SPARC Report Urges Action to Address Concerns with ScienceDirect Data Privacy Practices

SPARC released Navigating Risk in Vendor Data Privacy Practices: An Analysis of Elsevier’s ScienceDirect. The report documents a variety of data privacy practices that directly conflict with library privacy standards, and raises important questions regarding the potential for personal data collected from academic products to be used in the data brokering and surveillance products of RELX’s LexisNexis subsidiary. The report highlights why users and institutions should actively evaluate and address the potential privacy risks as this transition occurs rather than after it is complete.