Scholarship@Western: Institutional Repository Mandate and Policy

Table of Contents:

  1. Mandate
  2. Defined Terms
    3.
  3. Eligible Contributors
  4. Content Guidelines
  5. Format Types
  6. Submission Guidelines
  7. Copyright
  8. Limits on Public Access to Materials
  9. Withdrawal and Modification
  10. Preservation
    11.
  11. Disclaimer
  12. Use of Metadata

    13. 1. Mandate

    Scholarship@Western is an open access digital repository that collects, archives, preserves, and freely disseminates electronic copies of publications and other scholarly outputs by members of the Western University community. It aims to facilitate knowledge sharing and broaden the international recognition of Western’s academic excellence by providing open access to Western’s intellectual output and professional contributions.

    2. Defined Terms

    Administrator: refers to the Research and Scholarly Communication Librarian within Western Libraries who is responsible for Scholarship@Western operations.

    Affiliated University Colleges: refers to Brescia University College, King’s University College, and Huron University College.

    Community Administrator: refers to any individual granted privileges to manage content in a selected Community or Collection in Scholarship@Western.

    Contributor: refers to the member of the Western community who makes the submission to Scholarship@Western

    Embargo: refers to a temporary restriction on access imposed by a publisher or journal as part of their copyright policy.

    Mediated Deposit: a service whereby Western Libraries staff submit materials on behalf of a contributor or group of contributors or provide support to a Community Administrator to submit materials.

    Metadata: refers to the information used to describe a publication on the S@W submission form (e.g.Title, Author, Keywords, Abstract).

    Non-exclusive right: refers to the right granted to Western Libraries to archive, preserve, reproduce, and freely disseminate scholarship, all with proper attribution and for non-commercial purposes only.

    3. Eligible Contributors

    • Individual faculty members, librarians, archivists, and staff affiliated with Western University and the Affiliated University Colleges. This includes retired faculty, librarians, archivists, and staff.
    • Individuals contributing on behalf of people affiliated with any faculty, department, program, school, institute, research centre, campus unit, or other group affiliated with Western University.
    • Graduate students with faculty support and approval to post scholarly work.
    • Undergraduate students with faculty support and approval to post scholarly work.

    4. Content Guidelines

    • All works must be authored or produced by an eligible contributor.
    • Submissions must be scholarly, research, or teaching materials (e.g., journal articles, books/ book chapters, manuscripts, conference presentations, records of events and symposia, theses and dissertations, course materials, learning objects).
    • The work should be final and complete (e.g., papers that are ready for publication or have been published, books or book chapters that are complete on their own).
    • Submissions should be ready for public dissemination in an open access environment immediately upon submission or after an embargo period.
    • For each submission, one or more file(s) must be uploaded. Links to external websites or standalone pages can be included in addition to the file(s) but cannot be the only source of content, since Scholarship@Western cannot guarantee long-term access to external pages.
    • The files should be made accessible in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), where practicable (examples of not practicable situations may include materials formatted by the publisher, or files you have no authority or control over).

    5. Format Types

    Scholarship@Western supports a wide range of file types and includes options for native file download. Currently supported file types include:

    • MS Word and RTF files (automatically converted to .pdf upon upload) .
    • Image files: TIFF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, and GIF
    • Audio and video with a MIME type of video or audio are supported with native streaming, including:
      • Video: 3GP, ASX, AVI, F4V, FLV, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPG/MPEG, WMV
      • Audio: AAC, AC3, AIF/AIFF, FLAC, M4A, MP3, WAV, WMA

    6. Submission Guidelines:

    Contributors can deposit materials into Scholarship@Western independently or through Western Libraries’ Mediated Deposit Service. See the Scholarship@Western Submission Processes for more information.

