Guidance for authors of journal articles
DSpace@Cambridge is the Institutional Repository of the University of Cambridge. Its existence illustrates the University’s commitment to providing a digital preservation service and to supporting a platform which allows permanent and free online access to research material created by the University of Cambridge’s community.
With the advance in digital technology the scholarly communication process has begun to change and increasing amounts of research material is available online for free. Policy makers in the Higher Education sector are beginning to take this change on board with for example Harvard Law School, Stanford University School of Education mandating the deposit of all research output of their faculty into repositories. In the UK six of the seven RCUK funders and the Wellcome Trust have chosen to implement mandates supporting unrestricted access to the published output of research. Find more information on Open Access on the University Library’s webpages.
These guidelines are meant to help any researcher wishing to contribute material to DSpace@Cambridge.
Content submission
To submit content to DSpace@Cambridge please follow these steps:
- Check whether you have copyright for the material you wish to deposit.
- Make sure that the file(s) is available in a suitable electronic format
- Then please contact support@repository.cam.ac.uk with the details of which collection you wish to submit to.
- Deposit the material
In many cases support staff will be happy to help with the deposit process. Whilst they can liaise with us setting up collections and submitting material, the copyright clearance and provision of material in suitable formats generally remain the author’s responsibilities.
Copyright
- Depositors retain copyright over content placed in DSpace@Cambridge.
- When you deposit a paper in DSpace@Cambridge you confirm that you have permission to do so. It is your responsibility to ensure you are not infringing copyright by depositing material into the repository.
- For papers written by multiple authors please ensure you have the consent of each co-author to deposit work in DSpace@Cambridge on their behalf.
Retaining rights
If you are in the process of publishing your article with a journal publisher it is also possible to retain rights allowing you to place your paper in DSpace@Cambridge.
Short film (2.5 minutes) on Author rights, your rights. This film was produced by SURFdirect, SURF’s digital rights expert community starring Dirk Visser, Professor of intellectual property law at Leiden University and Martijn Katan, Professor of Nutrition at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Some publishers already allow self-archiving in repositories; for example, Elsevier and Blackwell. Read the publisher’s agreement you are asked to sign carefully. In case it does not refer to depositing in repositories discuss with the publisher a possible amendment of the existing agreement or using an alternative one. For help and advice on model agreements see the Copyright Toolbox. You might also wish to consider publishing in Open Access journals directly, for example, Biomed Central or Bloomsbury Academic.
Copyright Clearance
Publishers generally require authors to sign some sort of copyright transfer agreement or license to publish agreement prior to the publication of material. These agreements vary between publishers. Before starting the deposit process, please investigate if the publisher allows deposit of a copy into an institutional repository, this is also called self-archiving.
Scientific papers
78 % of scientific publishers currently allow self-archiving of articles published in their journals. In order to clear the copyright for a particular scientific article you can use three main sources of information:
- Check the Copyright transfer agreement that you signed, for newer articles self-archiving policies will be included in the agreement. Here is an example licence from Nature Publishing Group.
- Look up the publisher or journal policy in the SHERPA/ROMEO database.
- Look up the publishers own web site. Often publisher policies for self-archiving are described in the Author guidelines. For example Elsevier's Journal authors' home.
Please note that most publishers only permit authors to deposit their final draft post refereeing and not the publisher pdf version. Please see below for more an explanation of different versions.
Formats and versions
For textual material we recommend the use of PDF format. We are able to store Word files but due to its proprietary nature we cannot guarantee their long term accessibility. It is possible to store different formats of the same file alongside each other. List of preferred file formats.
Explanation of different versions:
- A preprint is a pre-refereed and unpublished paper which is usually submitted for publication.
- A postprint is the final peer-reviewed version of a paper. The postprint incorporates any changes or corrections necessary to ensure publication. It is the author’s copy of the paper, not the published pdf version.
- The publisher PDF is the formatted PDF file as created by the publisher.
- An eprint is the umbrella term for an electronic copy of a paper which can include both pre and postprints.
- For advise about managing personal versions and revisions please see the LSE's Version Toolkit for authors, researchers and repository staff.
Display
Once deposited it is possible for your material to be displayed on your own webpage using SOAP web services. Please speak to your Computer Officer for this to be arranged.
Please be aware that other material can be deposited as well, such as theses, images, multimedia content or raw data.
If you have difficulties please contact the DSpace@Cambridge Support and Liaison officer Barbara Bültmann.