Appendix D - Guidelines for the NCSU Scholarly Publications Repository

January 2008

Appendix D
Guidelines for Determining your Rights to Deposit Works in the NCSU Scholarly Publications Repository

   1. Pursuant to NCSU's Copyright Regulation, REG 01.25.03, if your work was created after August 13, 2001, while you were employed at NCSU, the author's final version of the work (including changes made in response to peer review, but not the publisher's branding) may be deposited in the NCSU Digital Repository.

   2. If your work does not meet the specification above, and if it has been published, check your publishing agreement. If you did not transfer your copyright in the work, you are free to post it in the Scholarly Publications Repository. If you transferred your copyright, the publishing agreement will say so.

   3. Even if you have transferred your copyright, most publishers allow posting to an educational institution's web site or repository. Check the "SHERPA" database to see the policy of your publisher/journal. To date, this database includes moderate to large-sized journal publishers, with 74% of publishers allowing authors to deposit copies of their articles in repositories.
      Journals or publishers whose policies are not available from SHERPA may have relevant information on their own sites, under headings such as "copyright" or "information for authors."

   4. If you are still uncertain about your right to deposit your work, consider asking your publishers (or conference organizers, if you're planning to post conference presentations) for the following rights:

          "Copyright holder [e.g., publisher] grants to the author a non-exclusive, perpetual right to deposit the work [your submission] in the NCSU Digital Repository, a non-commercial, openly available collection of institutional scholarly research. Furthermore, copyright holder grants the right to migrate, without changing the content, one or more copies of the submission to any medium or format for backup and preservation purposes."

For your future scholarly work, it is a good idea to carefully review your publishing agreements in regard to your rights, and consider incorporating language that is available on the Libraries' Open Knowledge Center site.

If you have questions, please contact the Libraries' Digital Publishing Center, email repository@ncsu.edu.