Terms of Use for CU Scholar

Mission Statement

CU Scholar is an open access institutional repository supporting the research and teaching mission of the University of Colorado Boulder. It is intended to serve as a platform for preserving the research activities of members of the CU Boulder community and for providing public access to that research. CU Scholar is maintained by the University Libraries.

Access Policy

CU Scholar is intended as a resource for open access research, and material posted will be made available to the public freely and without barrier. Some content may have limited access due to an embargo period.

Content Policy

CU Scholar is an institutional repository. Its content must reflect the intellectual environment of the campus and support the academic mission of the University of Colorado Boulder. Content in CU Scholar is restricted to works that fall within the broad scope of research, scholarship, and creative work being conducted at the University.

Examples include:

 

Published scholarly research articles

Working papers and technical reports

Completed manuscripts

Conference papers and proceedings

Theses and dissertations

Undergraduate Honors theses

Faculty course-related output primarily of scholarly interest

Data sets

Submission Policy

Current CU Boulder faculty, staff, or students (or their designated agents) may only submit work which they have authored or co-authored. Departments and other administrative units of the campus may also submit qualifying content. Alumni and others closely affiliated with the university may request permission from the University Libraries to submit materials. Eligible depositors must deposit full texts of their publication, although they may delay making the publication publicly visible for a limited period when necessary.

 

Individuals submitting materials to the repository must have a legal right to submit the material. Any intellectual property rights violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors. The sole remedy for proven violations will be removal of the relevant item from CU Scholar.

 

Submissions must not contain any confidential information, proprietary information of others, or export controlled information. If applicable, it is the responsibility of the authors/depositors to obtain appropriate IRB approval before submitting work to CU Scholar.

 

The administrator only vets items for the eligibility of authors/depositors, relevance to the scope of CU Scholar, valid layout and format, and the exclusion of spam. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the depositor.

Metadata Policy

Anyone may access the metadata free of charge. The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes and re-sold commercially provided the link to the original metadata record is given, and CU Scholar is mentioned.

Data Policy

Single copies of full items can be reproduced, and displayed or performed for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge provided: the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, a hyperlink and/or URL are given for the original metadata page, and the content is not changed in any way.

 

Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holders.

 

Some full items are individually tagged with different rights permissions and conditions.

 

This repository is not the publisher; it is merely the online archive.

Preservation Policy

Items will be retained indefinitely. CU Scholar will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility, but it may not be possible to guarantee the readability of some unusual file formats. All items are preserved in accordance with international standards for digital preservation.

 

Items may not normally be removed from CU Scholar. Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:

 

Journal publishers' rules

Proven copyright violation or plagiarism

Legal requirements and proven violations

National Security

Falsified research

 

Withdrawn items' identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely. URLs will continue to point to “tombstone” page (citation-only record) to avoid broken links and to retain item histories.

 

Changes to deposited items are not permitted. However, errata and corrigenda lists may be included with the original record if required. If necessary, an updated version of the item may be deposited.

 

In the event of CU Scholar being closed down, attempts will be made for the database to be transferred to another appropriate archive.

Data Set Policy

Data sets under 10GB can be submitted directly to CU Scholar. Please contact cuscholaradmin@colorado.edu if your data set exceeds 10GB. All data sets will be registered with a DataCite DOI, reviewed for completeness of data and metadata/documentation, and reviewed for adherence to FAIR data principles. CU Scholar staff may suggest changes or request additional information from submitters as a result of these reviews. At a minimum, a descriptive “Abstract” must be included in the CU Scholar metadata, and adequate documentation to allow reuse of the data must be present in whatever form is most appropriate (e.g., a README file). It may be helpful to use or adapt this README template when creating documentation. Please contact cuscholaradmin@colorado.edu for assistance with preparing data and metadata/documentation for submission.