Frequently asked questions
Below are answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQ) about institutional repositories, open access, copyright and Manchester eScholar.
On this page,
Questions about Manchester eScholar
- Who is managing Manchester eScholar?
- Who can I contact for further information?
- Who can access the content stored in the repository?
- How can I find the content in Manchester eScholar?
- What types of content are in Manchester eScholar?
- Why do only some of the records have full text available?
- What is grey literature?
Questions about institutional repositories
- What is an institutional repository?
- Which other UK universities have similar research repositories?
Questions about open access & copyright
- What does open access mean?
- What do UK Research Funding Councils think about open access?
- Where can I find out more about open access?
- Do publishers allow authors to deposit published articles in Manchester eScholar?
- What is the University of Manchester's policy of intellectual property and copyright?
Answers
Who is managing Manchester eScholar?
Manchester eScholar is a service provided and maintained by the John Rylands University Library.
Who can I contact for further information?
For all enquiries contact the Manchester eScholar support team by email:escholar@manchester.ac.uk or by telephone: 0161 275 8728 (Internal x58728).
Who can access the content stored in the repository?
Manchester eScholar is a service for staff and post-graduate students of the University of Manchester to deposit their scholarly materials. Providing the depositor does not set any restrictions on these materials (i.e. an embargo period) they will be made openly available to anybody with access to the World Wide Web.
Where content is unavaible due to copyright restrictions there may be a link from the record to a publisher's website. Access to this content will depend on whether your institution has a subscription for the journal in which the article is published.
How can I find the content in Manchester eScholar?
All content in Manchester eScholar which is made openly available by the depositor will be indexed by search engines (e.g. Google) and other repository harvesting services such as OAIster and Intute. You can also search and browse for content in Manchester eScholar by searching the repository directly.
See Manchester eScholar search.
What types of content are in Manchester eScholar?
Manchester eScholar contains the following types of scholarly works: Journal Article, Journal Contribution, Book Contribution, Book, Report, Technical Report, Working Paper, Patent, Newspaper/Magazine Article, Composition, Conference Contribution, Conference Proceeding, Manuscript, Dataset, Exhibition, Exhibition Contribution, Thesis, & Dissertation.
Further content types will be added following launch of Manchester eScholar services.
Why do only some of the records have full text available?
Many of the records in Manchester eScholar were migrated from Faculty publication databases. These records contained metadata but not the full text of the publication. Manchester University staff are encouraged to attach the full text to these records where copyright allows.
Manchester University staff are also encouraged to provide full access to materials when creating a record. However it may not always be permitted for them to upload the full text, for example they may have assigned the copyright for a book chapter to a publisher. Alternatively the publisher may have insisted that a researcher may only upload the full text of a publication to a repository after a pre-determined period of time, commonly referred to as an embargo period.
What is grey literature?
Grey literature refers to research material that is not formally published. Examples of grey literature include technical reports, working papers, and conference proceedings.
Institutional repositories are an increasingly common way of making grey literature openly accessible.
What is an institutional repository?
In simple terms an institutional repository is a place to store digital copies of scholarly work and make these materials freely and easily accessible.
For an academic researcher it is a place to store, manage and disseminate their work via the World Wide Web. The work can include publications in peer-reviewed journals, books and book contributions, technical reports, working papers, books, conference presentations, audio and visual materials or any other research content that has some scholarly value.
A librarian might consider a repository as somewhere to catalogue, preserve and archive digital materials for posterity. This includes enabling easy access to these materials via a simple persistent web address.
A research manager might view a repository as a barometer of an organisations research productivity and health. They might use the repository to inform on strategic planning.
An IT professional might consider a repository as a type of digital asset management (DAM) system. They might see the system as hardware, software and processes for the ingestion, annotation, cataloging, storage and retrieval of digital materials.
An organisation might see its repository as a record of its intellectual assets. The organisation would use the repository to help meet research council requirements, improve its reputation and demonstrate to its employees that their work is valued.
Which other UK universities have similar research repositories?
The world-wide development and use of institutional repositories has grown significantly in the last few years. At the time of writing, there were around 1,300 institutional repositories world-wide, of which over 140 are located in the UK. All of the twenty Russell Group universities have established or are developing institutional repositories.
For an up-to-date listing of global repositories see the OpenDOAR website.
What does open access mean?
Open access (OA) scholarly works are digital, online, free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. There are generally two ways to make scholarly works OA; open access publishing and open access self-archiving.
Open access publishing is the publication of scholarly works which is available to all potential users without financial or other barriers. This can involve the publisher charging an OA fee which is usually bore by the researcher's institution or Research Funding Council. This form of OA is referred to as 'gold OA'.
OA journals are indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Open access self-archiving is a deposit of scholarly works in an online repository or personal website which allows unrestricted access to anybody with access to the World Wide Web. Authors must read carefully any copyright agreements that they have signed if the works they are depositing have been previously published. Different publishers have different self-archiving policies. This form of OA is referred to as 'green OA'.
Publisher's self-archiving and copyright policies can be searched using the SHERPA/RoMEO service.
What do UK Research Funding Councils think about open access?
All seven of the major UK Research Funding Councils have now mandated that research that they fund is made open access in some form. This should be done through depositing a version of the published work in an appropriate subject or institutional repository wherever such a repository exists.
Generally Funding Councils insist that deposits to a repository should take place at the earliest opportunity.
See SHERPA JULIET for a summary of policies given by various research funders as part of their grant awards.
Where can I find out more about open access?
To find out more or to simply stay abreast of the rapidly changing open access landscape see Related Blogs and Websites.
Do publishers allow authors to deposit published articles in Manchester eScholar?
If the author of a scholarly work has assigned the copyright of his/her work to their publisher and the copyright statement indicated that they are not allowed to deposit those materials in an institutional repository (or in another electronic source, such as a personal website) then they shouldn't submit those materials to the repository.
An increasing number of publishers do now allow some form of self-archiving. Authors should check any copyright agreements carefully before depositing work to Manchester eScholar to be sure of which version they are allowed to deposit.
SHERPA/RoMEO is a service offering up-to-date listings of publisher's copyright and self-archiving policies.
What is the University of Manchester's policy of intellectual property and copyright?
The University of Manchester's intellectual property and copyright policy is available to download from Staffnet.
Summarising, ownership of intellectual property created by a University employee automatically belongs to the University (see section 3.4). However, the University waives its rights with regards to ownership of copyright in scholarly work (see section 3.7) except where,
- if an employee creates intellectual property outside of the course of his/her employment with more than incidental use of University resources,
- intellectual property created in the pursuance of sponsored research or other agreement with an outside body will belong to the University and then ownership will be determined according to the terms of such agreement
- in the relation to any item created by an employee whose job description specifically includes the creation of printed or electronic materials,
- where publication of the scholarly work brings the University into disrepute
It is important to note that the University's policy is that all employee's are responsible for ensuring their arrangements with outside bodies do not conflict with their obligations to the University, including the University’s rights of IP ownership. In particular, this applies to any arrangements which an individual makes with a third party publisher in relation to the publication of a piece of scholarly work (see section 3.3).