eScholarship@BC Policies

 

Collection Policy

1. Scope of the Collection: eScholarship@BC is the institutional repository of Boston College. The content of the repository consists of scholarly and creative work and research affiliated with Boston College, including all academic disciplines and departments (with the exception of the Boston College Law School).

2. The repository holds all types of materials. This may include:

  • Versions of published articles, including: Preprints (i.e. the submitted manuscripts prior to peer-review); Postprints (i.e. the accepted manuscripts after peer-review); and/or Published versions (i.e. final versions of articles with publishers' formatting)
  • Supplementary materials
  • Working papers and drafts
  • Technical reports
  • Books
  • Chapters
  • Conference proceedings, papers, posters, and presentations
  • Learning objects
  • Image, audio, video, web content, and multimedia files
  • Electronic theses and dissertations (graduate and undergraduate)

Data files may be included in the repository when associated with a publication. In most cases, datasets should be deposited in the BC Dataverse repository instead. Learn more about BC Dataverse.

3. eScholarship@BC accepts all file formats for submission. However, we may convert or migrate files to different formats for public use when those formats are determined to be proprietary, obscure, or obsolete.

Submission Policy

1. All deposits must be authored by at least one person affiliated with Boston College. Eligible depositors include Boston College faculty members, researchers, enrolled students, and university employees. Enrolled students, both graduate and undergraduate, may only deposit theses, dissertations, published works, fully peer-reviewed materials, exceptional materials that have the endorsement of a Boston College faculty member, or other items that have been formally reviewed by a third-party (e.g. contest winners). All student materials accepted into the repository because of faculty endorsement will be publicly associated with that faculty member (e.g. theses, dissertations, and other research papers will have faculty advisors listed). Boston College research centers and sponsors of Boston College affiliated conferences may submit work created by non-BC authors for those centers/conferences.

2. Depositors may only submit original work to which they hold the copyright or have permission to submit and which to the best of their knowledge will not infringe upon anyone’s intellectual property rights or violate anyone's privacy rights.

3. If the submission is based upon work that has been sponsored or supported by an organization or agency other than Boston College, the depositor must fulfill any right of review or other obligations required by any contract or agreement with such agency or organization.

4. The administrator reviews items only for the eligibility of authors/depositors, relevance to the scope of the repository, and valid layout and format.

5. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the depositor.

6. Items can be submitted at any time, but digital objects will not be made publicly accessible on eScholarship@BC until any embargo period has expired. Metadata will be deposited upon submission.

Access and Reuse of Data Policy

1. Anyone may access full items free of charge, with the following exceptions:

  • Access to undergraduate honors theses will be determined by the student depositor(s) and may be limited to the Boston College campus.
  • Embargo periods may be applied based on publisher policies or at the request of copyright holder, restricting access to item(s) for a given time.

2. Items may include individual statements regarding rights permissions and conditions, which will be included with the public record display.

Metadata Policy

1. Anyone may freely access and reuse the metadata on eScholarship@BC without prior permission for non-commercial purposes.

Preservation Policy
1. Items will be retained indefinitely.

2. As media or file formats become obsolete, content will be migrated to newer media/formats.

3. The repository will maintain multiple copies of items for security, backup, and preservation purposes, and will allow third parties to hold one or more copies for such purposes.

4. Checksums may be computed for any and all files to enable the detection of alterations. Copies will be compared periodically via an automated process to verify that no degradation has occurred (locally as well as in any geographically distributed digital preservation network). If degradation is detected, the defective files will be replaced with intact copies.

5. Items may be withdrawn with or without the request of the depositor/copyright holder or by Boston College, for the following reasons:

  • Proven or alleged copyright violation or plagiarism
  • Legal requirements and proven violations
  • Falsified research

6. If an item is withdrawn, an updated version may be deposited if the identified reasons for withdrawal have been addressed, retracted, and/or removed.

7. Withdrawn items are not deleted from the repository but are removed from public view.

8. Withdrawn items' URLs may remain as "tombstone" citations, to avoid broken links and to retain item histories.

9. If Boston College determines that some of the items in the repository will no longer be retained, those items will be returned to their depositors or transferred to another appropriate repository.

10. In the event of the repository being closed down, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.

 

 (Photograph by Office of Marketing Communications, Boston College)