Library and Learning Services

Leicester Research Archive policies

Metadata Policy for information describing items in the repository

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.
  • Leicester Research Archive is mentioned.
  • The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission.

[OAI Identifier is a persistent resource identifier]

Data Policy for full-text and other full data items

Anyone may access full items free of charge.

Single copies of full items can be:

  • reproduced, and displayed or performed in any format or medium.
  • for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge provided:
    • the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given.
    • a hyperlink and/or URL are given for the original metadata page.
    • the original copyright statement is given.
    • the content is not changed in any way.

Full items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or citation analysis.

Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holders.

This repository is not the publisher; it is merely the online archive.

Mention of Leicester Research Archive is appreciated but not mandatory.

Content Policy for types of document and data set held

This is an institutional or departmental repository.

Leicester Research Archive holds all types of materials.

Papers may include:

  • unpublished pre-prints (not peer-reviewed).
  • final peer-reviewed drafts (post-prints).
  • published versions.Papers are individually tagged with their peer-review and publication status.

Submission Policy concerning depositors, quality and copyright

Items may only be deposited by accredited members of the institution, or their delegated agents.

Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.

Eligible depositors must deposit full texts of all their publications, although they may delay making them publicly visible to comply with publishers' embargos.

The administrator only vets items for the eligibility of authors/depositors, and relevance to the scope of Leicester Research Archive.

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 publishers' or funders' embargo period has expired.

Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.

If Leicester Research Archive receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.

Preservation Policy

Items will be retained indefinitely.

Leicester Research Archive will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility. Items will be migrated to new file formats where necessary.

Leicester Research Archive regularly backs up its files according to current best practice.

Items may be removed at the request of the author/copyright holder, but this is strongly discouraged.

Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:

  • Journal publishers' rules.
  • Proven copyright violation or plagiarism.
  • Legal requirements and proven violations.
  • National Security.
  • Falsified research.

Withdrawn items are deleted entirely from the database.

Withdrawn items' identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely.

URLs will continue to point to 'tombstone' citations, to avoid broken links and to retain item histories together with:

  • A link to a replacement version, where available.
  • A note explaining the reasons for withdrawal.

Changes to deposited items are not permitted.

Errata and corrigenda lists may be included with the original record if required.

If necessary, an updated version may be deposited.

  • The earlier version may be withdrawn from public view.
  • The original URL will be linked to the latest version.

In the event of Leicester Research Archive being closed down, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.

Takedown Policy statement

Leicester Research Archive seeks to retain everything that has been archived, in order to build up a permanent record of research. We do however foresee that there will be circumstances when we will need to remove an item, and/or its associated record (the metadata). These circumstances include copyright violation, plagiarism or libel. Requests to remove items should be sent to the Head of Research Services at lra@leicester.ac.uk.

Data formats and preservation

The Leicester Research Archive is not a general-purpose web hosting service but rather an archive that focuses on preserving research output. Therefore it is against our mission to provide durable handles to data that is in formats that will quickly bitrot, such as .doc. The preferred standard format of ingest for text based documents is PDF, unless there is a clear and over-riding reason why another format needs to be provided. The deposit of items in formats other than PDF need to be discussed with the Head of Research Services and acceptance is by no mean guaranteed.

[A durable handle is an open file handle that is preserved during a short network outage. bitrot is data degradation]

Our policies as recorded in the OpenDOAR database

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