Policies & Information for Authors

ScholarWorks is a set of services that centralizes, showcases, and provides free online access to the research and creative scholarship of faculty, students, administration, and staff from the University of Montana (UM). In addition, the Mansfield Library is committed to providing long-term access and preservation services for the content in ScholarWorks. ScholarWorks is primarily open access and is designed to make scholarship from the University of Montana community easy to find, share, cite, and use.

Appropriate Submissions

Any content is appropriate if all applicable policies are followed (e.g., copyright), if the content can be posted using existing format types (i.e., technically feasible), and if the content is scholarly and of enduring value. Examples of appropriate ScholarWorks content include:

  • Published faculty research (as copyright permits)
  • Technical reports, working papers, conference publications
  • Books/chapters, book reviews
  • Research data in numeric or image formats
  • Theses, dissertations, and professional papers
  • Undergraduate and graduate research (see policy on student scholarship below)
  • Administrative records
  • Special collections digitized locally (letters, photographs, diaries)
  • Digital image collections

ScholarWorks also supports peer-reviewed series and journals as well as conferences. If you are considering publishing a peer-reviewed journal or series via ScholarWorks, or if you would like to manage a conference and upload conference proceedings in ScholarWorks, please .

Accessibility

In accordance with federal and state law, the Mansfield Library is committed to ensuring barrier-free access to all of our collections. To achieve this goal, materials submitted to ScholarWorks must be functionally usable with currently employed assistive technology. For more information on how to create accessible files, please review the information on UM's Accessible Technology Services site. You may find the information about the OCR document converter service particularly relevant. If you discover material in ScholarWorks that is not accessible, .

Student Scholarship

Undergraduate and graduate work may be submitted to ScholarWorks so long as the work meets the following conditions:

  • It must be scholarly in nature
  • It must be of enduring value (theses, dissertations, capstone projects, award-winning work, etc.)
  • It must be sponsored by a UM faculty member
  • The student and the faculty member acknowledge that some or all of the content in the student submission may constitute an educational record under the Family Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. §1232g). As such, a faculty member cannot require a student to submit scholarship to ScholarWorks.

Please if you are a student and would like to submit your scholarship to ScholarWorks.

Copyright and Author Agreements

Authors must own the copyright for work submitted to ScholarWorks. Authors grant the university a non-exclusive, perpetual right to use the digital assets for non-commercial use. Because authors retain the copyright for all content posted in the repository, they are free to reuse the content elsewhere.

If a working paper is published in a journal - either in the same form or, more commonly, in revised form - many journals allow the working paper to continue to be openly accessible, especially when it is for educational/scholarly noncommercial use. While some journals require that the working paper be removed, others grant exceptions for institutional repositories, but must be asked.

The author is responsible for negotiating the terms of publication agreements. The repository constitutes noncommercial use. Faculty who wish to include a reprint of a journal article in the repository should consult their agreement with the journal to see if posting in a repository is allowed. Authors who have transferred copyrights may seek permission of the copyright holder to publish it in the repository. The SHERPA/RoMEO site provides information about publisher copyright policies.

Authors can preserve basic self-archiving rights when negotiating copyright issues in book and journal contracts. We encourage authors to protect their rights when submitting documents to a publisher. Sample language for retaining rights can be found here:

We also encourage you to use a Creative Commons License when you upload previously unpublished scholarship to ScholarWorks.

For additional information about copyright, seeking permissions, authors' rights, and retaining rights that will allow you to post future publications in ScholarWorks, please see the ScholarWorks FAQ or .

Submission Agreements

Unless otherwise noted, documents posted in ScholarWorks are the property of their respective authors.

Faculty authors who deposit material in the repository agree to the following:

"I hold the copyright to this document, or have been authorized by the copyright holder(s) to upload it for distribution, and agree to permit this document to be posted in ScholarWorks, and made available to the public in any format in perpetuity.

I warrant that the posting of the work does not infringe any copyright, nor violate any proprietary rights, nor contains any libelous matter, nor invade the privacy of any person or third party, nor otherwise violate ScholarWorks policies.

I confirm that my submission is functionally usable with currently employed assistive technology.

I agree that UM may translate the submission to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation and access. In addition, I agree that UM may keep more than one copy of this submission for purposes of security, back-up, and preservation."

Student authors who deposit material in the repository agree to the following:

"I hold the copyright to this document, or have been authorized by the copyright holder(s) to upload it for distribution, and agree to permit this document to be posted in ScholarWorks, and made available to the public in any format in perpetuity.

I warrant that the posting of the work does not infringe any copyright, nor violate any proprietary rights, nor contains any libelous matter, nor invade the privacy of any person or third party, nor otherwise violate ScholarWorks policies.

I confirm that my submission is functionally usable with currently employed assistive technology.

I agree that UM may translate the submission to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation and access. In addition, I agree that UM may keep more than one copy of this submission for purposes of security, back-up, and preservation.

I understand that some or all of the contents in this document may constitute an educational record under the Family Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. §1232g) and expressly consent to the use of the document as contemplated by this Agreement."

Formats Supported and Preservation

ScholarWorks recommends the use of particular file types to increase the likelihood of safely migrating files into the future. Word and RTF files are converted to PDF when they are imported into ScholarWorks. We recommend the following formats as most likely to migrate effectively:

Images: TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF
Audio: AIFF, MP3 "unprotected" (DRM-free) AAC, WAV
Video: MPEG, QuickTime
Data: XML, Comma-separated values

Other formats may be included for associated materials, but are less likely to be migrated when technology changes. The Library is committed to providing access to and preserving all contents of the repository. When we migrate to new formats, we will change the format of a file, but not the information in it. For example, we will not update hyperlinks, other external references, or out-of-date information within a paper or supplementary file. If file formats cease to be supported as a result of changes in technology and the private sector, beyond the control of the Library, files in these formats may no longer function on computer equipment and hence, become unusable. If a new repository platform is chosen, all content will be migrated and every effort made to ensure that all content continues to be accessible.

The commitment to provide persistent access to content in ScholarWorks applies only to material housed on servers maintained directly or under contract by the Mansfield Library. Links and access to content of any format referenced outside ScholarWorks cannot be guaranteed.

Withdrawal of Materials

ScholarWorks is meant to be a permanent scholarly record, and content removal is discouraged. If you would like an item withdrawn from or redacted in ScholarWorks, please with a request in writing, including the URL of your item and reason for request. Please note that we do not remove or redact items except under legal and significant extenuating circumstances. A notice and takedown procedure will apply if proof of copyright infringement or complaint for other reasons, such as data protection or alleged research misconduct, is received. If content is removed from the IR, a publicly accessible item record that includes the original item description and a statement explaining the reason for withdrawal or redaction will be retained.