Privacy Policy

Ojukwu Journal of Psychological Services (OJPS)
Website: https://psyservicesjournal.org.ng/
OJS platform: https://ojs.psyservicesjournal.org.ng/
Publisher: Psychological Services’ Centre, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam Campus, Anambra State, Nigeria
Appointed publishing-platform and DOI metadata partner: Onyitechideas Publication Services
Effective date: 31 August 2026
Last updated: 31 August 2026

1. Purpose and scope

This Privacy Policy explains how Ojukwu Journal of Psychological Services (“OJPS,” “the Journal,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, stores, discloses, and protects personal data when you visit our public website, use our Open Journal Systems (“OJS”) platform, create an account, submit a manuscript, participate in peer review, contact the editorial office, subscribe to journal notifications, or otherwise interact with the Journal.

This Policy applies to the public website at psyservicesjournal.org.ng, the OJS platform at ojs.psyservicesjournal.org.ng, and Journal communications that link to this Policy. It does not govern third-party websites, social-media services, payment processors, email providers, repository services, indexing services, or external websites linked from our pages. Those services operate under their own privacy notices.

OJPS is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal. Published articles, author names, affiliations, abstracts, references, acknowledgements, ORCID identifiers, and other publication metadata may remain publicly available as part of the scholarly record. This Policy does not create a right to remove or anonymise information that must reasonably remain in the permanent academic record, subject to applicable law and legitimate correction, retraction, or safeguarding procedures.

2. Who is responsible for your personal data

The Journal’s publisher is the Psychological Services’ Centre of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam Campus, Anambra State, Nigeria. The Journal’s principal editorial contact is:

Journal Editor
Email: editor@psyservicesjournal.org.ng

ci.onyemaechi@coou.edu.ng.

Onyitechideas Publication Services is the Centre’s appointed publishing-platform, hosting, maintenance, and DOI-metadata partner. In that role, Onyitechideas may process personal data on the Journal’s documented instructions and may provide technical support for the website, OJS installation, user accounts, submissions, publishing workflows, and metadata. It is not the publisher of OJPS merely because it operates or maintains the platform.

For a particular activity, the publisher, the Journal’s editorial office, and authorised technical providers may have different responsibilities under applicable data-protection law. Questions about personal data should first be sent to the Journal Editor.

3. Personal data we may collect

Depending on how you interact with OJPS, we may collect the following categories of information:

Category	Examples	Typical source
Identity and professional information	Name, title, affiliation, department, position, country, biography, profile photograph, ORCID iD	You, your co-authors, editorial staff, or public scholarly sources
Contact information	Email address, postal address, telephone number, correspondence address	You or an authorised co-author
Account information	Username, password hash, roles, account status, language and notification preferences	You and the OJS platform
Manuscript and review information	Manuscripts, supplementary files, cover letters, reviewer comments, editorial decisions, revisions, declarations, correspondence, conflict-of-interest information, ethics statements, and publishing agreements	Authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial staff
Publication information	Article title, abstract, keywords, references, author affiliations, funding statements, data-availability statements, acknowledgements, corrections, and retraction information	Authors, editors, and production staff
Technical information	IP address, browser type, device information, operating-system information, approximate location inferred from IP, access times, referring URLs, pages viewed, and security logs	Your browser, server, OJS, hosting provider, or security tools
Communications	Messages sent to the editorial office, contact-form information if enabled, support requests, and responses	You, editors, or technical support personnel
Transaction information	Payment status, invoice details, payer name, and transaction reference where a fee is offered or collected	You and the relevant payment provider; payment-card details should be handled by the provider
Cookie and preference information	Session identifiers, authentication cookies, security cookies, language preferences, and limited usage preferences	Your browser and the Journal’s website

Please do not submit unnecessary sensitive personal data, confidential clinical information, government identification numbers, financial-account credentials, or personal data about another person unless you have a lawful basis and the necessary permission to do so.

