TUScholarShare Policies

 

Overview

User Communities

Content & Collection

Deposit Requirements & License

Access & Use

Alteration & Withdrawal

Preservation

Privacy

Accessibility


Overview

Depositor Responsibilities & Rights

The responsibilities of the TUScholarShare depositor are to:

  • Understand and observe University and TUScholarShare policies.
  • Obtain permission to deposit items when copyright owner is not the depositor. 
  • Arrange for the accurate description and submission of content for deposit into TUScholarShare.
  • Abide by all Temple University policies relating to personal information. TUScholarShare does not accept submissions that contain any Personal Health Information (PHI), or otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Depositors are responsible for securing the explicit consent of human subjects described.
  • Agree to the TUScholarShare deposit license. If appropriate, students agree to share their work and waive any privacy rights granted by FERPA or any other law, policy or regulation, with respect to the submission, for the purpose of publication. If the depositor has any student co-authors, they will obtain a signed copy of this agreement for those co-authors.

The TUScholarShare depositor retains the right to:

  • Make explicit the terms under which others can use the deposited content. This includes use of a Creative Commons license, when applicable.
  • Limit access to content for a defined period of time in accordance with TUScholarShare Access & Use Policy.
  • Collaborate with TUScholarShare staff to decide the exact work(s) you want to deposit.
  • Remove items in accordance with TUScholarShare Withdrawal Policy.

Temple University Libraries Responsibilities & Rights

The responsibilities of Temple University Libraries are to:

  • Provide access to intellectual content in TUScholarShare.
  • Retain and maintain deposited content.
  • Preserve content according to the TUScholarShare Preservation Policy.
  • If Temple University Libraries cease to support TUScholarShare, make a good faith effort to transfer collections to appropriate archives.

Temple University Libraries retain the right to:

  • Amend and/or redistribute descriptive information (metadata) for items in TUScholarShare.
  • Refuse items that do not comply with the TUScholarShare Content & Collection Policy, and remove items in accordance with TUScholarShare Withdrawal Policy.
  • Perform any necessary format changes to items to ensure the preservation of content, based on the TUScholarShare Preservation Policy.

Updates to TUScholarShare Policies

Policies are reviewed and revised as needed. If you have questions regarding these please contact the TUScholarShare Administrator.

 

User Communities

Temple University faculty, researchers, staff, and graduate students may contribute content to TUScholarShare. Undergraduate work may be submitted by sponsoring departments, programs, or organizations and, when appropriate, depositors must have any necessary FERPA releases.

Works done prior to being affiliated with Temple may be deposited, as long as the depositor has the right to do so. Works with non-Temple-affiliated co-authors may be deposited by an author affiliated with Temple. If you would like to deposit works completed after leaving Temple, please contact the TUScholarShare Administrator.

Works by non-Temple affiliates that are published by Temple University Press or are part of a Temple sponsored or hosted conference or publication may also be deposited.

 

Content & Collection

TUScholarShare is an institutional repository. Its intellectual content reflects the scholarly work created, sponsored, or submitted by the Temple community. Content must be covered by the TUScholarShare deposit license, entered into by the depositor, granting Temple University Libraries the rights necessary to fulfill the preservation and distribution aims of the repository.

Temple University Libraries reserves the right to refuse for deposit content that includes administrative records, private and confidential information, proprietary information, and working data for projects in process.

The following describes guidelines for the types of content appropriate for deposit.

Type

TUScholarShare supports creative and scholarly work created in the course of research and teaching. The following provides examples of content types that will be accepted, however this list is by no means exhaustive:

  • Documents (e.g. articles, preprints, published works, white papers, briefs)
  • Books and book contributions
  • Theses and dissertations
  • Datasets
  • Web-based resources (e.g. software, blog posts)
  • Teaching and learning objects (e.g. syllabi, lectures, presentations, assessment tools)
  • Conference proceedings, presentations, and posters
  • Certain student work (e.g. Livingstone Undergraduate Research Award Winners)

Format

TUScholarShare can accept work in any digital format. However, depositors are strongly encouraged to submit in one of the open file formats. For additional information, see the Preservation Policy and Recommended File Formats.

