Reactome is committed to respecting and protecting your privacy, whether you are browsing for information or conducting business with us through electronic channels. This privacy policy informs you about how our project collects, stores, and uses your personal data that you provide when you use our website or contact us. This statement explains our current practices regarding what information Reactome may collect, use, and secure your personal information when visiting our websites.

Questions about this notice can be directed via email to our This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Who controls your personal data and how to contact us?

The Reactome Data Protection Officer's contact details are:

Reactome Data Protection Officer

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

OICR, 661 University Ave Suite 510, Toronto, ON, M5G 0A3, Canada

What data do we collect?

When you browse or download information from Reactome websites, our servers automatically collect limited amounts of standard information for traffic monitoring and statistical purposes. The information is analyzed for operational trends, performance, ways to improve our sites, and other purposes of the day-to-day running of the Reactome resource and underlying infrastructure. 

We only collect the contributor data necessary to allow for a high-quality editorial policy. Author details are captured when an authored pathway record is created and used to process and publish them. Where appropriate, they are also shared confidentially with the curation staff at Reactome. Furthermore, the collection of details about reviewers is required to properly solicit reviewers and appropriate editorial staff engagement in the processing of decisions on Reactome records. Reviewer information will be held indefinitely but never shared with other parties.

We collect the following standard types of information:

  • Website
    • Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers being used to access our sites
    • operating systems and the types and versions of browsers used to access our sites.
    • dates and times users access our sites
    • amount of data transmitted
    • pages visited
    • keywords users enter into our search engine
    • names and sizes of files requested
  • Help Desk
    • Name
    • Email address
  • Data Curation
    • Name
    • ORCID iD
    • Email address
    • Affiliation

We will use your personal data for the following purposes:

  • To provide the user access to the service.
  • To answer questions from users.
  • To better understand the needs of the users and guide future improvements of the service.
  • To create anonymous usage statistics.
  • To conduct and monitor data protection activities.
  • To conduct and monitor security activities.

Who will have access to your personal data?

Personal data will only be disclosed to authorized staff at the institutions that form the Reactome Consortium and will be used only for the purposes described in the previous section.

Will your personal data be transferred to third countries (i.e., countries not part of EU/EAA) and/or international organizations? 

Minimal contributor metadata is shared as part of routine indexing of published content in professional publishing databases such as CrossRef and ORCID.

There are no personal data transfers to international organizations outside of the Reactome Consortium.

Reactome uses Google Analytics as a third-party analytics service to collect information about website performance and how users navigate and use our sites to design better interfaces. We do not use Google Analytics to track you individually or collect personal data.

How long do we keep your personal data?

We will keep the personal data for the minimum amount of time possible to ensure legal compliance and to facilitate internal and external audits if they arise. However, any personal data directly obtained from you will be retained as long as the service is live, even if you stop using the service.

What are the privacy notices for other linked websites?

Our website contains links from and to other websites. However, our privacy notice applies to only our website and not other linked websites. So, if you click on a link to other websites, you can read their privacy notice.

What are your rights regarding your personal data?

We want to make sure that you are fully aware of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following rights:

  1. Not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing of data (i.e., without human intervention) without you having your views taken into consideration.
  2. Request at reasonable intervals and without excessive delay or expense, information about the personal data processed about you. Under your request, we will inform you in writing about, for example, the origin of the personal data or the preservation period.
  3. Request information to understand data processing activities when the results of these activities are applied to you.
  4. Object at any time to the processing of your personal data unless we can demonstrate that we have legitimate reasons to process your personal data.
  5. Request free of charge and without excessive delay rectification or erasure of your personal data if we have not been processing it respecting the respective controllers' data protection policies.

It must be clarified that rights 4 and 5 are only available whenever the processing of your personal data is not necessary to:

  • Comply with a legal obligation.
  • Perform a task carried out in the public interest.
  • Exercise authority as a data controller.
  • Archive for purposes in the public interest, or historical research purposes, or for statistical purposes.
  • Establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.

Will you make changes to our privacy policy?

Our organization reviews and updates its privacy policy regularly. We may change our data privacy practices and place any updates on this privacy policy page.

How to contact us?

If you have any queries related to our data privacy practices or this privacy policy, feel free to contact us at our This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..