4. How we use personal data

We may process personal data for the following purposes:

1. To operate, secure, and maintain the Journal website and OJS platform.
2. To create and administer author, reviewer, editor, and reader accounts.
3. To receive, assess, peer-review, edit, produce, publish, preserve, and disseminate scholarly submissions.
4. To communicate with authors, reviewers, editors, readers, and institutional contacts about submissions, decisions, corrections, retractions, publication issues, and Journal activities.
5. To identify conflicts of interest, protect research integrity, investigate allegations of misconduct, and maintain a reliable scholarly record.
6. To display published article information and deposit or distribute bibliographic metadata through DOI registration agencies, repositories, indexing services, library systems, search engines, and scholarly discovery services.
7. To process subscriptions, invoices, publication charges, donations, or other transactions if those services are offered.
8. To prevent spam, fraud, abuse, unauthorised access, malware, and other security incidents.
9. To comply with legal, regulatory, institutional, contractual, accounting, safeguarding, and records-management obligations.
10. To analyse limited website performance and improve usability where analytics are enabled and lawfully configured.
11. To respond to privacy requests, complaints, and requests relating to access, correction, withdrawal, or deletion.

We do not use manuscript or peer-review data to provide unrelated advertising services. We do not sell personal data.

5. Legal bases for processing

Where the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 or another applicable privacy law requires a lawful basis, the Journal may rely on one or more of the following, depending on the circumstances:

• Performance of a contract or requested service, such as administering an account, processing a submission, managing a review assignment, or completing a publishing arrangement.
• Legitimate interests, such as operating a scholarly journal, preserving the integrity of the academic record, preventing abuse, maintaining information security, and communicating with contributors, where those interests are not overridden by the rights and freedoms of the individual.
• Consent, where consent is required or is the appropriate basis, such as optional promotional communications or certain non-essential cookies. Consent may be withdrawn, but withdrawal does not affect processing already carried out lawfully.
• Legal or institutional obligations, including recordkeeping, responding to lawful requests, resolving disputes, and protecting rights, safety, or the integrity of the publishing process.
• Public-interest or scholarly-publication purposes, where recognised by applicable law and appropriate to the Journal’s academic function.

The precise lawful basis may depend on the person’s relationship with the Journal, the data involved, and the applicable law.

6. Manuscripts, peer review, and scholarly publishing

Authors should submit only information that is relevant to editorial evaluation and publication. Authors are responsible for ensuring that they have the necessary permissions and lawful authority to provide personal data contained in manuscripts, photographs, datasets, acknowledgements, case materials, or supplementary files.

Reviewer identities will be handled according to the Journal’s peer-review model and editorial policy. Reviewers must keep manuscripts and review information confidential and must not use or disclose unpublished material except as authorised by the Journal.

If a manuscript is accepted and published, the Journal may make the article and associated publication metadata publicly available. This may include author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs, email addresses intentionally included in the article, funding information, acknowledgements, declarations, and correspondence details included for publication. Authors should not include personal contact information in a published article unless they understand that it may become publicly accessible.

The Journal may retain submission, review, editorial, production, and publication records after a decision or publication in order to preserve the scholarly record, establish the history of editorial decisions, address complaints, investigate misconduct, process corrections or retractions, and meet legal or institutional requirements.

7. When we share personal data

We may disclose personal data only as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, including to:

• authorised editors, editorial-board members, reviewers, production staff, and institutional representatives;
• Onyitechideas Publication Services and other authorised technology, hosting, security, backup, email, and maintenance providers acting under appropriate instructions;
• DOI registration agencies, metadata registries, repositories, library services, indexing services, search engines, and scholarly discovery platforms when publication metadata is deposited or distributed;
• payment processors, banks, accountants, and professional advisers where a transaction or financial record requires it;
• regulators, law-enforcement bodies, courts, universities, or other authorities where disclosure is required or legally permitted;
• a successor, transferee, or service provider involved in a lawful restructuring or transfer of the Journal’s publishing operations; and
• other parties where you have requested or expressly authorised the disclosure.

We do not permit third parties to use submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, or account information for their own unrelated marketing purposes. We require service providers to use appropriate confidentiality and security safeguards consistent with their role.

8. International transfers and public dissemination

The Journal, OJS host, email provider, backup provider, DOI registry, repository, indexing service, or other service provider may process personal data in Nigeria or another country. Where personal data is transferred across borders, we will seek to use a lawful transfer mechanism and appropriate contractual, technical, or organisational safeguards required by applicable law.

