UVM ScholarWorks Policies and Guidelines

Content

ScholarWorks is the Institutional Repository (IR) for the University of Vermont. The repository brings together the University's research under one umbrella, with an aim to preserve and provide open access to that research.

Launched in October 2013, it has grown to include over twenty collections such as public health projects, historic botanical research, occasional papers on Vermont policy, student dissertations and theses and open access journal projects. With ScholarWorks, UVM joins most major research institutions in providing an institutional repository where faculty and students can deposit their work.

ScholarWorks is an excellent vehicle for pre-prints, publications and “gray literature” such as grant reports, occasional papers, technical reports, conference presentations, posters and unpublished writings.

It can make significant student research such as theses, dissertations or service learning projects available to a global audience.

Participation can:

  • increase visibility of your scholarship
  • provide you with additional metrics for use in the RPT process
  • help you meet public access funding requirements
  • bring scholarship to researchers and practitioners in lower-income institutions and countries

Who can submit content?

UVM faculty, staff, students, organizations or departments, or individuals or groups sponsored by or closely affiliated with the University of Vermont.

What kinds of materials can be contributed?

Original, creative work that is scholarly in nature, research oriented, or of institutional significance. ScholarWorks accepts a wide range of file formats (including text files, datasets, audio files, and video files). These guidelines are subject to change as ScholarWorks evolves. For questions about submitting content, contact

  1. The work must be produced, submitted, or sponsored by UVM faculty, researchers, students or staff.
  2. The work must be scholarly, educational, research-oriented or of institutional significance.
    • Contributions are intended to be a permanent part of the repository.
    • The work must be in digital form and ready for public dissemination. The ScholarWorks Team can provide limited consultation assistance with requirements.
    • The author/copyright owner grants UVM the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute the work via ScholarWorks.

Copyright/Permission

By depositing content into ScholarWorks, contributors grant the University of Vermont a non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute the content through the repository. Contributors do not transfer intellectual property rights to the repository by submitting their work. ScholarWorks staff may be able to assist with specific questions about copyright and permissions, but the primary responsibility of conducting copyright clearance falls to the contributor. As part of the submission process, contributors must agree to a submission agreement.

To find out if your published work can be included in ScholarWorks, you can search the publication using a tool called Open Policy Finder to see standard agreements. To learn more about how to negotiate open access and institutional repository publishing rights for future publications, see the SPARC Author Addendum tool for proposed contract language.

Default submission agreement for materials in ScholarWorks

"By checking the box below, I grant ScholarWorks on behalf of the University of Vermont the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute my submission ("the Work") over the Internet and make it part of ScholarWorks and its successors.

I warrant as follows:

  1. that I have the full power and authority to make this agreement;
  2. that the Work does not infringe any copyright, nor violate any proprietary rights, nor contain any libelous matter, nor invade the privacy of any person or third party; and
  3. that, to the extent this Work is an educational record as defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), I consent to public disclosure of it."

Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors and depositors.

A few specific collections within ScholarWorks have slightly different submission agreements. For example, visit the Environmental Studies Electronic Thesis Collection and click on Submit Reseach to see the submission agreement for that collection.

Approval by co-authors

Each joint author of an article holds copyright in the article and, individually, has the authority to grant ScholarWorks a non-exclusive license. Joint authors are those who participate in the preparation of the article with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of the whole. We do not recommend depositing an article in any repository without the knowledge and consent of all authors.

Submission

Click here to submit research.

Submissions can be made directly by the individual or via the community administrator. If the collection allows direct submission, the contributor can navigate to the collection to which they wish to contribute and click on Submit Research. Contributors can then log in with their UVM NetID and password. A submission agreement must be accepted before uploading is allowed.

Collections of student work (e.g. undergraduate theses, graduate dissertations) have more detailed guidelines. Students can contact their program or college for more information.

The following information will be necessary to submit materials: title, author name(s), publication date, and the full-text file.

Digital Preservation

The Libraries are committed to preserving and providing access to the scholarly content in ScholarWorks. Some file formats may cease to be supported as a result of changes in technology beyond the control of the Libraries. Bepress, the publisher of the Digital Commons platform, employs multiple preservation strategies to ensure the long-term integrity of deposited materials. These measures include: provision of stable URLs, robust infrastructure, daily and weekly offsite backups, dedicated staff, scheduled maintenance, software testing and development, file format migration and emulation, and compliance with preservation standards. ScholarWorks staff will promote the use of standard and open content formats that meet community-accepted digital preservation standards, are widely supported on a number of platforms, and that can be preserved and migrated forward to new preservation formats over time.

The preferred file type for documents housed in ScholarWorks is searchable Adobe Acrobat PDF. When materials are submitted in Microsoft Word (doc and docx) or Rich Text Format (rtf) formats, ScholarWorks will automatically convert them to searchable PDF, retaining copies of the original for preservation purposes. Other file types will not be automatically converted to PDF as part of the submission process. PDFs that are uploaded (whether searchable or not) will not be altered in the submission process. For documents not in PDF format, ScholarWorks staff recommend that a PDF version be submitted along with the original whenever possible.

