Information Services

Repository policies

Policies describing who can use the services, what type of content is held, the terms and conditions of access and preservation actions.

Content policy: what is held in our repositories

  1. Edinburgh Research Explorer (ERE) and the Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) are institutional repositories for the University of Edinburgh.
  2. Edinburgh Research Explorer holds information on current research activity including staff, projects and publications.
  3. Edinburgh Research Archive contains documents which are of sufficient quality to be collected and preserved by the Library, but which are not controlled by commercial publishers. Holdings include full-text digital doctoral theses, masters dissertations, project reports, briefing papers and out-of-print materials.

Submission policy: who can deposit items

  1. Items may only be deposited by accredited members of the University of Edinburgh, or their delegated agents.
  2. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.
  3. Administrators only vet items for the eligibility of authors/depositors, and for relevance to the scope.
  4. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the depositor.
  5. Items can be deposited at any time, but will not be made publicly visible until any publisher's embargo period has expired.
  6. Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
  7. If administrators receive proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately, as per the stated Notice and Take-Down policy.

Data policy: what you can do with our content

  1. Anyone may access full items free of charge.
  2. Copies of full items generally can be:
    • reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium
    • used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the content is not changed in any way
  3. Some full items are individually tagged with different rights permissions and conditions.

Metadata policy: what you can do with our metadata

  1. Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
  2. The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record are given.
  3. The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission.

Preservation policy: how we will try to make content remain accessible

  1. Items will be retained indefinitely, and we will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
  2. Regularly back up its files according to current best practice.
  3. The original bit stream is retained for all items, in addition to any upgraded formats.
  4. Items may be removed at the request of the author/copyright holder, but this is strongly discouraged.
    • Proven legal violation or plagiarism
    • National Security
    • Falsified research
  5. Items are allocated a checksum to facilitate the detection of alterations.