Policies for Library Staff Publications & Presentations

Purpose

The University of St. Thomas's Research Online (RO) is a digital repository intended to collect, organize, disseminate, preserve, and highlight the scholarly work created or sponsored by faculty, students, or staff of UST. Research Online is administered by the University of St. Thomas Libraries' staff who collaborate with university departments, research centers, and individual faculty to select, submit, and manage content. Members of the academic community are invited to contribute their completed scholarship for long-term preservation and worldwide electronic accessibility. Contributions are expected to support research, have persistent value, and be on deposit in the RO permanently.

Acceptable Content

Types of content appropriate for RO:

  • The work must be produced, submitted, or sponsored by a UST faculty or staff member.
  • The work must not be ephemeral; deposits are intended to be permanent contributions to the repository.
  • The work must be in digital form.
  • The work must be complete and ready for campus or public dissemination.
  • The copyright owner must be willing and able to grant UST the right to preserve and distribute the work via RO, although the copyright owner retains copyright for all works submitted.
  • Deposited materials may be written in any language.

Colleges, schools, departments, and/or faculty will decide which student works are appropriate for Research Online. Students may petition to opt out of having their work deposited into RO by contacting the appropriate college, school, department, and/or faculty member.

Types of works not appropriate for submission to Research Online:

  • Education records (such as files containing grades, transcripts, or identification numbers).
  • Confidential materials (such as restricted archival records of the university).
  • Operational materials (such as departmental policies).
  • Digitized historical and archival works.

Items submitted to RO that fall outside the scope of these content guidelines will be rejected or sent back to the contributor for revision.

Copyright, Rights, and Permissions

Depositors of digital objects must authorize the submission of each digital object, and must be willing to permit immediate campus or global access to the content. Depositors must agree to a non-exclusive license allowing UST to distribute the content and to change the format of the material for preservation purposes. The license permits authors to formally publish their work, in the same form as in RO or in a revised form, without obtaining permission from UST.

Materials submitted must be the intellectual property of the author, the department, or UST and not under any copyright restrictions imposed by a third party. Materials must be submitted by one of the authors listed on the material or by an appointed agent of one of the authors. When an agent acting under the direction of an author submits materials, there must be an explicit statement that the author wishes her or his work to be stored in the repository.

Authors retain the copyright for all content posted to Research Online unless they explicitly give it away to a third party. UST does not seek nor claim copyright on a work submitted to RO unless UST held copyright to that work prior to submission to RO.

UST reserves the right to withdraw items from RO in accordance with the removal policy (below) if notified by a third party of potential copyright infringement. In such cases, authors and contributors will be notified if possible.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Contributors are responsible for addressing privacy and confidentiality issues in their submissions. Institutional Review Board staff are available for consultation on appropriate courses of action for material with privacy concerns not covered by this policy. Contributors are responsible for proper redaction of confidential content before submission.

If privacy concerns are identified after a submission has been made publicly available, the site administrator is empowered to restrict access to the submission temporarily. This person will then consult with the departmental chair, College Dean, or the Executive Vice President/Chief Academic Officer in order to determine an appropriate course of action regarding future access.

Embargoes

Research Online permits embargoes of up to 5 years on access to contributed content. During the embargo period there will be limited access to the document for the author and for purposes of maintaining the repository.

Situations warranting an embargo include:

  • patent pending
  • personal privacy
  • corporate secrets
  • copyright agreements with potential publisher

The author must supply an end date for the embargo at which time the content will be made fully available. Disputes will be resolved by the University Librarian in consultation with the Executive Vice President/Chief Academic Officer.

Revision of Items

Research Online is a permanent archive. Before submission, depositors must ensure that the works are complete and factually accurate, and that they have the right to make them publicly available. If the status of a work is uncertain, it should not be submitted to RO.

If an author discovers after submitting a work that the file(s) contained errors, the UST Libraries will work with the author or editor to replace the earlier file with the corrected version.

In cases where authors or editors have substantially reworked the content and wish to make a newer version available, they may submit the new or revised version as a new item. The UST Libraries will provide assistance in linking the earlier version with the later version and will, if the author requests it, provide information indicating which version is preferred. However, it is the policy of UST also to retain the original version of works submitted to RO.

Removal from Research Online

UST claims the right to permanently preserve any object deposited into Research Online. Once deposited, an item will not be permanently deleted, though under some circumstances items will be removed from public view. A public note with one of the following statements will be added to the metadata for the item:

  • "removed from view at the request of the author"
  • "removed from view at UST's discretion"
  • "removed from view by legal order"

Since any item deposited in RO may have been cited, the metadata record (“tombstone”) for the item will be retained and available for viewing.

Requests by students for withdrawal of their deposited work must be negotiated with the Executive Vice President/Chief Academic Officer.

Preservation Responsibilities

As fiscal resources and technology permits, UST in conjunction with the software vendor will take steps to ensure that the files deposited in Research Online survive uncorrupted and continue to be usable. Because the technological environment is changing rapidly, it may not be possible to preserve the usability of every file format that is deposited in RO.

Should the Research Online installation ever be terminated, materials will be offered to the contributing college, school, and/or department when possible or moved to the University Archives where appropriate.