SCOLR

Guidelines

Except where noted, these guidelines have been adapted with permission from KORA at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

About SCOLR

SCOLR is an open source digital collection of scholarly, creative, and historic materials produced and collected by the members of the Selkirk College community.

Guidelines

SCOLR is managed by the Selkirk College Library in accordance with the following guidelines. These guidelines and procedures are subject to internal review and modification, and are available on the SCOLR site.

  1. Eligible Contributors

    1. Items may only be deposited by members of the Selkirk College community.
    2. Selkirk College community members include individuals or groups affiliated with a Selkirk College department, program, research team, working group, collaborative project, or conference, such as:
      1. Current and former College faculty, researchers, and employees
      2. Selkirk College faculties, departments, schools and programs
      3. Selkirk College research institutes
      4. Students
      5. Selkirk College Archives staff
    3. Other College-affiliated individuals or entities will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

  2. Eligible Content

    1. SCOLR collects scholarly and creative materials, as well as important documents related to the college’s history, in digital format.
    2. Full-text items are only added to SCOLR with the permission of the author/creator, and where permitted under Canadian copyright law.
    3. SCOLR is an open-access repository primarily providing access to complete (i.e. “full-text”) digital works but also includes abstracts and citations.
    4. The repository includes all types of digital formats, except for datasets and software.
    5. Eligible types of work include:
      1. Journal articles
      2. Books or chapters
      3. Popular media articles
      4. Conference and workshop papers and presentations
      5. Lectures and speeches
      6. Research reports, technical reports, and working papers
      7. Multimedia and audio/visual materials
      8. Honours theses
      9. Outstanding student projects
      10. Selected course-related materials and learning objects produced by instructors
      11. Selected digitized College records and other materials which document the history of the institution, as recommended by the College Archives.
      12. Selected digitized archival materials documenting the history of the Kootenay area, as recommended by the College Archives.
      13. Other types of materials will be considered on a case-by-case basis
    6. Previously published journal articles may include different versions, including:
      1. working draft
      2. pre-print: the author’s manuscript as submitted to publisher for peer review
      3. post-print: the final peer reviewed draft, also called the accepted version
      4. published version: also called the final or official version which has been copy-edited, typeset, and/or enhanced by the publisher in other ways.
    7. Works that are subject to a publisher’s embargo may be added to SCOLR at any time, but they will not be made publicly visible until the embargo period has ended.
    8. Works published or created prior to an author’s affiliation with the college may be retroactively deposited as long as the authors are currently affiliated with the college and meet all submission requirements.
    9. Works published or created by authors who are no longer affiliated with the college may be retroactively deposited as long as the work was published or created by authors while affiliated with the college and meets all other submission requirements.
    10. The repository will also accept materials produced by non-college researchers that are produced in conjunction with a college sponsored event, such as a conference or lecture series.
    11. The College Library reserves the right to deny materials not within the scope of the SCOLR guidelines.
    12. The College Library reserves the right to remove a work from SCOLR without prior notice for administrative or legal reasons. Upon such an occurrence, the metadata record indicating prior storage of the Work in the Repository may remain visible in perpetuity.

  3. Submission Requirements

    1. Full text items will only be added to SCOLR with the permission of the author/creator.
    2. Authors/Creators may only submit their own work for archiving.
    3. Depositors must accept the terms of the SCOLR Submission Agreement by which they:
      1. warrant that they own the copyright, or have permission from the copyright holder to include their work in SCOLR. Any restrictions on this copyright must be specified when the work is submitted.
      2. attest that the work does not contain any libelous or unlawful matter or violate anyone’s right to privacy.
      3. grant the Selkirk College Library a licence to make the work publicly and freely available on the internet in perpetuity for anyone to view and copy for non-commercial use, as long as the work is not altered and appropriate acknowledgement is given. This is the equivalent of a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
      4. allow the Library to migrate the work to different formats, as needed, in order to ensure that it remains publicly accessible.
    4. Depositors who hold the copyright in their own work may choose to assign a broader Creative Commons licence which permits additional types of reuse.
    5. Depositors will provide bibliographic metadata for their works (i.e. title, description, keywords, abstract, etc.) They will also provide biographic information if they wish to have an entry in SCOLR as a scholar.
    6. Depositors will provide a digital copy of the version of the work that may be legally included in SCOLR. Archives staff may reformat physical copies as workloads allow.
    7. Student works will be vetted for content and quality before inclusion in the repository.