Access and Use

Users are encouraged to cite and link to digital content in ScholarWorks and are free to do so without asking for permission. Depending on the source of the digitized work, licenses or other contractual terms may restrict further distribution or other uses. ScholarWorks does not have authority to grant or deny permissions, as copyright remains with the authors. When use is made of the materials, we request that ScholarWorks be attributed as the source of the digital content and that links to the item on ScholarWorks be included where appropriate.

The ScholarWorks accepts materials under the following access conditions:

  • Public Domain: This work is in the Public Domain, meaning that it is not subject to copyright. Users are free to copy, use, and redistribute the work in part or in whole. It is possible that heirs or the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as illustrations, assert copyrights over these portions. Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address.
  • Open Access: This work is protected by copyright law. It is made available to the public through ScholarWorks with explicit permission of the copyright holder. Permission must be requested from the rights holder for any subsequent use.
  • Creative Commons: This work is protected by one of the Creative Commons non-exclusive licenses that are intended to promote the sharing of intellectual property under a set of limited conditions. Details and complete licenses are available at the Creative Commons Website http://creativecommons.org.
  • Embargoed Access: While ScholarWorks encourages submitters to make their submissions publicly available under one of these licenses immediately on submission, access restrictions may be imposed when necessary to limit access: to members of the UVM community; to members of the UVM and FAHC communities; to specific individuals identified by the author or submitter at or after submission; by anyone. Public access under one of the above license types will be granted automatically at the end of the specified time period.

Reports

Information and data obtained by ScholarWorks in support of assessment of services, collections, resources, etc., or in support of research related to repository services, are considered confidential and will not be shared except in aggregates or with the express permission of participants, to protect privacy.

Any internal ScholarWorks records used in any publicly accessible forum, such as demonstrations, presentations, or research papers, will have specific references to real people and personal information removed unless permission has been granted otherwise.

Google Analytics

ScholarWorks uses Google Analytics, a Web analytics service provided by Google, to help understand how the site is being used and to improve our interface and services. Google Analytics operates through the use of a "cookie", which is a text file placed on your computer that contains information about your use of ScholarWorks. The information stored in the cookie (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google. ScholarWorks uses this information for analytical and feature-improvement related purposes only. We do not transmit any information to other third parties. For more information on Google Analytics and Google's privacy policy, please visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html.

If you choose, you can opt out of this tracking by using one of the following methods:

  • Turn off cookies in the preferences setting in your browser
  • Use the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Withdrawal and Retention

ScholarWorks has been established as a permanent archive. While we discourage the removal of content from ScholarWorks, authors or submittors may request that content be removed if necessary. Content will also be removed from the archive for reasons of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or falsification of data. No files will be removed by the repository coordinator or collection administrators without the author and contributor being informed.

When the ScholarWorks coordinator removes content, the description (metadata) for the work will remain as a placeholder in the archive, with its affiliated handle, or URL. A brief statement explaining the reason for withdrawal of the content will be added to the descriptive metadata.

Updated versions of content may be posted, and can be linked to the first posted version. In these cases we request that authors preserve both versions in the repository and will work with authors to clearly represent the various versions.

In the event of ScholarWorks being closed down, the UVM Libraries will make every effort possible to transfer the database and all contents to another archive.

Take-down Requests

Parties who have questions or who wish to contest the user of specific works on this site may contact ScholarWorks. Notices must include a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner, proof of copyright ownership, a statement that (under proof of perjury) you are the rights holder or an authorized agent, and identification of the material claimed to be infringing (such as a URL). Takedown notices will be handled in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Privacy

The University of Vermont is committed to preserving your privacy. The personal information we receive through ScholarWorks, such as names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers, is used solely for the purposes of the functioning and assessment of the system.

This system collects personal information from:

  • users involved in the submission of ScholarWorks content and metadata
  • users who subscribe to the ScholarWorks alerting service
  • users who locate and download content from ScholarWorks (i.e., user IP address)

Personal information collected by ScholarWorks will not be used for any commercial or philanthropic purpose not directly connected with ScholarWorks and approved by the University of Vermont.

We do not disclose information about your individual visits to our site, or personal information that you provide us, such as your name, address, telephone number, etc. to any outside parties except when the law requires it or when that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights and property of ScholarWorks users.

ScholarWorks is part of the bepress Digital Commons Network of institutional repositories. When searching the Digital Commons Network or viewing content in other repositories, you are subject to the bepress privacy policy (http://www.bepress.com/privacy.html) and the policies of the other repositories.

Acknowledgements

These ScholarWorks policies and guidelines incorporate language from the policies of institutional repositories at the University of Rhode Island, Texas A&M University, University of Surrey, Emory University, and University of Oregon.