Institutional Repository Policy
Purpose
The purpose of the institutional repository (IR) is to promote the scholarship of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette) in a free and open access environment for enhanced discovery and research value. The URL is ir.louisiana.edu.
Platform
The IR runs on Islandora OnDemand, a software as a service by DiscoveryGarden. Islandora is an open source digital repository system based on a Fedora Commons back-end storage, a Drupal front-end interface, and Solr search and indexing.
Availability
Materials in the IR are free and openly accessible to the general public, unless restricted by an embargo or legal hold.
Depositors & Contributors
Anyone affiliated with the university can contribute to the IR, including but not limited to faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students, research centers, and faculty emeriti.
Organization Structure
The structure of the IR is hierarchical. Collections are organized by college/school, research center, and university organization. Individual departments are listed within these collections. There is also a special section within the IR devoted to student scholarship to support the efforts of Advance: Student Research Experience. In most cases, depositors/contributors will submit material to the departments in which they belong or that sponsored their work. Work may be submitted to (or shared with) more than one department, organization, or research center.
Acceptable Types of Materials
The types of materials accepted into the IR encompass all kinds of university scholarship and creative works, including but not limited to research articles, electronic theses and dissertations, conference proceedings, university and departmental publications, student scholarship, presentations, posters, art work, design plans and models, technical reports, working papers, research data, university archives, finding aids, oral histories, images, films, music scores, and audio-visual recordings of performances and documentaries. These items may be born-digital or digitally reformatted. Any works created outside the university or without the guidance, sponsorship, observation, or approval of a university department, organization, or research center may not be accepted into the IR.
Acceptable Formats
Acceptable formats include but are not limited to PDF, DOC, DOCX, TXT, CSV, XML, HTML, PPT, JPEG, JP2, TIFF, WAV, AIFF, MP3, MP4, MOV, and citations. The IR will display most text-based documents as PDF, in which case certain elements may change in appearance or completeness, and will utilize its own viewers for images, books, and audio-visual materials. PowerPoint and HTML web pages should be converted to PDF before submission to the IR. Depositors/contributors should consider reformatting large files into smaller, more accessible formats, such as MP3 for audio and compressed MP4 for video. The IR typically limits file size to about 2 gigabytes.
For the time being, due to limited storage space in the repository, a department, organization, or research center may not exceed 20GB. This, however, should be adequate space for uploading many text-based documents and some access-friendly images and audio-visual materials. Contact an IR administrator for special needs regarding file sizes and data space requirements.
Licensing of Works
Depositors/contributors give Edith Garland Dupré Library, UL Lafayette non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide license to access, reproduce, publish, and distribute content submitted to the IR. The author(s) of the submitted work must be willing and able to grant copyright permission to Edith Garland Dupré Library, UL Lafayette. The author(s) must consult with SHERPA/RoMEO or the publisher to secure permissions to submit material to the IR. Content may be withdrawn from Edith Garland Dupré Library, UL Lafayette due to violation of the deposit agreement, if required by law, or under any other exceptional circumstance.
Creative Commons License Option
Edith Garland Dupré Library, UL Lafayette respects the rights of creators to retain their copyrights. However, for those who want their work to be shared freely on the Internet across multiple platforms without restrictions (but requiring attribution and non-commercial purpose), Edith Garland Dupré Library, UL Lafayette suggests that a depositor/contributor assign a Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International” License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)” to their submitted material. Visit Creative Commons for more details and legal code. Other Creative Commons licenses are available.
Private & Confidential Information
Submitted materials, including data sets, must be free of restrictions and must not contain private, confidential, classified, or legally protected information. The depositor/contributor is responsible for reviewing materials and removing or redacting private, sensitive, classified, or confidential information or third-party copyrighted material. Any materials containing private, sensitive, confidential, classified, or copyrighted information may be subject to review and may not be accepted into the IR.
Process for Submission
Depositors/contributors are required to contact an IR administrator for permission and access to submit materials. In order to promote efficient user management and quality control of submitted materials, Edith Garland Dupré Library, UL Lafayette strongly encourages a limited number of authenticated users (i.e. administrative contact person, project manager, or department head) per department or research center. Once permission and access are granted, an authenticated user may submit material. View the IR Ask Us for instructions on submitting materials. Depositors/contributors can also set embargo periods if required by publishers. Submitted content must wait for review by an IR administrator, during which time the content and any metadata will not be displayed properly to the depositor/contributor. Once approved, the content will be published to the IR and displayed along with its metadata. Depositors/contributors can also submit work (along with any metadata) directly to an IR administrator, who will then review the materials and ingest them into the IR.
Metadata
Metadata (information about the submitted work) must be provided by the depositor/contributor. The metadata can be provided in an electronic web form during the submission process, or through email with simple text descriptions sent to an IR administrator.
The minimum metadata required for submitted materials are usually title and resource type (e.g. text). Edith Garland Dupré Library, UL Lafayette strongly recommends the inclusion of title, author, date created or issued, abstract, place of origin or publication, type of resource, identifier, extent, language, rights statement, and relevant subject terms in order to facilitate research and discovery.
Review of Materials
IR administrators will review submitted materials for acceptable formatting and general adherence to research guidelines. However, it is the responsibility of the author to ensure that the submitted material reflects the research standards of the university, does not infringe on privacy and any other rights, protects confidentiality, has secured all copyright permissions, and, if sponsored or agency-supported, has met all obligations concerning the research, including peer review.
Migration & Reformatting
Scholarly materials in the repository may be migrated to a more accessible and preservation-friendly file format during initial deposit or at any time in the future. Although the intent of the IR is to offer long-term open access to materials, there is no guarantee of permanent and persistent storage or re-formatting of deposited works. If there comes a point where the platform will need to be changed, data of the content will be returned to the University Libraries and transferred to the new platform. Every effort will be made to maintain the integrity of the materials.
Use of IR Content
Use of IR content is for personal, research, educational, and non-commercial purposes. Users and researchers who access or attempt to access IR content assume full responsibility of how IR materials are used or re-used.
Citation
Materials accessed in the IR must be cited if published and/or distributed. Researchers should consult an appropriate style guide for adherence to specific guidelines.
Disclaimers
Any researcher and user of IR materials agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all suits, claims, actions, and expenses arising out of the use and reuse of materials provided by the IR.
UL Lafayette makes no representation of IR content linked to other websites or third-party information. UL Lafayette cannot be held responsible for errors and omissions or damage caused by access or non-access to the IR.
Library & University Policies
For further information on Dupré Library and University policies, view Policies and Procedures.
Contact
Zachary Stein, Ed.D. | Associate Professor, and Assistant Dean of Technical Services
(337) 482-6427 | zachary.stein@louisiana.edu
Scott Jordan | Senior Instructor, Interim Head of Special Collections, and Digitization Archivist
(337) 482-5702 | scott.jordan@louisiana.edu
[ Last Revised on July 17, 2023 ]