Policies for Faculty Publications

1. Copyright Policies

AFIT Scholar's Faculty Publications section is unique in that works created by the federal government are not copyrightable but considered part of the public domain. (See Frequently Asked Questions About Copyright for explanations and exceptions) However, as employees of an academic institution, some AFIT members publish academic works in journals that have copyright protection. In those instances, digital materials that meet the contributor and copyright guidelines may still be submitted for inclusion in the IR.

a. Contributors must ensure that they have obtained the appropriate copyright permissions when he/she is not the copyright holder for all items submitted to the AFIT repository.

b. If contributor transferred copyright to another entity without retaining these rights, then they must seek permission of the copyright holder unless the use is of one of statutory exemption in copyright laws

c. Contributors do not transfer copyrights when submitting to the AFIT repository, but rather license the right for the AFIT repository to provide access to their scholarly materials.

2. Guidelines for what will be accepted in the Faculty Publications collection

a. Submitted materials must be scholarly, educational, or research oriented, and written

b. The work must be approved for public dissemination

c. Materials to be excluded from repository are limited distribution or classified documents

d. Primary materials accepted into the repository include:

1. Preprinted articles/papers accepted for publication
2. Conference papers/posters accepted for presentation

e. Secondary materials can include files related to the primary material submitted, for clarity and/or repeatability of experiments:

1. Videos
2. Datasets
3. Images

All secondary files must also be approved for public release.

 

3. Rights and Responsibilities

Responsibilities of a contributor to Faculty Publications

• Ensure that he/she holds the copyright for items submitted or has obtained appropriate copyright permission for items submitted when he/she is not the copyright holder
• Ensure that the items submitted meet submission guidelines

Rights of a contributor to Faculty Publications

• Copyright for a work is retained by copyright holder and does not revert to the D’Azzo Research Library, Faculty Publications repository.

Responsibilities of the D’Azzo Research Library

• Retain and maintain content submitted to Faculty Publications
• Preserve content and notify contributors of any significant changes to formats and platforms.
• If AFIT and/or BePress cease to support Faculty Publications, the library will return the digital content/collections to the contributors and transfer the content to University Archives for consideration collections of departments that have ceased to exist

Rights of the D’Azzo Research Library

• Redistribute or amend metadata for items in Faculty Publications
• Refuse or de-accession items or collections under certain circumstances as outlined in the Withdrawal Policy statement
• Move content to reflect current University structure or format

4. Submission Guidelines

• Faculty Publications is open to contributions from faculty, students, or staff of AFIT.
• All submissions must clear Public Affairs.
• For most format types, individual files should be less than 1GB. File types may include the following:
• All text files should be converted to PDF by the contributor. Non-text files can be made available as secondary files.
• Theses and dissertations will be submitted to the repository through the TPC center on a quarterly basis.
• Those contributing other material will complete a submission form and agree to policies set forth on the form. Submissions may also be sent to afit.enwl.repository@us.af.mil. The submission will be reviewed by repository staff to ensure that guidelines have been met before posting.
• Updated versions and revisions of content may be submitted and can be linked to the original posted version.

5. Withdrawals

The IR is meant to be a permanent scholarly record, and once a file is deposited anywhere in the repository, a citation to the paper will always remain. Removing content is discouraged. However, authors may request that the IR staff remove their files. The repository staff must approve all withdrawals. Reasons for removal may include copyright infringement, plagiarism, or falsification of data.

Submissions that fail to meet contributor, copyright, or quality policies will be rejected. Contributors may resubmit files when all policies have been followed to the satisfaction of repository staff.

6. Preservation Policy

The IR staff uses standard data management practices to protect items stored in the repository. The database is backed up regularly and is kept secure against deletion or unauthorized modification. Additionally, each digital file will be placed into a dark archive on the AFIT network’s O: drive. Although IR staff is committed to preserving and providing access to all of the content in the repository, some file formats may cease to be supported as a result of changes in technology beyond our control. Files in some formats may no longer function on advanced computer equipment and become unusable. In addition, AFIT may determine that our current IR platform no longer meets the needs of our community. Should this happen, and where possible, staff will attempt to migrate all files to a new platform and continue to provide access to the content.