    Scholarship@Western content is organized around Communities, which generally correspond to administrative entities such as faculties, schools, research institutes, or other groups. Communities may contain Sub-Communities or Collections to reflect the structure of the unit and the nature of research conducted. Repository submissions and content management may be carried out at individual (contributor), Collection, Sub-Community or Community levels. In the absence of a Community/Collection administrator, content is managed by Western Libraries staff.

    Regardless of how content is submitted or what Community it is submitted to, the responsibilities and rights described below apply.

    6a. Responsibilities of a Contributor

    • Ensure that materials submitted comply with S@W Content Guidelines.
    • Ensure that materials are submitted in a manner consistent with Canadian Copyright law: that is, the author must have copyright or must obtain copyright holder's permission to submit content (e.g., for previously published articles or books for which copyright was transferred to publisher).
    • Provide sufficient metadata for the submitted content to describe what it is and ensure discoverability (e.g., title, authors, abstract, keywords).
    • Embargo (temporarily restrict access) to an item if necessary to comply with publisher’s requirements.
    • Agree to grant Western Libraries a non-exclusive right to publish your work via the repository.

    6b. Rights of a Contributor

    • Decide which content and format to submit within the Scholarship@Western Content Guidelines and Format Types.
    • Select and assign a Creative Commons license for materials consistent with the item’s copyright status.
    • Request that a record or item be modified or removed from public view.

    6c. Responsibilities of Western Libraries

    • Make decisions about Community and Collection definitions.
    • Request customizations to submission form/s and/or metadata to reflect the content in the Community.
    • Decide upon a submission workflow for each Collection.
    • Approve submissions and/or edit metadata when these steps are part of the submission workflow.
    • Embargo (temporarily restrict access to) an item if necessary to comply with publisher requirements. Content will become publicly available after a defined embargo period.
    • Make decisions about requests to withdraw or modify content.
    • Provide guidance and instruction on Scholarship@Western submission processes, retrieval of materials, and Community and Collection setup and management.
    • Provide download and usage statistics as required or requested.
    • Notify Bepress staff and campus partners of any organizational changes affecting submissions.
    • Understand and follow University policies relevant to Scholarship@Western and educate Community/Sub-Community contributors about these policies.
    • Collaborate with Bepress to remove any emerging accessibility barriers as they are identified, and ensure that Scholarship@Western adheres to the standards and guidelines outlined in the Scholarship@Western Accessibility Statement.

    6d. Rights of Western Libraries

    • .Decide upon a policy regarding content to be submitted.
    • Decide who may submit content within the Community.
    • Grant and withdraw users’ authorizations to submit.
    • Approve addition of or elimination of Collections and/or Sub-Communities.
    • Customize interfaces to reflect Community content as permitted by Bepress functionality; extensive customization may be performed by Bepress support staff.

    6e. Responsibilities of a Scholarship@Western Community Administrator

    • Decide upon a submission workflow for each Collection in consultation with Western Libraries’ administrator.
    • Approve submissions and/or edit metadata when these steps are part of the submission workflow.
    • Ensure that materials submitted comply with S@W Content Guidelines.
    • Ensure that materials are submitted in a manner consistent with Canadian Copyright law: that is, the author must have copyright or must obtain copyright holder's permission to submit content (e.g., for previously published articles or books for which copyright was transferred to publisher).
    • Provide sufficient metadata for the submitted content to describe what it is and ensure discoverability (e.g., title, authors, abstract, keywords).
    • Embargo (temporarily restrict access) to an item if necessary to comply with publisher’s requirements.

    6f. Rights of a Scholarship@Western Community Administrator

    • Decide which content and format to submit within the Scholarship@Western Content Guidelines and Format Types.
    • Request customizations to submission form/s and/or metadata to reflect the content in the Community.
    • Select and assign a Creative Commons license for materials consistent with the item’s copyright status.
    • Request that a record or item be modified or removed from public view.
    • All works must be submitted in a manner consistent with Canadian Copyright law: i.e., the author must have copyright, permission from a rights holder, or must avail themselves of one of the permitted uses of copyrighted content in the Copyright Act of Canada.
    • By depositing your work in Scholarship@Western, you grant Western Libraries a non-exclusive right to publish your work via the repository in perpetuity. This is different from transferring copyright. Rather, you as the author and copyright holder permit the University to distribute their work while retaining the right to reuse their content as desired.

