or on or through any of its features or registration routes. You must not make any purchases through the website nor use any of the interactive elements such as public comments. You must not provide any information about yourself to us, including but not limited to name, address, telephone number, email address or any screen or usernames. If we learn we have inadvertently collected or received personal information from a child under 18 we will delete that information. If you believe we might have information from or about a child under 18, please contact us at [email protected]

Website users/potential clients from outside of the UK

Our products/services are designed for UK resident researchers, whether they be based in a university or other research-intensive organisation such as a research institute, government lab or business. Our products/services are NOT designed for anyone outside of the UK and therefore your use of the website and any of our products/services confirms that you are resident in the UK for tax purposes.

2. Our activities

We provide specialist advice and coaching via our 1:1 (1:team) critical friend and pre-interview coaching services.  We plan and facilitate research related workshops (often called sandpits) and we run training courses. Our training courses are delivered both live (in-person and via remote communication methods such as Zoom/Teams) and via our online portal where course members have a library of all the courses they are subscribed to and follow the course materials at their own pace.

3. Who do we collect information about?

• Previous, current and prospective clients.
• Previous, current and prospective employees and associates/business partners.
• Research in Focus website users
• Business contacts such as, but not limited to, our suppliers

 

4. When do we collect personal information?

• When you submit your name to our email list
• When you become a member of one of our online courses
• When you participate in one of our events IF we need to use this information to deliver our service e.g. to invite you to the event
• If you participate in one of our services e.g. you are a research collaborator of someone who has procured our coaching/critical friend service
• Whenever you use the Research in Focus website
• If you respond to a non-anonymised survey, course, etc. evaluation questionnaire, or marketing campaign
• If you ask us to provide a quotation
• If you contact us for any other reason

5. What personal information do we collect and use?

In order for us to provide our products and services, and to serve our clients, we need to collect and process personal data about you.  We will collect the minimum amount of personal information that we need to enable us to provide our product/service.

The personal information that we collect will depend on your relationship with us. We will collect different information depending on whether you are a current or prospective client; associated with a client; or website user, live or online course member, supplier, associate, or other third party.

Due to the nature of our business, we may request and/or receive ‘confidential’ data related to or about you, e.g. confidential research project or interests related information; but none of this will be special category data i.e. we do NOT collect information pertaining to your health, race, ethnicity, religious believes, etc.

Please click on the relevant section below for detailed information regarding the types of personal information we are likely to collect and use about you.

Personal information:

• General information such as your name, address and contact details.
• Information about your job including job title, and employer
• Information relevant to your research interests and/or grant history
• Information relevant to any activity we are delivering on behalf of your organisation or another organisation with whom you are associated e.g. If the employer of the Principal Investigator on a grant application has procured one of our coaching services and you are a co-investigator or research collaborator from a different organisation.
• Information relating to previous quotations or projects
• We use a 3^rd party (STRIPE) to process credit card payments and therefore we do NOT hold any financial information relating to you
• Information obtained through our use of cookies. You can find more information about this in our Cookie Policy
• Website browsing history
• Information captured during our telephone calls, whether inbound and outbound
• Your marketing preferences
• IP address
• Device ID information

Sensitive personal information:

We do NOT capture any sensitive personal information.

6. How do we collect your information?

We collect personal information from a number of different sources including:

• Directly from you or from someone else on your behalf
• From associates, other private individuals, or other businesses
• From other third parties who provide a service in relation to our service/product
• From third party data providers and through publicly available sources such as internet search engines and social media sites
• Through customer surveys and responses to various marketing campaigns
• From your use of our website and its cookies - please see our Cookie Policy
• From inbound and outbound phone calls
• From inbound and outbound emails

Research in Focus has internal policy documents in place to ensure that any information used that’s in the public domain or sourced from social media sites is used in line with our usual obligations.

7. What are the purposes for which your information is used?

The Company collects your information in order to record and support your participation in the activities you select or your employer selects for you. If you register to download a book or resources, sign up for our newsletter, and/or purchase a product from us, we collect your information. We use this information to track your preferences and to keep you informed about the products and services you have selected to receive and any related products and/or services. As a visitor to our website/s, you can engage in most activities without providing any personal information. It is only when you seek to download resources and/or register for services that you are required to provide information.

