Frequently Asked Questions
Who benefits from Open Access Repositories?
- Researchers
- Institutions
- National economies
- Science and society
Why should we have Open Access Repositories?
- Greater impact from scholarly works
- More rapid and more efficient progress of scholarship
- Better assessment, better monitoring and better management of research
- Better information-creation using new and better technologies
What does an Institutional Repository provide researchers with?
- The means to disseminate their work, free, to the world
- Secure storage (for completed work and for work-in progress)
- A location for supporting unpublished data
- One input, many outputs (CVs, publications)
- Tool for research assessment
Why have an Institutional Repository?
- Fulfils the University's mission to engender, encourage and disseminate scholarly work
- Enables a university to compile a complete record of its intellectual effort
- Forms a permanent record of all digital output from an institution
- Enables standardised online CVs for all researchers
- Marketing tool for the University
What can be included in UTSeScholarship?
Any type of material that is available in any electronic format. As long as it is:
- Authored, produced or sponsored by a UTS faculty, research centre or institute
- Scholarly, research or pedagogically oriented.
- Complete and ready for publication via UTSeScholarship
- If part of a series, other works are to be contributed so that a full set is available to users
Can I remove items from UTSeScholarship?
UTSeScholarship is intended to provide ‘permanent' archival records. There may be times when it is necessary to remove items from public view (eg cultural or sensitive issues). Under these circumstances, the object will be removed but the item description will remain available - ie you will not be able to see the item but you can obtain information about it.
Can students publish in UTSeScholarship?
Yes, if they are scholarly, quality assured and sponsored by the faculty. There are a number of ways that this can happen. See "Student Material Guidelines" for further details.
How is information structured within UTSeScholarship?
Material should be structured in a way that makes it as easy as possible for people to access. For this reason, we have chosen a classification system that is based around the Australian Bureau of Statistics ‘Australian Standard Research Codes'. These are codes that are used by the majority of researchers in Australia and are also intuitively logical for non-university researchers who might want to access the material.
In UTSePress - where material is developed specifically for this online environment, only the top level of classification is pre-defined and UTS scholars are encouraged to develop their own faculty, school or department collections under these broad categories.
For material that has been published elsewhere, the submission into UTSiRepository will involve one or two extra metadata steps to ensure that your material goes into the right place. Of course there are powerful search engines attached to UTSeScholarship which means that a user can ignore the browse functions and classification structure and conduct simple or advanced searches on keywords, authors etc.
What is the privacy policy for users of the system?
UTSeScholarship has the same privacy policy as UTS Library, which is also compliant with the UTS Privacy Management Plan.
Does UTSeScholarship collect and publish theses?
Yes. UTSeScholarship contains the theses of UTS PhD Graduates. You can search these online. There is information on the Library website on how to publish a thesis you are about to complete, or to digitise a thesis you completed at UTS some time ago,
Do you charge users to access any parts of UTSeScholarship?
No. All material on UTSeScholarship is free of charge to users.
Do you charge authors or content creators for any services through UTSeScholarship?
If we are unable to absorb what you need within normal library operations, yes. Authors and other content creators who meet all other requirements, can freely submit material in UTSeScholarship compliant formats that are ‘ready to publish'. Design work, manipulation of text or other content will be charged back to the author or creator as UTS Library does not have the resources to absorb these costs.
Are there any restrictions on access?
There can be. For example, Journal Managers often ask users to register, so that they can monitor who is reading their material. This is useful for future issues when they are looking for authors, content creators, reviewers and guest editors. Journal Managers must comply with the UTS Library privacy policy as well as the UTS Privacy Management Plan, so users are protected from any misuse of their details.
Access may also be restricted to certain materials contained in the UTSiRepository for reasons of copyright, commercial in confidence content, patents and embargo periods. However, UTSeScholarship is intended to provide open access to material so wherever possible, material will be freely available to all.
What is metadata?
Metadata is often described as ‘data about data'. It is used to facilitate the understanding, use and management of data, ie it helps librarians and archivists organise where an item is placed and it helps users find it!
There are various types of metadata...
Descriptive: facilitating discovery and describing intellectual content
Administrative: facilitating management of digital and analogue resources (rights statement; technical data; when created, access requirements)
Technical: describing the technical aspects of the digital object
Structural: describing the relationships within a digital object
Preservation: supporting the long term retention of the digital object and overlapping with technical, admin and structural metadata
Adapted from: Best practice guidelines for digital collections at University of Maryland Libraries
What metadata will I have to add as an author or content creator?
You will need to add metadata such as the author/creator's name, the title of the work, keywords (which is guided by classification systems), abstract etc. You may also be asked for details about how the item can be used (eg licences), which will also form part of the metadata. UTSeScholarship is responsible for creating more detailed metadata.
