Policies for Student Scholarship

About

This collection holds the creative and scholarly works of all Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) undergraduate and graduate students. The following policies guide the management of this collection. These policies are subject to change. Please review the relevant policies at the time of submission. Contact Us with questions or suggestions.

Collection Management

This collection is managed by staff at the Kelvin Smith Library (KSL). Administrators are responsible for: establishing collection and use guidelines, educating users on copyright requirements, and conducting rights reviews of scholarly articles submitted to this collection.

Scholarly Commons staff do not provide editorial support or facilitate peer review for submitted content. Individuals submitting work, whether through an online submission form or through administrator-mediated submission, are solely responsible for the content of their work. Scholarly Commons reserves the right to request assurances or relevant documentation from contributors related to the legality of their submissions. Responsibility for compliance with legal requirements rests with the contributor.

Content Parameters

Collection Contributors

Only CWRU undergraduate and graduate students may submit to this collection. The individual submitting the work should submit to the collection that best describes their current position at CWRU (faculty, staff, student) even if you have co-authors who belong to different groups. If you have co-authors who belong to different groups, you should still include those CWRU co-authors in the submission information.

Content Scope

This collection includes all types of scholarly and creative output from CWRU faculty, researchers, staff, and students. Acceptable content types include but are not limited to:

  • Journal articles
  • Conference papers and presentations
  • Open access books or book chapters
  • White papers
  • Technical reports or research briefs
  • Graduate capstones
  • Open Educational Resources (OER)

For the storage and preservation of research data, please see OSF. For any questions about acceptable content or whether your content fits the collection scope, please contact digitalcommons@case.edu.

Content Criteria

All objects included in this collection must meet the following criteria.

  • Fit within the collection scope outlined above
  • Applicable Scholarly Commons and university policies and laws are followed (e.g. the author has retained copyright and/or is legally entitled to deposit the content in the IR)
  • Meets accessibility requirements (see Accessibility section below)
  • Intended for public viewing and use with a Creative Commons or similar license that allows public access and use
  • Intended for permanent storage in Scholarly Commons
  • Content should be in a completed state, rather than in-progress and regularly updated.
  • Faculty and staff may deposit content published prior to joining the University which meets guidelines for inclusion.

Objects included in this collection cannot be

  • Externally linked content where KSL has no control over the management of those objects
  • Personal work unrelated to the collection scope
  • Large research data sets (see OSF)

Acceptable File Formats

This collection has the ability to accept a variety of file formats. Generally, it supports a variety of formats including but not limited to PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, CSV, RTF, HTML, PPT, etc. The system will display most text-based documents as a PDF, in which case certain elements may change in appearance or completeness. It is recommended that contributors convert text-based documents to PDF in order to correct any issues on conversion.

Submission Requirements

Before a submission can be posted, it must meet all submission requirements. Submissions that do not meet requirements will not be posted. For this collection, KSL staff will conduct a copyright review to ensure content can be posted and an accessibility check to ensure submissions meet minimum accessibility requirements. Contributors will be notified whether their content was approved and published, approved pending additional information and/or edits from the contributor, or does not meet collection standards.

Works posted to the repository will be available for free to the general public via the internet. Authors must grant a non-exclusive license to the University in order to publish their work in Scholarly Commons. Because the license is non-exclusive, authors retain ownership of copyright in the work, and may continue to use and license the work without further obligation to the University (see Rights & Permissions section below).

In order to submit work to Scholarly Commons, the author must agree to the Submission Policies & Guidelines during the submission process. This Agreement asks the author to:

  • Verify that their work falls within submission and content guidelines
  • Agree to the Submission Agreement
  • Select a Creative Commons license or similar license that allows public access and use
  • Fill out all required submission form fields
  • Provide appropriate file formats

Author Name(s) & Affiliation(s)

Only CWRU-affiliated authors will be listed on the repository record page for this collection and their institutional affiliation must be “Case Western Reserve University”. School and departmental affiliations are not required but if desired will be recorded in a separate field.

