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NIHR cookies policy

Contents

Published: 17 July 2019

Version: 2.0 - January 2023

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What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small text file that is downloaded onto your device (computer, tablet, or smartphone) when you visit our website. It allows us to recognise your device and store some information about your visit or past actions.

Why do we ask to put cookies on your device?

By aggregating data from all our website visitors, we can better understand what content our visitors find useful and what content needs to be improved. By allowing cookies onto your device you are helping us continually improve the NIHR websites for everyone.

Do you collect and can you see my personal data?

No. We don’t collect, store, or process any personal data. We only see anonymised, aggregated data.

What types of cookie do we use?

  • Strictly Necessary (Functional) cookies - these are needed to make the website work.
  • Performance cookies - to give us insight into how people use our content and help us improve it.
  • Targeting cookies – for example when you interact with a Youtube video on our pages, Youtube places a number of cookies on your device. From time-to-time we track the performance of our social media campaigns and may place a cookie on your device to help do this.

Can I decline or customise which cookies I accept?

Yes. With the exception of strictly necessary, functional, cookies that make the site work, you can do this at any time using the cookie icon banner to change your choices. The cookie icon can be found on the bottom left of your screen.

Precisely which cookies do we use, what do they do and how long do they stay on my device?

We’ve listed below the cookies used on the main NIHR corporate website, the NIHR Funding & Awards and NIHR Journals Library websites.

We use a third-party specialist product developed by OneTrust Inc to audit our webpages for cookies. We use their scans to ensure that we are transparent about which cookies we use.

Embedded YouTube video content

We use YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode to show embedded video content. We do this so that viewing an embedded Youtube video on our website will not be used to personalise your YouTube browsing experience, either within the embedded player, or in your subsequent YouTube viewing on the same device.

Google signals

We use a feature called Google Signals to collect and understand data from our website visitors who sign in to their Google accounts and choose to see personalised ads. This feature helps us to see how you use different devices, such as phones or computers, to access our website. The data we collect through Google Signals includes things like your location, your searches, your YouTube activity, and your visits to other websites that work with Google. We use this data for the following purposes:

  • To better understand our audience and their demographics, and to tailor our communications to suit your interests and needs.
  • To help our Global Health team know where you are based and how we can reach you through different devices.
  • To help our Campaigns Team improve the impact and relevance of our Google ads by using cross-device insights and personalised ads.

We use this data in a way that supports our mission to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. You can always opt out of Google Signals by visiting the Ads Settings page or by adding the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. If you want to know more about how Google uses your data, please see Google’s Privacy Policy.

Which websites are covered by this policy?

The NIHR corporate website: www.nihr.ac.uk

Cookies on the NIHR.AC.UK website

Performance Cookies

Google

Cookie name: ga_2BGNRQYTPS

  • Cookie expiry: 729 days
  • Cookie type: first party, ac.uk, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: _ga

Cookie name: _ga

  • Cookie expiry: 729 days
  • Cookie type: first party, ac.uk, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the site’s analytics reports. By default, it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.

Cookie name: _gid

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics. It appears to store and update a unique value for each page visited.

Cookie name: _gat_UA-nnnnnnn-nn

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: This is a pattern type cookie set by Google Analytics, where the pattern element on the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. It appears to be a variation of the _gat cookie which is used to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume websites.

Cookie name: _GA_XXXXXXXXXX

  • Cookie expiry: 1 year
  • Cookie type: third party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.

Hotjar

Cookie name: _hjTLDTest

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed.

Cookie name: _hjSessionUser_2181208

  • Cookie expiry: 364 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: This is a Hotjar cookie that is set when a user first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behaviour in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.

Cookie name: _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party
  • Cookie description: This cookie is used by HotJar to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a True/False flag set by the cookie.

Cookie name: _hjIncludedInPageviewSample

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that visitor is included in the data sampling defined by your site's pageview limit.

Cookie name: _hjSession_2181208

  • Cookie expiry: 364 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: A cookie that holds the current session data. This ensures that subsequent requests within the session window will be attributed to the same Hotjar session.

Cookie name: _hjSession_2181208

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: A cookie that holds the current session data. This ensures that subsequent requests within the session window will be attributed to the same Hotjar session.

Cookie name: _hjFirstSeen

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party, nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: Identifies a new user's first session on a website, indicating whether or not Hotjar's seeing this user for the first time.

Cookie name: _hjIncludedInSessionSample

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: first party, www.nihr.ac.uk
  • Cookie description: This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that visitor is included in the data sampling defined by your site's daily session limit.

Cookie name: _hjIncludedInSessionSample

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: third party, script.hotjar.com
  • Cookie description: Used when Hotjar has rejected the session from connecting to our WebSocket due to server overload. Applied in extremely rare situations to prevent severe performance issues.

Cookie name: _hjIncludedInPageviewSample

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: third party, script.hotjar.com
  • Cookie description: Used when Hotjar has rejected the session from connecting to our WebSocket due to server overload. Applied in extremely rare situations to prevent severe performance issues.

Targeting Cookies

Google

Cookie name: NID

  • Cookie expiry: 182 days
  • Cookie type: third party, google.com
  • Cookie description: This domain is owned by Google Inc. Although Google is primarily known as a search engine, the company provides a diverse range of products and services. Its main source of revenue however is advertising. Google tracks users extensively both through its own products and sites, and the numerous technologies embedded into many millions of websites around the world. It uses the data gathered from most of these services to profile the interests of web users and sell advertising space to organisations based on such interest profiles as well as aligning adverts to the content on the pages where its customer's adverts appear.

Cookie name: CONSENT

  • Cookie expiry: 729 days
  • Cookie type: third party, google.com
  • Cookie description: This domain is owned by Google Inc. Although Google is primarily known as a search engine, the company provides a diverse range of products and services. Its main source of revenue however is advertising. Google tracks users extensively both through its own products and sites, and the numerous technologies embedded into many millions of websites around the world. It uses the data gathered from most of these services to profile the interests of web users and sell advertising space to organisations based on such interest profiles as well as aligning adverts to the content on the pages where its customer's adverts appear.

Youtube

Cookie name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE

  • Cookie expiry: 179 days
  • Cookie type: third party, youtube.com
  • Cookie description: This cookie is used as a unique identifier to track viewing of videos

Cookie name: CONSENT

  • Cookie expiry: 729 days
  • Cookie type: third party, youtube.com
  • Cookie description: YouTube is a Google owned platform for hosting and sharing videos. YouTube collects user data through videos embedded in websites, which is aggregated with profile data from other Google services in order to display targeted advertising to web visitors across a broad range of their own and other websites.

Cookie name: YSC

  • Cookie expiry: 0 days
  • Cookie type: third party, youtube.com
  • Cookie description: YouTube is a Google owned platform for hosting and sharing videos. YouTube collects user data through videos embedded in websites, which is aggregated with profile data from other Google services in order to display targeted advertising to web visitors across a broad range of their own and other websites.

Cookie name: _fbp

  • Cookie expiry: 3 months
  • Cookie type: first party, ac.uk, nihr.ac.uk 
  • Cookie description: Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products such as real time bidding from third party advertisers

 Functional Cookies

 Cookie name: CONSENT

  • Cookie expiry: 1 year
  • Cookie type: third party, google.com
  • Cookie description: This cookie carries out information about how the end user uses the website and any advertising that the end user may have seen before visiting the said website.
  • This cookie may be seen when NIHR is running Google adverts as part of an autumn or spring campaign.