Metadata

All metadata in TUScholarShare are released under CC0 1.0, Public Domain Dedication. This means the metadata from the repository is dedicated to the public domain and all rights to the metadata worldwide under copyright law have been waived.

Submitting works to TUScholarShare requires a minimum set of submitter-supplied descriptive information (or metadata). This metadata will be indexed and used in both the search and browse functions. In addition, the metadata will be made available for external search engines, such as Google and OAIster.

For complete information about available metadata fields including input guidelines, please see our full Metadata Guidelines.

 

Deposit Requirements & License

Requirements for depositing content in TUScholarShare are:

Content must

  • Be scholarly and/or creative work.
  • Have been created, sponsored, or submitted by Temple faculty, students, or staff.
  • Be in a digital format supported by the repository.
  • Be covered by a non-exclusive deposit license, entered into by the depositor, granting Temple University Libraries the rights necessary to fulfill the preservation and distribution aims of the repository.

Content may not

  • Be administrative records.
  • Contain private, confidential, or personally identifiable information, or anything that otherwise violates Temple University’s general and tech policies.
  • Be working data (for works in progress we suggest you visit the Data Management Planning page for alternative options).
  • Be FERPA-protected information, except if the individual has authorized release of their information in writing.

TUScholarShare Deposit License

The Temple University Libraries use the following non-exclusive distribution license agreement in TUScholarShare:

By signing and submitting this license, you (the author(s) or copyright owner) grant to the Temple University Libraries (TUL) the non-exclusive right to distribute worldwide and preserve the deposited content.

You agree that TUL may migrate the submission to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation and keep more than one copy of this submission for purposes of security, back-up and preservation.

If the submission contains material for which you do not hold copyright, you represent that you have obtained the unrestricted permission of the copyright owner to grant TUL the rights required by this license.

IF THE SUBMISSION IS BASED UPON WORK THAT HAS BEEN SPONSORED OR SUPPORTED BY AN AGENCY OR ORGANIZATION, YOU REPRESENT THAT YOU HAVE FULFILLED ANY RIGHT OF REVIEW OR OTHER OBLIGATIONS REQUIRED BY SUCH CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT.  

The copyright holder of any work submitted to TUL retains copyright to the work. All permission requests should be directed to the individual author(s) or the stated holder(s) of copyright.

It is your responsibility to ensure that the submission does not include content that is plagiarized and/or infringes upon any third party’s privacy, confidentiality, and/or intellectual property rights.

Refer to the Withdrawal Policy for information about removing items from TUScholarShare.

FERPA AUTHORIZATION (for students)

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the educational records of students. Students whose educational works appear in TUScholarShare must give permission to Temple University to provide online access to their work:

You, the author or copyright holder, intending to be legally bound, authorize the release of education records or information from educational records relating to you and maintained by Temple University to TUScholarShare for the purpose of making your work publicly accessible in furtherance of the University’s educational and research mission. You make this release and waiver understanding your right to prevent disclosure of information from your educational records under the United States Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.

 

Access & Use

Under certain circumstances, restrictions or temporary embargoes on access may be imposed by the owner. Access restrictions for works are set during the deposit process and include the following:

  • Temporarily blocked access for an embargo period that does not exceed two years. After the embargo period, the work will be available worldwide.
  • An embargo of a thesis or dissertation that has been approved by the Graduate School.

Users may download and use works in TUScholarShare in any manner consistent with fair use, as per the license terms and conditions chosen by the copyright owner and designated as such in the materials deposited in TUScholarShare by the copyright owner. Users are responsible for determining whether a work is protected by copyright, the identity of the copyright holder, and the means for appropriately using the work. If your use or publication requires permission, you must contact the authors directly; the TUScholarShare Administrator cannot respond to requests for permission.

Users are expected to not make any attempt to re-identify any de-identified anonymized or redacted content, or otherwise violate the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals described in the content.

 

Alteration & Withdrawal

If the description of the content (its metadata) is incorrect, the depositor should send the TUScholarShare Administrator an explanation of the error and request its correction.

Requests to create a new version or replace an item already on deposit are addressed according to the following policies.

