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
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (ERE) and the Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) are institutional repositories for the University of Edinburgh.
- Edinburgh Research Explorer holds information on current research activity including staff, projects and publications.
- 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
- Items may only be deposited by accredited members of the University of Edinburgh, or their delegated agents.
- Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.
- Administrators only vet items for the eligibility of authors/depositors, and for relevance to the scope.
- The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the depositor.
- Items can be deposited at any time, but will not be made publicly visible until any publisher's embargo period has expired.
- Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
- 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
- Anyone may access full items free of charge.
- 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
- Some full items are individually tagged with different rights permissions and conditions.
Metadata policy: what you can do with our metadata
- Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
- 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.
- 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
- Items will be retained indefinitely, and we will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
- Regularly back up its files according to current best practice.
- The original bit stream is retained for all items, in addition to any upgraded formats.
- 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
- Items are allocated a checksum to facilitate the detection of alterations.