In order to ensure consistency and reduce confusion, only one accepted name format will be used for each individual listed in the Author field of an item record. The same name must be used for all item records in which that individual is listed as an Author. The accepted name format will reflect the individual’s university account or the name typically used in published works unless a variant name is requested by the individual. The author’s university email address will be associated with their name when available. If available, individual’s ORCID iDs will also be included in records and linked to their ORCID record page.

Rights & Permissions

Contributors can only submit works to which they have the authority to grant the rights contained in the submission agreement and must ensure that the use of the submitted work will not breach any other person’s intellectual property, privacy or other legal rights. If a contributor has signed an agreement transferring some of their rights to a publisher, the contributor must ensure that their submission complies with their publisher agreement (see Publisher Agreements below). If creation of the work was sponsored or supported by a party other than the University (e.g., a government agency or corporate sponsor), or is based upon work that was so sponsored or supported, contributors must have complied with any prior-review or other obligations or requirements imposed by the sponsor agreement. By submitting works to the repository, the contributor is

  • representing that they have the right to give CWRU the ability to post their work under the terms of the submission agreement; and
  • granting the University non-exclusive, perpetual right to use the submitted work (in any digital or electronic media now known or later developed) for non-commercial use. Such rights shall include, but not be limited to, the right to:
    • Electronically view, present and display to others, including providing access via the web and display in classrooms and other public venues;
    • Provide copies via the institutional repository web site to external recipients. This includes acknowledgement that third parties may redistribute or create new content based on this work.

Additionally, items posted must comply with the requirements of the United States copyright law. This means that any third party material included in a submission must either (1) be in the public domain; (2) be used with permission (which both permits the contributor to post the material in the repository and permits the repository to make use of the third party material to the same extent the contributor grants the repository the right to make use of their work); or (3) be included pursuant to the contributor’s good faith belief, after conducting a fair use analysis, that fair use permits the use of the third party material.

For additional information, please consult the University's Copyright Policy.

Publisher Agreements

For any published works deposited, the publisher's copyright policies will need to be checked to determine if, and in what form a work may be submitted to Scholarly Commons. KSL staff will consult with authors and research rights to make a determination. If you have a contract with your publisher, check to see what it permits or check Sherpa Romeo. For questions or consultation on complying with publisher policies or how to retain rights, please contact digitalcommons@case.edu.

Revising or Withdrawing Content

Contributors may revise their submissions prior to those submissions being posted online by administrators. After posting, submissions cannot be revised or removed except in exceptional circumstances, including those related to copyright violation, academic fraud, or deemed harmful to our community. In the extremely rare instance when an item is removed, the metadata for the item is retained with a notation that the item was removed from the IR.

Embargoed Content

At the request of the author(s) and/or to comply with publisher policies, content can be “embargoed” from public view for a limited amount of time. However, Scholarly Commons requires an end date to the embargo, at which time the content will become freely available for viewing in Scholarly Commons. Embargoed content cannot be viewed by anyone except system administrators.

Accessibility

Scholarly Commons is designed for inclusion and considers auditory, cognitive, physical, speech, and visual learning preferences. In order to comply with Level A of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, it is recommended that works meet these minimum standards:

For PDF documents:

  • PDF file includes full text
  • PDF accessibility permission flag is checked
  • Text language of the PDF is specified
  • Figures and images include alternative text
  • PDF includes a title

For video and audio:

  • Captioning of films and video clips
  • Transcriptions for audio files

Privacy

Scholarly Commons publishes content that is primarily open access and meant for public discovery. The IR does not store or host sensitive, confidential, personal, or financial information but may collect some user information. Scholarly Commons is built on the bepress Digital Commons platform and is subject to bepress’ Privacy Policies.

Scholarly Commons collects some personal information in order to make users’ work discoverable by the public. Personal information is collected whenever a user creates an account, submits a work to the IR, and/or subscribes to the repository’s alerting service. Submitted information will be used only for the purpose for which users submitted it, with the exception that CWRU Libraries may make reasonable statistical reports that do not identify particular individuals. While CWRU Libraries may disclose information about use of the IR in aggregate (such as server use statistics), we will not disclose to unaffiliated parties any information that could be used to identify individuals or their use of Scholarly Commons, except as required by University policies or as mandated by law.

Please see the University’s Privacy Policy for more information.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact digitalcommons@case.edu.