• Section 1 - Summary
• Section 2 - Scope
• Section 3 - Policy/Regulation
• Section 4 - Procedures
• Part A - Summary of Roles and Responsibilities
• Part B - Procedures
• Section 5 - TEQSA/ASQA/ESOS Alignment
• Section 6 - Definitions

Section 1 - Summary

(1) This Procedure provides guidance on depositing material into the Victoria University Institutional Repository (VUIR) as required to implement the VU Insitutional Repository Open Access Policy.

Section 2 - Scope

(2) This Procedure applies to all VU staff, postgraduate research students, and authors affiliated with the University.

Section 3 - Policy/Regulation

(3) VU Research Repository Open Access Policy

Section 4 - Procedures

Part A - Summary of Roles and Responsibilities

Part B - Procedures

(4) VU staff, postgraduate students, or authors affiliated with the University may deposit into the VUIR.

Exclusions

(5) The following material will not be accepted for deposit

1. Material which contains confidential information, or of which the promulgation would infringe a legal or commercial commitment by the University and/or the author;
2. Any work for which the author has entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement;
3. Material where the granting of unrestricted access would compromise ethical obligations, including those associated with cultural sensitivities;
4. Unedited/un-reviewed personal opinion outputs, letters;
5. Unreferenced draft papers or draft versions made available for comment;
6. Theses, other than Masters by Research or Doctorates [except by special request of Institute Director, Executive Dean or Dean, Graduate Research).

How to Deposit: Research Outputs

(6) The University’s research publication system (VU Elements) is integrated with the VUIR via an Elements module and associated crosswalk (Repository Tools). Subject to Clause 15 below, staff should deposit their scholarly outputs via VU Elements. Staff are able to attach a full text version of their work or provide a url to an external location at which a copy of the output is available via Open Access, as part of their deposit. 

(7) Versions of outputs that can be made publicly available via the repository:

1. Author accepted manuscript;
2. Output published in an open access journal or outlet;
3. Link to externally hosted Open Access location (journal or other outlet) via url or doi.

(8)  Library staff will:

1. check and validate metada quality and accuracy in Elements and VUIR;
2. on occasion, claim or reject nominated research outputs and deposit to VUIR on behalf of academic staff;
3. assess copyright issues in relation to deposited outputs and work with authors to ensure an appropriate version is made publicly available and apply appropriate permissions for access;
4. provide advice regarding preferred copyright conditions for research publications, including examples of suggested clauses for authors to utilise for publication to ensure that they retain the ability to publish or self archive in Institutional Repositories;
5. provide information regarding options for open access publishing including available open access publishing agreements;
6. if an appropriate full text version of the publication is not initially submitted, contact the author for the most appropriate version of the work.

(9) In cases where the full text or a link to an OA version of an output is not available VU staff are still able to deposit a metadata only record relating to the bibliographic details of an output to VUIR via VU Elements.

Deposit of non-mandated Outputs

(10) Works not deposited via VU Elements but which meet the criteria for inclusion in VUIR including but not limited to :

1. Grey literature  eg. e.g. working papers, discussion papers, government submissions, reports and inaugural professorial lectures;
2. Unreviewed conference papers

Deposit of Theses

(11) Deposit of theses to the VUIR is handled as part of the graduation process for research students.  The deposit process is coordinated by the Graduate Research School:

1. Qualifying students complete a VUIR Submission and Permission form as part of the Graduate Research School thesis deposit process;
2. The Library copy should preferably be in Adobe PDF format or Word document and via provided via usb accessible hdd or sdd;
3. Students lodging an electronic copy of a thesis with a completed VUIR Submission and Permission form agree to allow the Library to publish the material in electronic format;
4. Restriction of access to full version of submitted theses may be possible in specific cases. In order for open access to the full text version of a thesis to be restricted, the student must contact the Graduate Research School and complete and submit a Restricted Access to a Thesis form. The Graduate Research School is responsible for approving restrictions and will advise the Library as appropriate.