Adding a New Version

If the depositor wishes to update a work, providing a new version of an existing item, they must contact the TUScholarShare Administrator with their request. If access to one or more earlier versions should be restricted, the depositor must provide a reason for restricting access. Version history and the metadata for restricted access items will remain visible to users, but the file(s) will not be accessible.

Creating a new version is the preferred approach when:

  • Nature of change is purely additive, and maintaining a record of (and persistent links to) earlier versions is important.

Examples of valid versioning requests include:

  • New version corrects significant error(s) in previous version. Include brief description and location of corrections.
  • New version includes new content. Include brief description and location of new content.
  • New version supersedes previous version.

Replacement

Replacement of a file requires justification from the requestor. The requestor must describe the specific circumstances or changes that have been made in order to allow TUScholarShare staff to assess the request.

Examples of valid replacement requests include:

  • Submission error (submitter sent or uploaded the wrong item).
  • Minor content corrections, such as contact information for an author.
  • Superseded content when submitter has a compelling reason to no longer have an earlier version available, at all.
  • The nature of change is purely additive - simple addition of pages with no changes in pagination, for example. Note that in this case a VERSION might also be appropriate.

There are some cases in which a replacement cannot be made, such as when a request pertains to an official record such as a thesis or dissertation that has been formally approved. Requests for alteration or withdrawal of this kind must be directed to the Office of Graduate Studies.

Withdrawal

TUScholarShare reserves the right to withdraw a work that is officially retracted, infringes upon copyright or privacy, contains a virus, is plagiarized, fails to satisfy other legal requirements, or is out of scope for the repository, or for any other reason, in sole discretion, with notice to the depositor.

TUScholarShare is intended to provide persistent access to deposited material. As such, requests for removal, withdrawal, alteration, or replacement are evaluated on a case-by-case basis and must include a justification for the request. All requests must be directed to the TUScholarShare Administrator. After a review of the request, the TUScholarShare Administrator will contact the requestor to let them know a work has been withdrawn, or, if withdrawal is not appropriate, to let the requestor know the reason(s) withdrawal was not completed.

The non-exclusive submission agreement preserves the creator's right to submit additional copies elsewhere. Works may not be withdrawn solely because a depositor leaves Temple University.

 

Preservation

TUScholarShare is committed to responsible and sustainable management of deposited works. Temple University Libraries hosts TUScholarShare in a secure, professionally managed environment. The repository and its contents are regularly backed up, with backup data stored on a secure mass storage system.

TUScholarShare’s long-term access strategies are shaped by the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model (ISO 14721:2012) and informed by relevant international standards and emerging best practices. Given the dynamic nature of technology, Temple University Libraries will make every effort to preserve content, but cannot guarantee that every file in every format will endure and remain usable due to hardware, software, and other technological changes.

Reasonable efforts will be employed to preserve work in any digital format submitted to TUScholarShare, however, we encourage depositors to submit in a recommended file format in order to facilitate long-term preservation.

We also encourage all depositors to save copies on their own.

TUScholarShare will aim to provide long-term access to submitted works, as well as associated descriptive and administrative metadata by employing strategies allowed per the deposit agreement, including:

  • Secure backup
  • Storage media monitoring
  • File format migration (including possible migration to standard formats during submission)
  • All works submitted to TUScholarShare will be assigned a persistent identifier (DOI) and a persistent Web address (handle)
  • All works submitted to TUScholarShare will be given a checksum for fixity tracking so that we can identify any alterations or corruption of files

This policy and related preservation activities will be reviewed regularly to ensure practices remain current as technology and institutional practices evolve.

 

Privacy

TUScholarShare adheres to the Temple University Privacy Statement regarding the collection and use of information from the repository website.

It is the responsibility of the depositor to ensure that their submission does not include content that violates any third party’s privacy or confidentiality. Any information included in the repository must not be in violation of our deposit license, and content may be removed from the repository based on our Withdrawal Policy.

 

Accessibility

TUScholarShare is committed to making digital content accessible to all in full compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Should you require further accommodation, including help with reading this content, or have accessibility questions about TUScholarShare, please contact the TUScholarShare Administrator via email at scholarshare@temple.edu or by phone at (215) 204-0142.

 

Last updated: May 22, 2020