  4. Submission Process

    1. Mediated Submissions (accepted submissions are uploaded to SCOLR by library staff):
      1. Authors/creators upload works to the College Library through an online form located on the Library’s webpage.
      2. Drop of a physical copy of the work by appointment with the SCOLR Administrator.

  5. Moderation and Quality Control

    1. Content must be scholarly, educational, or research-oriented, or of cultural or historical value to the Selkirk community. Works must be written in accordance with the tradition appropriate to the discipline, including review and editorial intervention.
    2. Works must not contain libelous or other unlawful matter, or violate anyone’s right to privacy.
    3. The validity and authenticity of the content of the submissions is the sole responsibility of the depositor.
    4. In the case of student works, a faculty member or department may be asked to verify the quality of the submission.
    5. The SCOLR Administrator and staff do not evaluate the content of submissions. Items are reviewed only for:
      1. the eligibility of the authors/depositors
      2. relevance to the scope of the repository
      3. valid layout and format, and
      4. the exclusion of spam

  6. Copyright

    1. Canadian Copyright law applies to all submissions
    2. Contributors must accept the terms of the SCOLR Submission Agreement which requires that:
      1. the work is the original creation of the contributor
      2. the contributor owns the copyright in the work, or has the explicit, written permission of the copyright holder to post the work in SCOLR
      3. if a work that has been sponsored or supported by an agency or organization, the contributor attests that they have the right to grant the rights contained in this licence and that they have fulfilled any right of review or other obligations required by the agreement with such a sponsor
      4. work that contains copyright-protected material created by someone else must have explicit, written permission from that third-party to include the work in SCOLR.
    3. Deposit of previously published work is only allowed in accordance with the publisher’s policy.
    4. Items can be deposited at any time, but they will not be made publicly visible until any publisher’s or funder’s embargo period has expired.
    5. Depositing in SCOLR does not affect the copyright of the work, whether it is held by the author(s) or publisher.
    6. Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
    7. If the repository receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.

  7. Non-exclusive Licence with SCOLR

    1. As part of the SCOLR Submission Agreement, depositors must agree to give the Selkirk College Library a non- exclusive, worldwide, perpetual and royalty free licence to copy, store, distribute, and transmit the Submission over the internet through SCOLR on the terms set out below.
    2. The rights granted to Selkirk College under this licence will last in perpetuity. References to SCOLR include any successor repository designated by Selkirk College.
    3. The licence gives the Selkirk College Library permission to migrate the work to newer formats for the purpose of preserving the work and maintaining its accessibility.
    4. By signing this non-exclusive licence, contributors are not transferring copyright to Selkirk College; they are simply giving the college permission to make the work publicly available on the internet and allowing Selkirk College to archive this work in SCOLR.

  8. Access and Re-Use

    1. Anyone may access the items held in SCOLR free of charge.
    2. Users may view, download and copy any work for non-commercial use, as long as the work is not altered and appropriate acknowledgement is given. (This is the equivalent of a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND licence.)
    3. Some items may have differing conditions of use:
      1. If the contributor owns the copyright in the work being deposited, they will be given the option to assign a Creative Commons licence permitting additional uses of the work.
      2. If the copyright is held by a third party (e.g. journal publisher), the permitted re-use terms will be specified in the item description in SCOLR.
    4. Items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or citation analysis.
    5. Re-use of SCOLR metadata:
      1. The metadata may be reused in any medium without prior permission for non-for-profit purposes, provided the OAI identifier or a link to the original metadata is given.
      2. The metadata must not be reused in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission.
    6. Mention of the SCOLR repository is appreciated but not mandatory.
    7. The College is not responsible to any use or misuse by third parties who access works through SCOLR.