    8. Limits on Public Access to Materials

    • Generally, all content will be made available to the public in accordance with the license terms selected by the Contributor.
    • A Contributor may request that their content be withheld from public access for a period of time (also known as a publication delay or embargo).
    • Graduate students who wish to place a publication delay or embargo on their thesis or dissertation must request this through the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
    • All other requests for a publication delay or embargo must be made at the time of submission or in writing to scholarship@uwo.ca
    • Western Libraries staff may also place an embargo on content in order to comply with publisher requirements.

    9. Withdrawal and Modification

    Requests for withdrawal are evaluated on a case-by-case basis and must include a justification for the request. Requests for withdrawal are evaluated on a case-by-case basis and must include a justification for the request.
    • Modifying item description: Western Libraries staff will correct errors in item metadata on request.
    • Modifying content: Since any content that has been posted to Scholarship@Western may have been cited in its original form, modifications are normally permitted in the form of updated versions posted alongside the original document(s).

    Requests for withdrawal or modification of theses and dissertations should be directed to the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (SGPS); all other requests should be directed to scholarship@uwo.ca

    10. Preservation

    • Western Libraries preserves Materials in Scholarship@Western for the long term by means of regular backups, by minimizing the effects of information technology obsolescence and by preserving the authenticity, security, and accessibility of the materials.
    • Backups are managed by the platform host for Scholarship@Western, Bepress’s Digital Commons software solution. Bepress is a commercial, academic software company owned by the RELX Group, with operations located in Berkeley, California.
      • Digital Commons provides clean, stable, persistent URL links to content. Digital Commons repositories are OAIS and LOCKSS compliant. In the event of a repository system migration the Library will make every effort to transfer contents to another appropriate platform.

    11. Disclaimers

    • Materials will be neither critically examined nor peer-reviewed as part of the process of submission and deposit into Scholarship@Western
    • Scholarship@Western and its administrators are not responsible for the maintenance and/or performance of external web links within documents and records in the repository.
      • Scholarship@Western and its administrators are not responsible for the content of the items contained within the repository.

    12. Use of Metadata

    Scholarship@Western metadata can be harvested by third parties for purposes related to the discovery of contents. However, harvesting the full text documents is not permitted except when explicitly granted by the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (for dissertations and theses) or Western Libraries (for all remaining content).

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    Scholarship@Western Submission Processes

    Option 1: Self-upload

    • Any eligible contributor can submit content directly to Scholarship@Western by browsing to an appropriate collection and completing the submission form.
    • A Western Libraries staff member will review each submission to approve it and may contact the contributor for clarification or additional information.

    Option 2: Western Libraries' Mediated Deposit Service

    Western Libraries staff members will submit materials on behalf of a contributor or group of contributors or will provide support to a Community Administrator to submit materials.

    For individual researchers, Western Libraries staff members will:

    • Verify journal or publisher policies that may limit the sharing of research through S@W.
    • Confirm for the contributor which version of a publication is permissible to self-archive according to journal or publisher policies.
    • Apply embargoes and/or Creative Commons licenses as determined by journal or publisher policies.
    • Upload the appropriate material as provided by the individual contributor.

    For departments, faculties, and research groups, Western Libraries staff members will:

    • Provide consultation and guidance on individual and batch upload of publications to S@W.
    • Assist with developing workflows for depositing content into S@W.
    • Advise on publication harvesting options and assist with developing workflows for publication harvesting.
    • Provide resources, training and follow-up support to ensure adherence to journal or publisher policies.

    Contact scholarship@uwo.ca to learn more about our Mediated Deposit Service for individual researchers, departments, faculties, and research groups.