We may process your personal information for a number of different purposes. For each purpose we must have a legal ground for such processing. Our purposes include:

• To provide you with products and/or services which you or your employer have procured us to deliver
• To provide you with information which you have requested such as new courses alerts and tips and tricks as included in our occasional newsletter style email updates circulated to our email list
• To provide you with offers for products and services (where you have opted in, to our email list)
• To provide you with information about your subscriptions and products
• To carry out any contract between you and the Company
• To administer our business activities
• To provide customer service
• From time-to-time, we may use the information you provide to us to make you offers to purchase products and services provided by third parties in exchange for a commission to be paid to us by such third parties. Should you opt to take part in such promotions, the third parties will receive your information.
• From time-to-time, we may use the information you provide to us to display advertisements to you that are tailored to your personal characteristics, interests, and activities.
• To administer any financial arrangements with you or your organisation e.g. to settle our bills and issue our own invoices for work we have carried out

8. Who do we share your information with?

As a general rule, we do not sell, rent, lease or otherwise transfer any information collected whether automatically or through your voluntary action.  Research in Focus protects it’s reputation as a trusted supplier extremely carefully so we take data collection, processing and security extremely seriously.

From time to time we may share your personal information with carefully vetted third parties such as our associates (sub-contractors) for the purposes of delivering a product or service or preparing a quotation as requested by you or your organisation/employer.

1. Disclosures to third parties

We also disclose your information to the third parties listed below for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy. These might include:

• the police and other third parties or law enforcement agencies where reasonably necessary for the prevention or detection of crime
• debt collection agencies
• online search engines
• social media platforms
• our third party service providers such as IT suppliers, actuaries, auditors, lawyers, marketing agencies, payment processing agencies, document management providers, and tax advisers
• third parties who undertake analysis for the purposes of product improvement
• data providers who support us with developing our products and services
• selected third parties in connection with the sale, transfer, or disposal of our business. We will ensure that such third parties have the appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to safeguard your data

9. What marketing activities do we carry out?

Email marketing

We may also use your personal information to provide you with information by email about our products or services or those of our partners which may be of interest to you or to send eNewsletters. You have the option to opt out at any time.

If you wish to unsubscribe from emails sent by us, you may do so at any time by clicking on the "unsubscribe" link that appears in all emails. Otherwise you can always contact us using the details set out in section 14 to update your contact preferences. In such circumstances, we will continue to send you service-related (non-marketing) communications where necessary.

Telephone marketing

We may also use your personal information to call you regarding products and services you have expressed an interest in, or which we believe may be of interest to you. You can opt out of receiving these calls at any point.

You can stop receiving telephone calls from us at any time by contacting us using the details set out in section 14 to update your contact preferences. In such circumstances, we will continue to send you service-related (non-marketing) communications where necessary.

Post

We may also use your personal information to provide you with information by post about our products or services or those of our partners which may be of interest to you. You have the option to opt out at any time.

You can stop receiving post from us at any time by contacting us using the details set out in section 14 to update your contact preferences. In such circumstances, we will continue to send you service related (non-marketing) communications where necessary.

TO STOP receiving any marketing communications from us please email  [email protected]

10. Email

If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received online, mail, and telephone. This also applies when you register for our website/s, sign up through any of our forms using your email address or make a purchase on this site.

We are committed to keeping your e-mail address confidential. We do not sell, rent, or lease our subscription lists to third parties, and will not disclose your email address to any third parties except as allowed elsewhere in this privacy policy.

We will maintain the information you send via e-mail in accordance with applicable law.

All e-mails sent from our organisation will clearly state who the e-mail is from and provide clear information on how to contact the sender.

Our marketing emails provide users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us and our partners by using the unsubscribe link located at the bottom of any e-mail.

Users who no longer wish to receive our newsletter or promotional materials may opt-out of receiving these communications by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the e-mail.

Even if you are opted out of marketing emails we may still need to send you messages in order to provide you with information about your products and/or services or to fulfil our obligations to you e.g. for a project we have been procured to deliver by you organisation/employer/their partner/s

11. The use of cookies and pixels

Similar to other commercial websites, our website utilizes a standard technology called “cookies” and server logs to collect information about how our site is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our site, and the websites visited just before and just after our own, as well as your IP address.

A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a website, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

The Company reserves the right to use technological equivalents of cookies, including social media pixels. These pixels allow social media sites to track visitors to outside websites so as to tailor advertising messages users see while visiting that social media website. The Company reserves the right to use these pixels in compliance with the policies of the various social media sites.​

Third party cookies

Some content or applications, including advertisements, on the Website are served by third-parties, including advertisers, ad networks and servers, content providers, and application providers. These third parties may use cookies alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies to collect information about you when you use our website. The information they collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioural) advertising or other targeted content.

We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you should contact the responsible provider directly.