  9. Privacy

    1. SCOLR Accounts:
      1. Users who wish to access specific content in SCOLR that is not available to the general public due to restrictions will need to create a personal account in SCOLR.
      2. When creating their account, users must provide some personal information: name, email, address and account password.
      3. Users will have the option to provide additional personal information in their account profile, but it is not required in order to create an account.
      4. People so not have to create a personal account to access or contribute to SCOLR. Contributors may submit their work to the Selkirk College Library and staff will upload the work to SCOLR on their behalf. This is called “mediated submission.”
    2. Assessments:
      1. Information and data obtained by SCOLR 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.
    3. Google Analytics1
      1. SCOLR uses Google Analytics, a Web analytics service provided by Google, to help understand how the site is being used and to improve the interface and services. Google Analytics operates through the use of a “cookie,” which is a text file placed on a user’s computer that contains information about their use of SCOLR. The information stored in the cookie (including the user’s IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google. SCOLR uses this information for analytical and feature-improvement related purposes only. It is not shared with any third parties. For more information of Google Analytics and Google’s privacy policy, please visit hppt://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html
      2. SCOLR users can opt out of this tracking by using one of the following methods:
        1. Turn off cookies in the preferences setting in browser
        2. Use the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on
      1With thanks to the University of Rhode Island Libraries for this borrowed text.

  10. Retention and Withdrawal

    1. Retention period
      1. SCOLR is meant to be a permanent scholarly record. Items will be stored indefinitely.
      2. Once an item is deposited in the repository a persistent URL will be generated.
    2. Withdrawal Policy
      1. Items may not normally be withdrawn from the repository.
      2. Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include, but are not limited to:
        1. proven copyright violation or plagiarism
        2. legal requirements and proven violations
        3. falsified research
    3. Withdrawn Items:
      1. Withdrawn items are not deleted per se, but are removed from public view.
      2. Withdrawn items’ identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely.
      3. Original URLs will continue to point to ‘tombstone’ citations, to avoid broken links and retain item histories.
      4. The metadata of withdrawn items will not be searchable.
    4. Version Control
      1. changes to deposited items are not permitted.
      2. errata and corrigenda may be included with the original record, if required.
      3. if necessary, an updated version may be deposited. There will be links between the earlier and later versions, with the most recent version clearly identified.
      4. items are allocated a checksum to facilitate the detection of alterations.

  11. Preservation2

    1. The Selkirk College Library is committed to preserving and providing access to the works in SCOLR. The repository will work with British Columbia Electronic Library Network to ensure continued readability and accessibility by:
      1. regularly backing up its files according to current best practice.
      2. encouraging 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.
      3. migrating items to new file formats where necessary
      4. retaining the original bitstream for all items, in addition to any upgraded formats
      5. providing software emulation to access un-migrated formats, where possible
    2. Some file formats may cease to be supported as a result of changes in technology and the private sector which are beyond the control of the Library. Files in these formats may no longer function on current computer equipment and hence, become unusable.
      3. *See File Formats and File Sizes for a current list of file formats.

    The Selkirk College Library may determine that our current Institutional Repository platform no longer best meets the needs of the university community. Should this be the case, and where possible, all content will be migrated to whatever new platform is chosen, and the library will make every effort to ensure that all content will continue to be accessible.

    2With thanks to the University of Rhode Island Libraries and the University of Connecticut Libraries for borrowed text.

  12. Questions

    13. Please see the FAQ section on the SCOLR website for answers to some commonly-asked questions.

    You may also email questions to the Selkirk College Library, or contact the SCOLR Support Technician, Bronwyn Krause, by email or by phone at 250-365-1449.