Because OJPS is an open-access journal, published articles and associated metadata may be accessed worldwide. Once an article or metadata has been distributed to repositories, libraries, search engines, indexing databases, DOI registries, or other scholarly services, copies may remain available under those services’ own policies even if a page on the Journal website is later changed.

9. Cookies and similar technologies

The Journal may use necessary cookies and similar technologies for login sessions, authentication, security, language preferences, load balancing, and core OJS functions. These technologies help the platform remember a user during a session and protect accounts and submissions.

If optional analytics, embedded media, social-media tools, advertising technologies, or other non-essential services are enabled, they may place additional cookies or collect additional technical information. Where required by law, the Journal will request consent before using non-essential cookies and will provide a means to withdraw consent.

You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings. Disabling necessary cookies may prevent you from logging in, submitting a manuscript, completing a review, or using other OJS functions.

Before publishing this policy, the Journal should confirm whether Google Analytics, Matomo, reCAPTCHA, embedded videos, social-media plugins, CDN services, or other tracking technologies are active. Any active service should be listed by name and linked to its privacy notice.

10. Data retention

We retain personal data only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, unless a longer period is required or justified by law, institutional policy, contractual obligations, security needs, dispute resolution, or preservation of the scholarly record.

In general, account and submission records may be retained while an account or editorial relationship remains active and afterwards for a reasonable period. Published article metadata and the article itself may be retained indefinitely as part of the permanent scholarly record. Security logs, backups, correspondence, payment records, and deletion-request records may be retained for periods appropriate to security, accounting, legal, and operational needs.

When personal data is no longer required, we will delete it, anonymise it, or securely restrict it where reasonably practicable. Backups may take additional time to expire.

11. Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures appropriate to the nature of the data and the risks involved. These may include access controls, role-based permissions, password protections, software updates, backups, server and application security, confidentiality obligations, and monitoring for unauthorised access.

No internet transmission or storage system is completely secure. Users should use strong, unique passwords, keep account credentials confidential, avoid sending sensitive information by ordinary email, and notify the Journal promptly if they suspect unauthorised access or a security incident.

12. Your data-protection rights

Subject to applicable law and any relevant exceptions, you may have the right to:

• request confirmation of whether we process your personal data;
• request access to personal data we hold about you;
• request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data;
• request deletion or erasure where the data is no longer necessary or another lawful ground applies;
• request restriction or object to certain processing;
• withdraw consent where processing is based on consent;
• request data portability where the right applies; and
• lodge a complaint with the competent data-protection authority.

These rights are not absolute. For example, a request may be limited where data must be retained to preserve the scholarly record, protect another person’s confidentiality, maintain peer-review integrity, comply with a legal obligation, investigate misconduct, or protect the security of the platform.

To make a request, email editor@psyservicesjournal.org.ng with the subject line “Privacy Request.” Please describe the request, identify the account or submission concerned, and provide enough information for us to verify your identity. We may ask for additional information where reasonably necessary to prevent unauthorised disclosure. We aim to respond within the period required by applicable law.

You may also contact the Nigeria Data Protection Commission through its official website: https://ndpc.gov.ng/.

13. Children and vulnerable persons

The Journal is intended for researchers, academics, practitioners, students, and other users involved in scholarly communication. We do not knowingly request personal data from children for unrelated purposes. If a manuscript contains information about a child or vulnerable person, authors must obtain all legally required permissions, ethics approvals, consents, and safeguards and must remove unnecessary identifying information.

14. Third-party links and services

Our websites may link to universities, repositories, DOI registries, social-media services, payment providers, indexing services, publisher resources, or other external websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices, content, or security of those third parties. Review their privacy notices before submitting personal data or interacting with their services.

15. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Policy to reflect changes in law, technology, OJS configuration, editorial practice, hosting arrangements, or Journal services. The updated version will be posted on this page with a revised “Last updated” date. If a change materially affects how we use personal data, we will provide additional notice where required.

16. Contact

For questions, requests, complaints, or concerns about this Privacy Policy or the Journal’s handling of personal data, contact:

Journal Editor
Ojukwu Journal of Psychological Services
Psychological Services’ Centre
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University
Igbariam Campus, Anambra State, Nigeria
Email: editor@psyservicesjournal.org.ng

Additional listed institutional contact: ci.onyemaechi@coou.edu.ng