AM Quartex user privacy policy

Quartex is a digital asset management system operated by Adam Matthew Digital Ltd which is part of the SAGE Group ("we" or “us”). Adam Matthew Digital Ltd (trading as “AM”) is registered in England and Wales under company number 5960030 and has its registered office at 1 Oliver's Yard, 55 City Road, London, EC1Y 1SP.

AM values our relationship with you and recognises the importance of respecting and protecting your personal information and privacy.

This policy (together with any other resources referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal information you provide to us through Quartex as an end user and if you set up an account using the “MyAccount” functionality (My Account) will be processed (meaning collected, stored, and otherwise used) by us.  This policy does not cover other possible uses of your personal data (for example, if you are a contact at one of our customers).  Other uses of your personal data which is not collected through Quartex are set out in our general privacy policy.

Please read this policy carefully as it sets out what you can expect from us and gives you our contact details if you wish to ask any questions or raise concerns about how we are processing your personal information.

For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 (the Act) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the data controller is Adam Matthew Digital Ltd, whose trading address is at Pelham House, Pelham Court, London Road, Marlborough, SN8 2AG.

The different types of personal information that we collect

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include information where the identity has been removed (anonymous information).

AM provides Quartex to enable organisations to store their archival material.  Our Quartex customers are academic institutions, libraries, commercial organisations and cultural heritage institutions.

In the context of providing Quartex to you, a user, we process personal data about you. More information on this is set out below.

There might also be personal data contained within the archive collections stored in the Quartex platform.  Unless the archive collection is licensed by us to customers, we only store that personal data within the archive collections on behalf of our customers, and we don’t control or manage that personal data.  If you have any concerns regarding personal data in the archive collections, you should contact the owner of the archival material.

Your Personal Data

We collect, store and process personal information of users (such as you) accessing Quartex and Quartex websites.  

This includes:

• Identity and contact data: names, user names, job titles, institution names, courses, research areas and email addresses of users accessing our digital publications and when you are signing up for MyAccount.
• Technical data: internet protocol (IP) address, login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices users use to access our publications and Quartex websites;
• Usage data: information about how users use Quartex, and its related products and services, including information and analytics about what searches users have done and user tracking data.

Our obligations and your rights

The law imposes certain obligations on us in relation to this personal data.

Data protection legislation also gives you a number of rights to protect you against an organisation mishandling this type of personal information. It is important that you understand your rights and in this document we have set out what those rights are and how you can exercise your rights in respect of AM processing those types of personal information.

How we collect your personal data

Information you provide to us: you may provide us with your personal data when you are accessing websites created using Quartex or set up MyAccount.

How we use your personal data and the lawful bases for that processing

We use your personal data in the following ways.

1. To deliver our products and services to you – we may use this information to allow you to access restricted areas of the Quartex platform (such as MyAccount), when you choose to do so (which may rely on your consent for the processing of your personal information which is necessary for giving you access to those restricted areas);
2. To improve the effectiveness of our products and services – we may use this information (in each case as is necessary for our legitimate interests) to:

• Administer the Quartex platform and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
• Improve the Quartex platform to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer or device;
• Assess how users are interacting with the Quartex platform so that we can use that information for feature development and enhancements;
• Keep our platform safe and secure;

References to our "legitimate interests" in this policy include our commercial interests in operating our business (and the business of AM more generally) in an efficient and sustainable manner, in accordance with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Sharing information with third parties

For the purposes referred to in this policy and relying on the bases for processing as set out above, we may share your personal data with our parent company, SAGE Publishing, namely:

• SAGE Publications, Ltd in the United Kingdom, for global business management purposes;
• SAGE Publications, Inc in the United States, for global business management purposes.

AM may also share your personal data with our business partners who are providing a service to us, for example:

• IT hosting, support and storage providers that provide such services to AM including Amazon Web Services for hosting and Valcon for support services;
• Selected providers of data cleansing and migration services,  web analytics services, and providers of web authorisation and authentication software including Liblynx and Auth0 for identification services.

AM may also share your personal data with service providers who are providing a service to you via Quartex, if you have signed the relevant licence terms with such service providers.

AM’s customers may use third party products to analyse your use of the archive materials included in Quartex or to control which parts of a customer’s archive material you access.  How this data is collected and used by our customers will be set out in our customers’ privacy policies where relevant.

Transfer outside the UK

AM is a global company and our systems and management team are integrated throughout the organisation. Personal data will be accessible to AM employees and business partner service providers based outside the UK. We have an agreement in place across the organisation to safeguard this personal information and to ensure the same high standards of data protection exist across AM.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.   This includes all countries in the EEA;
• Where there is no adequacy finding, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK, such as the International Data Transfer Addendum together with the EU standard contractual clauses or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

However, as a user of Quartex websites it is important that you keep any login information confidential where you have set up MyAccount.  

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

However, the internet is not totally secure so security cannot be guaranteed.

How long do we keep your personal data

In respect of user personal data for Quartex, we will normally retain this information unless otherwise instructed, as per your rights below.

Your rights in respect of your personal data

Under the Act you have the following rights:

• To obtain access to, and copies of, the personal information that we hold about you;
• To require us to correct the personal information we hold about you if it is incorrect;
• To require us to erase your personal information;
• To require us to restrict our data processing activities;
• Where our processing is based on your consent, the right to withdraw that consent (without affecting the lawfulness of our processing based on consent before its withdrawal);
• Where the processing is carried out by automated means, to receive from us the personal information we hold about you which you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by you (including for the purpose of you transmitting that personal information to another data controller); and
• To object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to any of our particular processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on your rights.

Please note that these rights are not absolute, and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the contact details set out below.

Contact us

If you have any comments, questions or concerns about anything you have read on this page or you are concerned about how your personal information has been handled by AM, you can contact us at ukgdprcommittee@amdigital.co.uk.

Referral to the UK Information Commissioner

If you are a UK Citizen and are not satisfied with how we are processing your personal information, you can refer us to the Information Commissioner. You can find out more about your rights under data protection legislation from the Information Commissioner's Office website available at: www.ico.org.uk.

Changes in our privacy policy

If we make changes to this policy, we will detail them on this page. If it is appropriate we may provide you with details by email; we suggest that you regularly visit this page to see any changes or updates to this policy.

This policy was last updated in September 2025.

Glossary

Compliance with law or with a legal obligation: means processing your User Personal Data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

Legitimate interest: means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

Personal data or personal information: means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include information where the identity has been removed (anonymous information).