Digital Collections @ Suffolk User's Guide

Go to Digital Commons @ Suffolk (https://dc.suffolk.edu/)

Select My Account in the upper right hand corner

Select 'Sign Up'

Fill in information

Go to your email and confirm your account

Return to Login Screen

This process works best for submitting a small number of publications. If there are multiple works to upload, the Library can do it on the author’s behalf.

Follow these steps: 

1. Collect info about the work(s), including:

• Author, title, date, publisher
• Digital files for all works to be uploaded
• Double-check Copyright: check if the publisher allows the work to be published in Suffolk's institutional repository. For help determining whether a work can be posted online, please contact the Digital Collections Team.

2. Create a Free Account in Digital Commons @ Suffolk (https://dc.suffolk.edu/)

Select My Account in the upper right hand corner

3. Go to the Submit Research page

4. Select the Collection area based on your school or affiliation

5. Read and accept the Author Submission Agreement 

6. Fill in the forms, providing information about yourself and any co-authors and your work 

7. Upload your electronic file and associated files and click "Submit" . 

8. Click "Next" to complete the submission.

9. Final Steps: Library staff will review and approve all eligible items. Author will receive an email notification once the item is posted online. 

Please contact the DC administrators if you have any questions or encounter any problems. 

If an author has multiple files to upload, the Library is happy to upload content on the author’s behalf.  Please follow these steps:

1. Send an email to Digital Collections team at dct@suffolk.edu indicating interest in having works uploaded.

1. Librarians can compile a list of eligible items that have been previously published.
2. For unpublished works, authors will need to supply information about the works and copies of the digital files. (ie. Presentations, conference papers, teaching materials)

2. Create a free account in Digital Commons @ Suffolk (https://dc.suffolk.edu/)

Select My Account in the upper right hand corner

3. Collect information about the published and unpublished works to be posted, including, 

• author, titles, dates, publisher, copyright information, and the digital files for all works to be uploaded.
• Double-check that the publisher will allow the works to be posted in Suffolk’s repository. For assistance in determining copyright and licensing issues, please consult the Author FAQ page or contact the Digital Collections Team.

4. Submit Works and Sign Submission Form

1. 1. Fill out this Qualtrics form and sign at the bottom
   2. If submitting multiple works, please upload a list of all the items that need to be added to DC @ Suffolk and digital copies of each work

5. Library staff uploads eligible content

6. Author receives an email notification from Digital Commons that their work has been posted.

7. Authors can monitor usage of their uploaded items by logging in to their DC @ Suffolk account (more info about Author Metrics)

Please contact the DC administrators if you have any questions or encounter any problems. 

Navigating Copyright Issues

For assistance in determining copyright and licensing issues, please consult the Author FAQ page or contact the Digital Collections Team.

Considerations for Previously Published Works

All contributors must own the copyright for (or have permission to post) work in Digital Collections @ Suffolk. Authors grant Suffolk University a non-exclusive, perpetual right to use and preserve the digital assets for non-commercial use. This license includes permission to convert the submission to other formats and to retain more than one copy of the submission for preservation purposes. Because authors retain the copyright for all content posted in the repository, they are free to reuse the content elsewhere.

For specific terms of the license, please see the Author Submission Agreement. ​​​​​​Additionally, for help determining if a work can be posted, please contact the Digital Collections Team. ​

Preparing a new work for Publication

As authors prepare new works for publication, the library encourages them to negotiate with publishers to retain key rights to their intellectual property, such as distribution and access through institutional repositories. Information about why and how to do this is available at the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) website: http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/authors/addendum. 

The use of materials is still subject to the terms and conditions noted in the copyright publication agreement or license agreement signed between the author and the publisher. Consult your publishing agreement to see if there are any restrictions, commonly referred to as embargoes.

Digital Collections @ Suffolk offers authors to the opportunity to delay, or embargo, the full publication of their work due to publisher restrictions or other barriers authors may encounter.

No embargo required: By choosing no embargo, you are agreeing to publish your Work in Digital Collections @ Suffolk immediately after submission. This option will provide the broadest possible access to your work. The full-text of your Work and any supplemental files will be accessible on the internet for unlimited viewing. Your Work will be indexed and discoverable via major search engines. 

Embargo: By choosing an embargo, you are requesting that there be no access to the full-text of your Work for a specified period of time. Your submission will be listed and indexed in Digital Collections @ Suffolk, but the full text of your Work, and any supplementary files, will not be accessible until the expiration of the embargo. The title, author, keywords, and abstract will be displayed on the web in the record for your Work even if you have restricted access to the full-text copy. If you are embargoing due to patentability concerns, make sure your abstract is written so as to not be considered prior art. If do not want an abstract displayed at all, enter “No abstract to protect patentability” in the abstract field when you upload your Work.

The pre-set embargo periods are: 1 year, 18 months, 2 years, and 3 years.