Privacy and Data Protection

This statement explains what personal data the Journal of Caribbean Artificial Intelligence and Systems (JCAIS) collects, why it is collected, how it is used, and what rights you have over it. It covers visitors to this website, authors, reviewers, and editorial board members.

Data controller: Caribbean AI Journal Initiative, publisher of JCAIS.
Data protection contact: editor@caribbeanaijournal.org

What We Collect

Who	Data collected	Why
Website visitors	Standard server log data: IP address, user agent, pages requested, timestamps	Security, abuse prevention, and aggregate traffic statistics
Authors	Name, email, affiliation, ORCID iD, biography, manuscript and correspondence	Managing peer review, publishing, and contacting you about your submission
Reviewers	Name, email, affiliation, areas of expertise, review reports	Assigning reviews and maintaining the reviewer pool
Board members	Name, affiliation, biography, contact details	Publishing the editorial board and coordinating editorial work
Enquirers	Whatever you include in an email to us	Answering your enquiry

Cookies and Tracking

This website sets no cookies and runs no advertising, analytics, or cross-site tracking scripts. There is nothing to consent to and no tracking to opt out of.

Two categories of content are loaded from third parties, which necessarily discloses your IP address to those providers:

Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com) — typefaces.
Unsplash (images.unsplash.com) — photographic imagery.

Neither is used by JCAIS to identify or profile you. Both are governed by their own privacy policies. We intend to self-host these assets so that no third-party request is made at all.

The Online Submission Form

Manuscripts submitted through the form on the Submit a Paper page are transmitted over HTTPS and stored by Netlify, the platform that hosts this site, which acts as a data processor on our instructions. Submissions are retrieved from there by the editorial office.

What is stored: everything you enter in the form — manuscript title and type, corresponding author name, email, affiliation, country, ORCID iD, co-author names, abstract, keywords, cover note, and your declarations — together with the files you upload (anonymised manuscript, title page, and any supplementary file).
Where it is stored: on Netlify infrastructure, which is located in the United States. Submitting the form therefore involves an international transfer of your data.
Spam screening: Netlify applies automated spam filtering to form submissions, including a hidden decoy field that people never see and bots tend to complete. No profiling or automated decision-making is applied to your manuscript.
Cookies: the form sets none. It is a plain HTML form and works with JavaScript disabled.
Retention: submissions are exported into the editorial record and deleted from the Netlify form store once the manuscript reaches a decision. The retention periods below then govern the editorial copy.

If you would rather not use the form, email your manuscript to submissions@caribbeanaijournal.org instead. Both routes reach the same editors and are treated identically.

Lawful Basis

Contract / pre-contractual steps — processing author and reviewer data in order to run peer review and publish accepted work.
Legitimate interests — keeping the site secure and available, and maintaining a reviewer pool.
Consent — publishing biographies and contact details of editorial board members, and any optional listing you ask us to publish. Consent may be withdrawn at any time.
Legal obligation — retaining records necessary to address research integrity allegations.

JCAIS does not sell, rent, or trade personal data, and does not share it for marketing purposes. Data is disclosed only in these circumstances:

Peer review. Anonymised manuscripts are sent to reviewers. Under double-blind review, author identities are withheld from reviewers and reviewer identities are withheld from authors.
Publication. Author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs, biographies, and correspondence addresses are published with the article, as is standard scholarly practice, and are transmitted to indexing services and persistent-identifier registries.
Service providers. Hosting, form processing, and email providers process data on our instructions and may not use it for their own purposes. Our website host and form processor is Netlify; see The Online Submission Form above.
Research integrity. Where misconduct is substantiated, relevant records may be disclosed to the affected institution or funder in line with COPE guidance.
Legal requirement. Where disclosure is required by law.

Retention

Published articles and their metadata: retained permanently. The scholarly record is not erasable, and this is a recognised limit on the right to erasure.
Rejected and withdrawn manuscripts and their review records: retained for five years to allow integrity allegations to be investigated, then deleted.
Reviewer and board records: retained while active and for two years thereafter, or until you ask to be removed.
General correspondence: retained for two years.
Server logs: retained for up to 90 days.

Your Rights

Subject to applicable law, including the Jamaican Data Protection Act and the EU and UK GDPR where they apply, you may request: access to the personal data we hold about you; correction of inaccurate data; erasure; restriction of processing; a portable copy; and objection to processing based on legitimate interests. Where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time without affecting prior processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email editor@caribbeanaijournal.org. We respond within 30 days. If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may complain to your national data protection authority.

Note the limit on erasure above: once an article is published, the authorship record cannot be removed without destroying the integrity of the scholarly record.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS. Manuscripts and correspondence are held in access-controlled editorial accounts limited to editors handling the submission. Reviewers are instructed not to retain manuscripts after completing a review, and not to upload manuscripts to third-party AI systems that retain or train on submitted content.

Children

This site is intended for a professional and academic audience and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.

Changes to This Statement

Material changes will be published on this page with a revised effective date. Where a change materially affects how we handle data you have already given us, we will contact you directly.

Effective from the date of publication of this page. Last reviewed: 2026.