What customers can monitor themselves – Google analytics

It is possible for the customers to monitor their Portal audience development using their institution's Google Analytics or HotJar account. To set this up for your Portal go to Administrator > Pure Portal > Configuration > Google Analytics. Elsevier employees do not have access to the data saved into an institution's own Google Analytics account.

What Pure monitors – Adobe Analytics

All website operators need to know whether they are serving their audiences needs and as such all website operators monitor the volume of visitors to the site and to specific pages to understand how they are serving their audience. Elsevier uses Adobe Analytics to collect insights into the audience and performance of the Pure Portals and shares this information with Pure Portal customers through periodic service update meetings. 

Adobe Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Adobe that tracks and reports website traffic. It uses Javascript that runs in the portal visitor's web browser to send information about the context in which they are accessing a website (such as the device type, browser type and operating system in use, the time etc.). It also records the interactions users have within a website. This process complies with relevant data privacy regulations and the data that is collected about users is fully anonymized.

EU GDPR Compliance

Adobe Analytics is fully GDPR compliant as we do not collect any personally identifiable information and individual user journeys are not reported on. You can find out more about our GDPR compliance practices here.

The data on the Portal performance is retained , allowing website operators to understand year over year trends, such as to understand if audience development plans are working as expected.

Data points collected by Adobe Analytics:

• date and time of visit
• browser type
• URLs of referring/exit pages
• operating system
• locale and language preferences
• internet service provider
• identification numbers associated with the user's devices
• the mobile carrier
• system configuration information
• Number of times the Portal visitor interacted with an interactive part of the website (i.e. clicked Search button, clicked “Contact Expert” button, search queries performed on the Portal)
• IP address - data available to only a select group of engineers and is used for only a limited number of purposes

The Pure Usage Log data is not shared with third parties, or with other RELX  entities. Within Elsevier this data is not broadly accessible by other business units (e.g. Elsevier’s  Publishing unit, etc.) Access is granted only to the teams working to serve Pure customers.

How is Adobe Analytics data useful for customers

The key purpose of collecting Adobe Analytics data is to provide insight to our customers on how their Pure Portal is performing. With the data we collect it is possible to provide insights for the following key questions:

• How many visitors does the Pure Portal receive per month / per year?
• Is the number of Pure Portal visitors increasing over the years?
• Is my Portal mainly viewed on a mobile or desktop/laptop?
• Is my Portal mainly visited from within my country, or does it have a more international audience?
• Do the Portal visitors look at one page and leave, or do they spend time exploring the Portal?
• Where are the Portal visitors coming from (i.e. google search. My institution’s other online resources, etc.)
• The Customer Consultant can share the insights with the customer and help them understand if their Pure Portal is performing as expected.

Please note that the usage statistics data processed by Pure is collected for the benefit of the customer institution who owns each website. The usage data is not distributed to any other party within Elsevier, or within any other subsidiary owned by Elsevier's parent company, or to any third party data broker.

Opportunity to opt out from data collection

In compliance with EU law, visitors to EU region Pure Portals must op-in to consent to be tracked and there is no obligation that they consent to do so. When individual site visitors decline the be tracked, their preference is saved on that device for as long as they would not clear their cookies which is where this preference is stored.

Organization Level /Pure Portal Setting Options

If you are outside of the EU region you may also elect to allow each user the option to decline tracking or to not track visitors unless they consent to be tracked. If you would like this please contact Pure Support requesting the One Trust Banner (consent to be tracked) feature to be activated. Please note if you elect this option then the Pure Consultant team would have very limited data in which to advise whether the site is serving customer needs.

Opting out of collecting data on all traffic for all visitors: 

The collection of data for Adobe Analytics is enabled by default for all Portals. If you would prefer your Pure Portal to be excluded from any Adobe data collection, simply submit a ticket to Pure Support indicating the address of your Pure Portal and your request to de-activate Adobe Analytics tracking across your entire Pure Portal.  Of course Elsevier will then not be able to assist you with understanding the volume or type of audiences you are serving with your website and we will be unable to share insights with you on which parts of your website are providing benefit to your audience.