Quality Control

(12) All works are assessed for compliance with this Procedure and Copyright conditions. The Library ensures the metadata of deposits meets established metadata standards in the VUIR. 

(13) Where issues arise with compliance with this Procedure and copyright conditions the VUIR administrators will provide feedback to the depositor.

Acceptable Formats

(14) Materials can be accepted in the following formats:

1. PDF; 
2. URL link or DOI to the accessible full text content where it resides on another web site;
3. HTML;
4. Postscript;
5. MS Word;
6. MS Excel;
7. txt;
8. csv;
9. Image JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF;
10. Video MPEG, QuickTime, AVI.

Deposit License

(15) The University will only accept material for deposit in the VUIR where the Author agrees the following:  

1. To grant an irrevocable licence to VU to store material and, when legally permissible, make it freely available via VUIR;
2. To warrant that you have the authority to grant VU this licence;
3. To warrant that VU will not infringe any third persons’ rights by using the material in accordance with the licence where the material contains copyright works (which are reproduced in whole or in part in the material) belonging to other persons.

Copyright

(16) As the copyright owner the Author is encouraged to apply a Creative Commons (CC) licence to their work, and depending upon conditions of their funder may be required to do so.    

(17) Responsibility for complying with the University’s copyright policies and procedures; any third party contracts; copyright legislation and publishers’ rights rests with the VU staff member or student submitting the material. The Library, with advice from the Office of the General Counsel, will assist in checking copyright where the author is unclear. 

(18) Information and guidelines on the University’s intellectual property policies and procedures is available on the University’s website.  

(19) Information on the policies of certain publishers on depositing in repositories is available from the Library.

(20) In the event of a dispute regarding VU’s right to make material accessible via the repository, the Library reserves the right to deny access to or remove the material from VUIR until the matter is resolved to the University’s satisfaction.

Take Down Procedure

(21) Library Staff will comply promptly with requests to remove material from VUIR if:

1. the author has a reason for the work to no longer be in the public domain; or,
2. if the publisher requests and the University accepts the removal of the material from the VUIR citing contravention of copyright or licensing agreements.

(22) Staff should complete the Copyright Take Down Notice when making a take down request.

(23) Theses will be removed for a period of one month to allow the author to complete a Restricted Access to a Thesis form and submit it to the Graduate Research School.  The Graduate Research School will be responsible for approving restrictions and will advise the Library as appropriate.  If restrictions are not granted, full-text of the thesis will be returned to the VUIR.

(24) Note that only the full version of the work will be removed via the take down procedure, the metadata (name, title, and year) will remain in the VUIR.

Section 5 - TEQSA/ASQA/ESOS Alignment

(25) HESF: Standards 1.4 Learning Outcomes and Assessment; 4.1.1 Research; 7.3 Information Management

Section 6 - Definitions

(26) Author: The creator of an original work.

(27) Author Accepted Manuscript: A document that has been through the peer review process, addressed the reviewers’ comments and is now accepted for publication.

(28) Creative Commons (CC) licence: A licence which allows a creator of works to prescribe the different ways the public can use their work.

(29) Metadata: Information describing an item, for example title, author, year of publication.

(30) Open Access: Available online and world-wide, free of charge or other access barriers.

(31) Refereed: Papers or articles that have been the subject of external or peer review prior to inclusion in a scholarly journal or proceedings.  For research theses, the examination process is considered equivalent to the external or peer review referee process.

(32) Research Output: The products or outputs generated as part of a research enquiry. Traditional research outputs may include – published journal articles or book chapters. Non traditional research outputs may include –original creative works such as exhibitions, live performance, recorded or photographed works and associated documentation, research reports.

(33) Scholarly Work: Work intended for academic publication (e.g. article, book, manuscript or manual regardless of format).

(34) VU Elements: The University’s research information management system.