About USIR

The Collection will exist of the following types of digital material produced as a result of scholarly research:
Research output that is mandated, by the University of Salford’s Open Access Policy, to be deposited in USIR:

• Journal articles produced while employed by the University of Salford, since 1st January 2010, and published in peer-reviewed journals.

The following types of material are not yet mandated, but the deposit of these items is strongly encouraged:

• Conference and workshop items
• Research Theses (see Section 2.2.2 for full listing)
• Books and book sections
• Datasets
• Multimedia, audio-visual materials, still images and Software
• Official University documents
• Technical reports, commissioned reports, and other un-refereed research output
• Newsletters of significant research groups

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• USIR includes both peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed items
• USIR includes both published and non-published items

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• The University of Salford has an Open Access mandate which requires that any research output produced whilst employed by the University since 1st January 2010 be deposited in USIR, and that the full text of a peer-reviewed journal should be deposited and made available as soon as publisher restrictions will allow. (See Section 3.1 for full details)
• Items may only be deposited by accredited members of the university, or their delegated agents.
• Authors may only submit their own work.
• Where an item has multiple authors and they have retained copyright in the work, the depositing author must obtain permission from all the other contributing authors before depositing the work.

USIR is happy to include papers authored by University of Salford staff while employed by other institutions.

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• The metadata schema used throughout by USIR will be principally based on Dublin Core
• Anyone may Access the metadata free of charge

The metadata may be reused in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record is given, and the repository is mentioned and should be cited as University of Salford Institutional Repository

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• Digital items produced as a result of research activity at the University of Salford and deposited by an eligible depositor will be accepted and retained in USIR unless:
  • The item infringes copyright or other rights
  • The item is in a format which cannot be stored or displayed satisfactorily
  • The item has a virus or other technical problem
• If a depositor leaves the employment of the University of Salford, their items will be retained in USIR
• USIR will, upon notification, consider removing any material on receipt of a complaint (further details can be found in section 6.3 of the USIR Policy Document)

Complaints include contact from the owner or representative of the owner with intellectual property rights in all or part of the resource; the creator of all or part of the resource who has moral rights or any individual or organisation who believes that any of the material held on the Institutional Repository is in some way illegal.

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• All depositors will be required to agree to a non-exclusive USIR DEPOSIT LICENCE in order to give permission for their work to be held in USIR, to provide for the distribution of their work, and to allow ongoing preservation of both their work and/or the related metadata

Where research is generated as a result of collaboration between multiple authors. USIR will accept an author signature on behalf of his/her co-author/s in good faith. Should there be an objection raised, the material in question will be withdrawn subject to further investigation of the complaint

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As the material in USIR will have a bearing on the reputation of the University, all submissions will be subject to the following quality control criteria along with other criteria listed under Section 8 of the full USIR Policy Document:

• USIR staff will review and assess all submissions before making them available via the IR for:
  • Eligibility of the depositor/author
  • Valid metadata

USIR staff aim to review submitted items within one week of deposit. At busy periods and for items with complex queries (e.g. copyright) this time may be extended

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• The Institutional Repository Development Officer will retain the right to exclude any item submitted.

The Institutional Repository Development Officer will be able to make minor edits, return items for amendments for technical and indexing purposes, determine Accessibility based on copyright agreements, and convert files to commonly used formats, etc.

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• University of Salford will endeavour to provide continued readability and Accessibility of all items deposited in the USIR.

Items will normally be retained within USIR indefinitely.

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Many publishers now allow authors to deposit their papers in online repositories such as USIR, others may be willing to give permission. USIR Project Staff will check the copyright agreements relating to any material you would like to add to USIR, before making it available publicly.
When depositing with USIR, you retain all intellectual property rights over any work you deposit. By agreeing to the USIR Deposit Agreement you give USIR permission to keep your work in a current format and to freely distribute electronic copies of it - nothing else.

USIR Project staff can provide advice on copyright issues, further information relating to copyright can be found in the Copyright Helpsheet.

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The majority of publishers permit authors to deposit some form of their publication in Open Access repositories such as USIR. A typical condition is that the author does not deposit the published version (i.e. publisher PDF) in an Open Access repository. However, versions that are permitted to be deposited in USIR are usually characterised by publishers as Pre-Print (version of the paper before peer review) and Post-Print (version of the paper after peer review, with revisions having been made).

You can check which permissions are granted by publishers as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement via the Sherpa Romeo site. The list can be searched by journal title or publisher name. However, note that this list is not a fully comprehensive list. If in doubt it is best to contact your publisher and seek advice.

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Journal publishers often invite authors to sign a standard copyright assignment form, which assigns a complete transfer of copyright to the publisher. Publishers do not need a complete transfer of copyright in order to publish your work; they only need a non-exclusive license to do so.

