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SFU Library Institutional Repository Project DSpace Policies and Guidelines

Community and Collection Policies

The SFU Library Institutional Repository Project (IR) is a partnership between SFU communities and the SFU Library. The SFU Library Institutional Repository Project content consists of collections produced by SFU communities. These collections are managed, preserved and made accessible by the SFU Library through DSpace software. Some of the collections will be subject to institutional guidelines defined by SFU administration. As in all partnerships, it is important that all IR stakeholders understand and agree to the policies, guidelines and procedures required to build an institutional repository. The following policy statements have been developed over a period of time with input from various parties.

What is an Institutional Repository community?

An Institutional Repository "Community" is an academic unit at SFU, such as a department, centre, institute or other group or an individual that produces research, has a defined leader or someone known as the individual responsible for that unit, has long-term stability, and can assume responsibility for setting Community policies. Each community must be able to assign a coordinator who can work with Library staff. A list of research entities can be found at http://www.sfu.ca/academic/az.html, which may serve as a guide to established communities. Groups wishing to establish a Community that do not fall into this definition will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

What responsibilities does an Institutional Repository Community take on?

An IR Community agrees to:

• arrange for submission and description of content
• make decisions about community and collection definitions
• notify the SFU Library Institutional Repository Project of organizational changes affecting submissions
• reply to annual reconfirmation of community information
• understand and observe SFU administration policies relevant to the IR, and educate community submitters regarding these policies
• clear copyright for items submitted when the copyright owner is other than author(s) or SFU
• decide upon a submission workflow for each collection

What rights does an Institutional Repository Community retain?

An IR Community retains the right to:

• decide policy regarding content to be submitted (within the IR guidelines)
• decide who may submit content within the community
• remove items and collections (as outlined in "Withdrawal Policy")
• customize interfaces to community content

What are the SFU Library Institutional Repository Project's responsibilities?

The SFU Library Institutional Repository Project agrees to:

• retain and maintain content submitted to the IR
• preserve content using accepted preservation techniques
• notify communities of significant changes to content, e.g. format migration
• if the SFU Library ceases to support the IR, return collections to existing communities and transfer to the SFU Archives collections of communities that have ceased to exist
• edit metadata assigned to the items placed in the IR

What are the SFU Library Institutional Repository Project's rights?

The SFU Library Institutional Repository Project retains the right to:

• redistribute or amend metadata for items in the IR
• refuse or de-accession items or Collections under certain circumstances - as outlined in "Withdrawal Policy"
• renegotiate terms of original agreement with Communities
• perform appraisal for long-term archiving when Communities cease to exist or within thirty years of the creation of a Collection
• migrate items if format is in danger of obsolescence

Withdrawal of items from the Institutional Repository

The SFU Library foresees times when it may be necessary to remove items from the repository. It has been decided that under some circumstances items will be removed from view, but to avoid loss of the historical record, all such transactions will be traced in the form of a note in the <Description.provenance> field of the Dublin Core record. The content of the note should be one of the following:

• "removed from view at request of the author"
• "removed from view at SFU's discretion"
• "removed from view at the SFU Library's discretion"
• "removed from view by legal order"
• "removed from view at community's discretion"

Since any IR item that has existed at some time may have been cited, we will always supply a "tombstone" when the item is requested, which will include the original metadata (for verification) plus one of the above withdrawal statements in place of the link to the object. The metadata should be visible, but not searchable. These items will also be made unavailable for metadata harvesting.