12. How long do we keep personal information for?

We will only keep your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the relevant purposes set out in this Privacy Policy and in order to comply with our legal, statutory, and regulatory obligations. If you would like further information regarding the periods for which your personal information will be stored, please see section 14 below for our contact details.

13. Your rights

Under data protection law you have certain legal rights in relation to the personal information that we hold about you. You may exercise these rights at any time by contacting us using the details set out in section 14.

Please note:

In some cases we may not be able to comply with your request (e.g. we might not be able to delete your data) for reasons such as our own obligations to comply with other legal or regulatory requirements or to deliver products/services were are contractually bound to deliver. However, we will always respond to any request you make, and if we can't comply with your request we will tell you why. In some circumstances exercising some of these rights (including the right to erasure, the right to restriction of processing, and the right to withdraw consent) will mean we are unable to continue providing you with services and may therefore result in the cancellation of any ongoing projects or course memberships . You will therefore lose the right to access your course materials, including any paid for before you exercised your right of erasure. In these circumstances you will not be eligible for a refund.

Your rights include:

The right to access your personal information You are entitled to a copy of the personal information we hold about you and certain details of how we use it. There will not usually be a charge for dealing with these requests. Your information will usually be provided to you in writing, unless otherwise requested, or where you have made the request by electronic means, in which case the information will be provided to you by electronic means where possible.

The right to rectification We take reasonable steps to ensure that the information we hold about you is accurate and complete. However, if you do not believe this is the case, you can ask us to update or amend it.

The right to erasure (also known as 'the right to be forgotten') In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information. Examples would include where the data is no longer required for the original purpose, consent has been withdrawn and there no overriding grounds for continuing the processing, or for compliance with the national law or for legal or regulatory obligations. There are occasions when a request made under data protection law is overridden by other legal and statutory data retention requirements.

The right to restriction or suspension of processing In certain circumstances, such as a question over its accuracy, you are entitled to ask us to stop using your personal information or to suspend its use.

The right to object to marketing You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time. To STOP receiving all marketing communications from us please email [email protected] 

The right to object to processing For certain uses of your personal information, we will ask for your consent. This consent can take the form of an action or affirmative instruction. Where we do this, you have the right to withdraw your consent to further use of your personal information. In other circumstances we may process your data using legitimate interest, and again you have the right to withdraw this right of processing, unless it is necessary in connection with our legal rights. Please note that in the event that you withdraw your permission for us to use all of your personal data, we may be unable to continue providing you with products/services and this may therefore result in the cancellation of any active services such as membership of our online courses. In this instance you will therefore be unable to access any of your course materials and will not be eligible for a refund.

The right to lodge a complaint with the ICO We would hope that you will always raise any issues with us first, and that we will be able to resolve them to your satisfaction. However, if this isn’t possible then you always have a right to complain directly to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe that any use of your personal information by us is in breach of applicable data protection laws and regulations.

Please see below for contact details of the ICO:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 (national rate)
Email: [email protected]
Making a complaint will not affect any other legal rights or remedies that you have.

14. How we protect your information

We employ commercially reasonable methods to ensure the security of the information you provide to us and the information we collect automatically. This includes using standard security protocols and working only with reputable third-party vendors.  Email is not recognised as a secure medium of communication. For this reason, we request that you do not send private information to us by email; doing so is allowed, but at your own risk. Some of the information you may enter on our website may be transmitted securely via a secure medium known as Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. We use a 3^rd party credit card processing platform which takes all necessary security precautions; we NEVER see your financial information. Under no circumstances should credit card or other sensitive information be transmitted via email.

The Company may use software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, the Company uses software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorised attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone, and to use a password that is appropriate (i.e. a mixture of upper and lower case letters, and characters, which isn’t used on other sites and isn’t easily guessed).

We restrict access to your information as appropriate within Research in Focus to only those who absolutely need to know that information for the purposes set out above.

Firewalls are used to block unauthorised traffic to the servers and the actual servers are located in a secure location which can only be accessed by authorised personnel. Our internal procedures cover the storage, access and disclosure of your information.

15. Contacting us

If you have any questions about how we collect, store or use your personal information, you may contact our data protection officer at:

Data Protection Officer Research in Focus Ltd, Innovation House, 4 Molly Millars Close, Wokingham, Berkshire, RG41 2RX

Email: [email protected]  

16. Updates to this Privacy Policy

From time to time we will make changes to this Privacy Policy, for example as the result of government regulation, new technologies, or other developments in data protection laws or privacy generally. You should check our website periodically to view the most up-to-date Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 25 June 2022