A number of publishers are now starting to offer alternative licence forms using which authors can grant the publisher a licence to publish their work. As such, when submitting an article for publication you can ask the publisher to provide you with an alternative licence form.

If the publisher does not have a standard licence form, you can amend the Copyright Transfer Agreement which the publisher normally uses by using the non-exclusive Copyright Licence Agreement. This agreement is approved by the Wellcome Trust and aims to help authors make appropriate arrangements with publishers for the publication of a journal article.

By using the model Copyright Licence Agreement you will assign the publisher a licence to publish your work, while retaining rights for your own use.

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In many respects such agreements are no different. However, they may give authors a number of rights which were not permitted under previous copyright transfer agreements.

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The JISC funded RoMEO Project carried out a series of studies on IPR issues. The fourth in a series of studies "An Analysis of Journal Publishers' Copyright Agreements" found that publishers gave a variety of reasons for asking authors to assign copyright.

However, as can be seen from the fact that Open Access publishers do not require authors to assign copyright it is possible for articles to be published without copyright being assigned.

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This varies depending on the publisher. Many publishers make it a condition of publication that they will not consider any articles which have already been made publicly available. Some publishers specify that making a work available in a repository constitutes "prior publication". If in doubt check with the publisher directly.

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Use the Sherpa Romeo database to check the copyright and Open Access policies of publishers and individual journals.

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The 'Accepted Version' of your research is the author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version.

• Draft Early version circulated as work in progress
• Submitted Version The version that has been submitted to a journal for peer review
• Accepted Version The author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version
• Published Version The publisher-created published version

For further clarification go to the Versions Toolkit

For information about which versions are accepted by the major publishers please visit Sherpa Romeo or email the USIR Team

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Electronic versions, of the following types of research material can be deposited in USIR:

• Journal articles, communications and short papers (pre- and post-print: pre-prints are versions of the paper before peer review and post-print is the version of the paper after peer review with revisions having been made
• Research theses successfully submitted and passed by University of Salford for that degree's award. This must be the final passed version with all corrections included. Awards currently eligible are: PhD, MPhil, MSc by research, MRes, DProf, DLit, DMA, DSc, LLM
• Conference and workshop items
• Books and book sections
• Datasets
• Research focused multimedia, audio-visual materials and still images
• Research focused official University documents that require global Accessibility and indexing
• Technical reports, commissioned reports, and other un-refereed research output
• Newsletters of significant research groups
• Other material produced by academic/research staff and approved by Research Centre Director or Head of Department

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SEEK holds bibliographic details about your publications, and does not make available full text versions of your work. USIR will hold full text versions of your publications and make them Accessible via the internet. The two systems will work in conjunction with each other and staff will not be required to input the same data twice.

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Material held within USIR will be found through global search services like Google, Yahoo and Google Scholar. There are also specialist search services which only search material held within academic repositories. One of the advantages of Open Access archiving are the innovative services which can be built on top of Open Access material. There is a current JISC project called Repository Search which is building innovative services for discovery of UK research outputs.

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Yes. You can upload your research item, fill in the citation and metadata fields, but set an option to make the document itself invisible. This option is available for authors who are not comfortable with the terms of Open Access or who are required by their publisher to wait a period of time (e.g. up to six months) before making their research available through Open Access.

For restricted Access items, if a user wishes to receive a copy of the publication, they will have the option of pressing a "Request a copy" button. This simply sends an email to the depositor of the item - you. You can then decide if the user should have Access to the item, e.g. by sending them a copy by email. If you use the embargo feature as well as restricting Access to the deposited item, you can set the exact time at which the document's embargo will expire and will become visible for Open Access, thus complying with your publisher's restrictions.

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Research material can be submitted to USIR via the following two options:

1. Self Deposit: Material for inclusion in USIR can be uploaded to USIR using the Make a Deposit section of USIR. This section requires the completion of a few simple online forms, the form is sent to the USIR Project team who carry out copyright and quality control checks and make your publication live in USIR. The Self Deposit option is aimed at new and current publications and research output, where authors will benefit from the increased visibility and dissemination of their work via USIR. Please see the deposit guide for further information, should you require any assistance please contact the USIR team.

2. USIR Deposit Service: The USIR team uploads research to USIR on your behalf. This service is aimed at uploading backlists of University of Salford publications to USIR. Authors choosing to submit backlists of their publications to USIR will be asked to provide a bibliographical listing (including citation, authors, year) of their papers together with any full text documents they may have. Publications on this list will then be checked for publisher permission and copyright. To submit via this service or for further information please contact the USIR team.

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The Deposit Agreement is designed to give USIR administrators permission to store, copy and manipulate material in order to ensure that it can be preserved and made available in the future and to confirm that the depositor has the right to submit the material to USIR. The Agreement is non-exclusive, and the depositor does not give away any of their rights to USIR.

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