The Digital Scholarship Repository at
Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School

Policies and Procedures

Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School [the Repository] is an initiative of the William H. Hannon Library and the William M. Rains Library. The repository serves institutional interests by collecting, organizing, preserving, and disseminating faculty and student scholarship and creative works in a digital, open-access environment. This initiative is consistent with the library’s archival role and responsibility in preserving publications and other artifacts documenting the university’s history and the activities of the LMU community.

Who Can Participate

The Repository is organized by community, a designation that includes LMU or Loyola Law School academic departments, programs, centers, institutes, and other academic or administrative units that produce or sponsor research, scholarship, creative works, or works of institutional or professional significance. Only individuals belonging to a community represented on Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School may have their works submitted to the Repository.

University groups that do not fall within the definition above may request to be considered on a case-by-case basis by sending an email to .

Submission of Content

All submission of content will be managed by library staff, according to the Content Guidelines described below.

A community may request to manage its own content, which would be required for any peer-reviewed series. If approved, the community must assign a coordinator to work with Repository staff.

Content Guidelines

The following guidelines govern the types of content that may be submitted to the Repository. Communities that manage their own content agree to comply with the guidelines, except as otherwise approved in advance by the Digital Scholarship Repository Advisory Committee:

  • The work must be produced, submitted, or sponsored by LMU/LA or Loyola Law School faculty, researchers, students, or staff.
  • The work must be creative, scholarly in nature, research oriented, or of institutional or professional significance.
  • The work must be a version acceptable to the author(s) and/or community.
  • The work must be in digital form. If parts of the item require different file formats, ideally all of the digital pieces will be provided as a set.
  • The author/owner must be willing and able to grant LMU/LA the right to preserve and distribute the work via the Repository.
  • Content does not have to be authored by an LMU/LA or Loyola Law School affiliate to be included in the Repository. For example, a community may post papers written by faculty from other institutions that were presented at a conference sponsored by the community. A community sponsor or article co-author is responsible for securing permissions agreements from non-affiliated authors before content is posted in the Repository.
  • Content submitted by students will require the approval of a faculty mentor or sponsor involved in the creation of the work.
  • For the most part, content will be openly accessible. However, it is acknowledged that some material may need to be embargoed for a period of time and/or have access restricted to only current LMU/LA or Loyola Law School faculty, students, and staff.
  • The Repository will accept a wide range of digital materials, including text, images, video, and audio files. Possible kinds of content include, but are not limited to, the following:
    • Articles and preprints
    • Technical reports
    • Working papers
    • Conference papers
    • Books and book chapters
    • Datasets: statistical, geospatial, etc.
    • Images: visual, scientific, etc.
    • Audio files
    • Video files
    • Software

Copyright

Contributors submitting materials to the Repository retain their rights to such materials, as described in the Intellectual Property Policy for Loyola Marymount University (December 1, 2008). The non-exclusive agreement acknowledged by contributors specifies that copyright holders retain all rights, title, copyright, and other interest in the materials submitted to the repository. In acknowledging the agreement, contributors also warrant, to the best of their knowledge, that they have permission to grant the rights contained in the agreement and that the submission does not infringe upon anyone else’s copyright.

Contributors should be aware that some publishers prohibit the inclusion of published articles in repositories, although exceptions may be granted at the author’s request. Contributors may consult the SHERPA RoMEO (Rights Metadata for Open archiving) web site (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/), which summarizes publishers’ copyright and self-archiving policies, as normally included in their copyright transfer agreements.

If a publisher prohibits posting a published article to the repository and will not grant an exception, a pre-print with corrigenda may be posted, along with a link to the published article.

As authors prepare new works for publication, the library encourages them to negotiate with publishers to retain key rights to their intellectual property, such as distribution and access through repositories. Information about why and how to do this is available at the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) website, http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml.

The library can provide additional assistance on checking the terms of a copyright transfer agreement, using the RoMEO website, or keeping or reclaiming one’s rights.

Withdrawal of Material

Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount and Loyola Law School is considered a permanent archive of the scholarly output of Loyola Marymount University community. Once deposited, a work cannot be withdrawn; however, under some circumstances, it may be removed from view. .

The following instances may result in a removal:

  • The appearance of the work in the institutional repository violates a copyright agreement, such as an agreement between an author and a journal publisher.
  • Authors or affected parties may request that works be removed for reasons of factual inaccuracy, plagiarism, or potential copyright infringement.
  • Works may be removed if the authors fail to comply with policies and procedures mandated by the Research Advancement and Compliance Office.
  • The work has been determined to contain false or libelous claims toward another individual or group.

Works may not be withdrawn when a depositor leaves Loyola Marymount University.

Requests for removal should be directed to and should include the item title, URL, and reasons for withdrawal. No materials will be removed without an attempt to reach the author.

If the request results in a successful removal, the full bibliographic citation of the work will remain in Digital Commons @ LMU/LLS with a note regarding the removal, e.g. “removed at request of author,” or “removed at the discretion of …,” or “removed by legal order.”

Preservation and Stewardship

It is the responsibility of the library to preserve submitted content using accepted preservation techniques. If the library ceases to support the Repository, the library will return content to contributing units and transfer to the LMU/LA Archives the content of units that have ceased to exist.

Procedures for Submitting Content

Library staff will manage the submission of content to the Repository. Starting with published works library staff will compile a list of postable content – using an author’s CVs and by searching publishers’ journal databases. Each author will then be asked for permission to post the works to the Repository. If a publication was co-authored by other LMU/LA or Loyola Law School faculty or staff, permission will be requested from all such co-authors.

When a published PDF is available, library staff will verify that the publisher allows posting to a repository. If a publisher’s standard policy does not allow such posting, library staff will assist the author in requesting an exception.

When a published PDF is not available or the publisher does not grant an exception, library staff will request a preprint from the faculty member, preferably in electronic format (e.g. Word or PDF file). If an electronic file is not available, the library will request an original or best copy of the work for scanning to archival quality.

Library staff will then upload the content and enter appropriate metadata for each work.