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Digital Collections @ Suffolk User's Guide

Use this guide to help with using Suffolk's Digital Commons site, Digital Collections @ Suffolk.

Access and Use

Materials deposited in the Digital Collections @Suffolk repository will, in general, be made freely available online to the public for educational and other non-commercial uses. All works in the repository are indexed and optimized for search engine discovery. However, due to copyright, licensing, embargoes, or other issues, access to some content may be limited.

For materials with copyright restrictions, usage is subject to the terms and conditions noted in the publication agreement or license agreement signed between the author and the publisher. Authors must consult their publishing agreement to see if there are any restrictions. Consult the Author FAQ page for more information.

Fair use permits downloading or printing any portion of scholarly or creative works for personal or educational use.  Any further editing, reproduction, republishing, or distribution of the material that is not for educational purposes requires the express written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries about use of material in Digital Collections @Suffolk should be directed to the author(s). Digital Collections @Suffolk administrators do not have the authority to grant permission to use content in the repository.

Content Guidelines

Content eligible for inclusion in Digital Collections @ Suffolk should relate to the research, pedagogy, institutional memory, and special collections of Suffolk University. Faculty, staff, and students of the Suffolk University are eligible to submit content. Suffolk University reserves the right to decline posting materials that do not support the overall repository mission or other criteria outlined in this policy. Most file formats are acceptable.

Examples of content appropriate for Digital Collections @ Suffolk include:

  • Faculty and staff: published and unpublished works including, journal articles, working papers, datasets, presentations, publications of university centers and institutes, peer-reviewed journals, materials associated with conferences, and instructional resources
  • Students: electronic theses and dissertations, student journals and publications, and select student work

Please note that pre-prints, post-prints, and publisher’s PDFs are eligible for submission, depending on publishers’ licensing guidelines. For assistance in determining copyright and licensing issues, please consult the Author FAQ page or contact the Digital Collections Team.

Copyright

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.

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.

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

 

Preservation

The contributor understands that Digital Collections @ Suffolk may make multiple copies of the submission for the purposes of security, back-up, and preservation. Submissions will be retained indefinitely. Suffolk University’s Libraries are committed to preserving and providing access to materials deposited in the repository. However, changes in technology may affect the Libraries’ ability to preserve certain types of digital content.