eScholarship@BC Help

What is Open Access?

Open access material is online and free of charge. For more information about Open Access, please visit our Open Access and Scholarly Publishing LibGuide.

At eScholarship@BC, the copyright holder defines the re-use rights available to the public. The Boston College University Libraries encourage authors to retain rights to their scholarship when they publish and to grant the broadest re-use rights possible when depositing in eScholarship@BC.

Who can submit works to eScholarship@BC?

All depositors must be affiliated with Boston College. Eligible depositors include Boston College faculty members, researchers, enrolled students and university employees.  Boston College research centers and sponsors of Boston College affiliated conferences may submit work created by non-BC authors for those centers and conferences.

What type of materials can be submitted?

Scholarly and creative work and research affiliated with Boston College. Examples of faculty work that can be made fully accessible in eScholarship@BC are research datasets, working papers, reports, conference presentations, versions of published articles, and faculty-developed teaching materials. For more details, refer to the Collection policy on our Policies page.

For Student Work: Enrolled students, both graduate and undergraduate, may deposit theses, dissertations, published works, fully peer-reviewed materials, or other items that have been formally reviewed by a third-party (See our GIS contest winners collection).

Where can I find the full text of a graduate thesis or dissertation? The record states that it is unavailable on eScholarship@BC.

The full text of an electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD) may not be available in eScholarship@BC by the request of the author. If you are unable to retrieve the full text of an ETD from the record in eScholarship@BC, it may be available in the ProQuest Theses and Dissertations database, which can be accessed with an institutional subscription (Boston College provides access for all current students, faculty, and staff).

In some cases, the author may have placed an embargo on the item, temporarily delaying the release of the full text for both the eScholarship@BC and ProQuest copies.

Will my publisher allow me to deposit my published work into eScholarship@BC?

Many published journal articles may be submitted and made accessible even after publication, but this largely depends on the terms of the agreement with the publisher and the policies applied by the journal.

Contact us for help deciding which versions of your work can be deposited. We will investigate the various journals’ policies regarding an author’s right to deposit articles in institutional repositories and share this information with you. We base our analysis on information found on the Sherpa/Romeo site, which tracks publishers' policies, and on the journal websites themselves.

What are pre-prints and post-prints?

Journal policies differ regarding the version of an article that may be deposited in the author’s home institution’s repository.  Commonly used terms are:

  • Pre-print -- the version of an article originally submitted to the publisher, prior to peer review (also known as "Author's Submitted Manuscript").
  • Post-print -- the version of an article with changes from the peer-review process; the final manuscript, but without the publisher’s formatting (also known as "Author's Accepted Manuscript").
  • Publisher’s PDF – the version of an article as it appears in the journal, with the publisher’s formatting (also known as the "Version of Record").

For more information about pre-prints and post-prints, please contact the copyright group.

How do I deposit works into eScholarship@BC?

Go to our Deposit page for information.

What do the Views and Downloads statistics represent?

Views are counted when a user views the record for an item. Downloads are counted when a user downloads the file for the item. Views have been counted since January 2014. Download statistics have been collected beginning in December 2016. Downloads prior to that date are not captured by the statistics.

 

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