1. INTRODUCTION
The aim of Brunel University Research Archive – BURA – is to increase the impact of the University’s research. BURA provides a showcase for the University’s research publications by making full texts freely available via the Internet, subject to copyright permissions. Archiving on BURA complements standard publication channels and supports the dissemination of research outputs as widely as possible.
Since January 2010, Brunel University has an Open Access mandate which requires all Brunel researchers to place their scholarly publications in BURA, subject to publishers’ copyright permissions.
BURA will:
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Provide free, searchable access to these scholarly publications and make possible their long-term archiving and preservation
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Provide a permanent record of the intellectual output of Brunel University London
Operate as a non-profit, non-commercial, open access Institutional digital repository
Please note that:
BURA is an online archive: deposit of materials has no impact on the ownership of copyright or any other intellectual property rights that may subsist in the deposited materials.
All materials contained within BURA shall comply with copyright legislation and where appropriate, publishers’ copyright policies.
2. DEPOSIT POLICY
BURA stores and provides full text access to all scholarly publications produced by Brunel researchers, primarily open access research publications, grey literature and theses.
Deposit in BURA is limited to employees and PhD students of the University. Those depositing content must have sufficient authority or permission to do so.
Deposited content must not contain sensitive personal data or content that infringes copyright and/or commercial or legal restrictions.
Research Outputs are deposited through Brunel’s Research Database (BRAD) and placed into a holding area for vetting by the BURA team. Publications are assessed in relation to their relevance and the appropriateness of metadata before being transferred to the applicable location in BURA.
In some circumstances content may be restricted, e.g. embargoed for a period of time and then made publicly visible once the publisher’s embargos have expired. Items with usage restrictions may be presented as metadata-only records with pointers to the full text.
Policy April 2016
Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors / contributors. If in doubt, authors should refer to the BURA team for advice (bura@brunel.ac.uk).
Library thesis deposit
Prior to submission students’ are required to send their thesis to the Library for a Turnitin check. The report from this will be sent to the student and their supervisor to aid the award process. This must be done at least two weeks prior to the submission deadline date as the checks can be time-consuming.
After the research degree is awarded, the student or their principal supervisor must send the Library their full text thesis and other required items following the process outlined on the Library website submitting your thesis (http://www.brunel.ac.uk/services/library/research/theses/submitting-your-thesis):
Items required:
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Full text thesis on CD/DVD
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A copy of student’s award letter
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Signed BURA Thesis Deposit Agreement form
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Signed Publication of Thesis form (completing Part A for non-confidential theses and
Part B for confidential theses. Part B must be signed by your Supervisor and counter signed by the Assistant Registrar).
Specifications for the thesis and CD/DVD:
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The thesis should be the final version after any corrections have been made
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The thesis, including any supplements, should preferably be a single file on the
CD/DVD
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The thesis may be written using any word processor
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The CD/DVD should be carefully labelled with the student’s name and thesis title, so
it is easily identifiable
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Memory sticks should not be used as their labelling would be difficult.
Enquiries about depositing theses can be sent to thesis@brunel.ac.uk
3. USE POLICY
Depending on the copyright licence, items in BURA are made freely available for access, printing and download for the purposes of non-commercial research or private study, educational or not-for-profit purposes.
When referencing Deposited Work in BURA, users must cite the final published version of record, its original author(s)/creator(s) and any publisher where appropriate. Full text items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or citation analysis. Full text items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.
4. METADATA POLICY
Deposited content must be accompanied by sufficient metadata describing its content, provenance and formats in order to support its preservation and dissemination. This can be achieved by ensuring that the loaded citation record is as complete as possible. Metadata can be freely accessed and may be reused for non-commercial purposes provided the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Identifier or a link to the original metadata record is given. Please contact us at BURA@brunel.ac.uk if you would like to reuse metadata commercially.
5. CONTENT POLICY
BURA is an institutional digital repository holding material related to the scholarly publications and some special collections of Brunel University. The principal language is English although with work deposited as full text. BURA papers may be written in any language, but the accompanying metadata should include English language titles and abstracts, and journal titles in a Roman alphabet language. Deposited work contains the following peer and non-peer reviewed items:
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journal articles
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authored and edited books and book sections
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conference and workshop papers including presentations and posters
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PhD / MPhil theses
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Unpublished works and working papers
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Technical reports, commissioned reports and patents where allowed by copyright
Multimedia, audio-visual, still images and software are reviewed for eligibility on a case-by-case basis.
6. PRESERVATION POLICY
Brunel University London is committed to the long-term care of items deposited in BURA and strives to adopt the current best practice in digital preservation. Items will generally be retained indefinitely subject to periodic review. When necessary and practical, items in obsolete formats will be migrated to new formats and the original files will be retained.
7. NOTICE AND TAKE-DOWN POLICY
BURA operates an immediate notice and take-down policy. Reasons for removal might include:
Items may also be withdrawn by the BURA team at the request of the author/copyright holder. Withdrawn items are not deleted per se, but are removed from public view and their meta-data / URLS are retained indefinitely.
Once work had been deposited in BURA and subsequently removed, the metadata for the deposited content will always remain to avoid loss of historical record together with a note explaining the reasons for withdrawal. The metadata of withdrawn items will not be searchable.
8. COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE
If you wish to issue a complaint regarding items available in BURA, please send a notice by email to: BURA@brunel.ac.uk. Please include the following information in your notice:
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Your contact details
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Bibliographic details for the item, including the URL
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An outline of the nature of the complaint.
On receipt of a complaint the BURA team will:
Return an acknowledgement in writing that the complaint has been received.
The complaint will then be reviewed by the BURA team who will seek advice from Senior Managers and the University’s Copyright Officer as required. Complaints which amount to allegations of research misconduct will be reported confidentially to the Secretary to Council or, in the event of a potential conflict of interest or absence, his/her nominated representative appointed by the Chair of Council.
If grounds for the complaint are considered proven or plausible, the material will be withdrawn permanently from BURA.
This policy was APPROVED by Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee of Senate in April 2016.