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Guidelines for depositors

This page contains guidance for users depositing an item into SAS-Space. For the full set of guidance and information about depositing items on SAS-Space and for more information about the Open Access policy please see our Open Access @ SAS online course. Please also click on the FAQs below for further information about deposits. If you still have any questions please email SAS-Space.info@sas.ac.uk.

  • Digital storage will improve your impact factor. Articles freely available on the Web are cited more than articles that are not. Your work will be more quickly.
  • Deposit in SAS-Space will increase exposure to search engines such as Google.
  • Depositing your work in SAS-Space ensures that you and other researchers always have access to it. Work in SAS-Space is easy to link to from other websites.
  • Your work will be preserved in the long term.
  • Deposit of peer-reviewed journal articles as Open Access is part of SAS and UK policy.
  • You can log in and deposit items on SAS-Space using your University login credentials (the username and password that you use for on-site PC login and for emails). Please do not create a new account as this will NOT grant you the capability to deposit items. If you need to deposit on SAS-Space and you do not have a University login please email SAS-Space.info@sas.ac.uk.
  • Please have available the file in an appropriate format. You will be asked to fill in metadata about the item, providing title, authorship information, publication details, and subject area.
  • If the item is the result of funded research you will need the Project ID code (available from research@sas.ac.uk if unknown). There is an autocomplete available for funder ID, just start typing in the full name of the funding body and click on the relevant result.

Interactive Diagram (pdf)

As soon as a peer-reviewed journal article has been accepted by a publisher you will need to share your manuscript with SAS to be compliant to Open Access policy. There are three routes that you can take:

  1. Upload the accepted manuscript to SAS-Space [green route]
  2. Apply for funds to make the published article Open Access [gold route]
  3. Make a closed deposit to SAS-Space (only available in specific cases, see below)

What is the date of acceptance?

HEFCE defines the date of acceptance as the point at which the author is notified that:

  • their output has been reviewed by the journal or conference (normally via peer review)
  • all academically necessary changes have been made in response to that review
  • the article is ready to be taken through the final steps toward publication (normally copy-editing and typesetting).

Source: HEFCE: What is meant by the date of acceptance?

Uploading the accepted manuscript to SAS-Space

  • We need your accepted manuscript (post-print) – this is usually the version that contains all the changes made after the peer review process but has not been typeset or copyedited by the publisher in any way. The copy should be in pdf format and should be a ‘clean’ version (i.e. one that does not contain tracked changes or notes). Each journal has its own Open Access policy. Please check SHERPA-ROMEO before depositing your manuscript on SAS-Space. In cases when the publisher does not allow a post-print copy you can usually submit a pre-print copy (before peer-review).
  • You will need to know the date that the paper was accepted for publication. We need this information for reporting the success of SAS research to HEFCE.
  • Please check that any third-party copyrighted material (e.g. images) are either cleared for open access digital publication OR are expunged from the deposited version. In cases where an element is expunged it is good practice to replace that element with text: This item has been removed from this version due to third-party copyright. The item can be found here [link to online location if available or description].

Download: Quick Deposit Guide

Apply for funds to make the published article Open Access

If you would prefer to make the final published version of your journal article available as Open Access you might be able to access the School’s APC Fund, which is designed to pay publishers for making your article open access immediately upon publication.

Download: APC Claim Form

Closed Deposits

In a small number of cases a Closed Deposit can be made to SAS-Space for work that falls under the SAS Open Access policy but which;

  1. contains material that is third-party copyrighted (e.g. images) and of which those items are crucial and underpin the research contained within the publication and of which their removal for purposes of Open Access would severely undermine the research presented;
  2. publication as Open access of even of the pre-print version of the research (pre-or-post corrections) breaches the rules of the publisher.

Please email SAS-Space.Info@sas.ac.uk for advice in these instances as closed deposits will be rejected without prior consultation and agreement from the SAS-Space Manager.

There is now an increased emphasis on managing and sharing data produced in research. Many of the research funders who support the work of the School of Advanced Study require that research data are openly available with as few restrictions as possible.

When a project or piece of research is complete, it is time to ‘archive’ the data so that it is secure and archived for future preservation and (where possible) available for use and re-use by other researchers. Before you make any data available for others to use and share you must ensure that it is properly organised, documented, and labelled. You must also check file size. SAS-Space can take small datasets that are intended for public access. Please email SAS-Space.Info@sas.ac.uk for advice.

What is Open Access?

Open Access means making research publications freely available online enabling anyone, anywhere to access and discover the material free of any paywall or registration. Open Access enables researchers to reach a much wider audience than would otherwise be possible, and ensures that the work can be used and shared easily.

SAS policy

All peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings produced by School research staff must be uploaded to SAS-Space within three months of acceptance by a publisher. Any item of published research that falls outside of these requirements (such as monographs, websites, exhibitions, and reports) should, alternatively, be listed on the Directory of Research Expertise unless the researcher wishes to upload the item to SAS-Space as an Open Access deposit.

In a small number of cases a Closed Deposit can be made to SAS-Space for work that falls under the SAS Open Access policy but which (i) contains material that is third-party copyrighted (e.g. images) and of which those items are crucial and underpin the research contained within the publication and of which their removal for purposes of Open Access would severely undermine the research presented; or (ii) publication as Open access of even of the pre-print version of the research (pre-or-post corrections) breaches the rules of the publisher.

Please email SAS-Space.Info@sas.ac.uk for advice in these instances as closed deposits will be rejected without prior consultation.

The School’s Policy on Open Access can be viewed here [PDF]. The policy aims to respond to the UK Research Councils’ and EU major research funders’ policies on Open Access, but is particularly aligned with the HEFCE policy for Open Access in the post-2014 REF, and focuses on discoverability and re-usability. Although the School does not take part in the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the policy has been designed so that any researcher at the School is compliant to REF requirements, which is essential for future career progression should the researcher move to another institution in the future where the REF is undertaken.

Copyright and Licences

If you have created an original work in literary, dramatic, artistic, or musical form, and you own the copyright in that work, other people will not normally be permitted to copy the work without your consent. Unauthorised copying would constitute an infringement under the UK Copyright Act. You may permit others to copy your work by means of a licence. By this method, you will retain the ownership of the copyright of your work but you will be allowing the person to whom you grant the licence to do things to your work (such as copy it) in the way set out in the licence agreement.

The standard licence suggested by SAS-Space is the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivative licence, which is the most restrictive Creative Commons licence. However, you may wish to choose an alternative licence from those offered as part of the deposit workflow. If a licence is required which is not on the list please fill in the contact form and the SAS-Space manager will update the licence list if agreement is made that the licence is valid for the repository.

Do I lose copyright if I deposit into SAS-Space?

No. You retain your copyright in your work. In fact, in certain circumstances, scholars are likely to be asked to cede their copyrights to their publishers, which is not required for deposit in SAS-Space. What SAS-Space does ask is for the irrevocable, non-exclusive royalty-free right to reproduce, distribute, display, and perform this work in any format including electronic formats throughout the world for educational, research, and scientific non-profit uses during the full term of copyright including renewals and extensions.

What licences are granted when depositing items?

Those who contribute items to SAS-Space are asked to grant two licences. One is a licence to the organisation which manages the repository. This will permit the manager, in this case the School of Advanced Study of the University of London, to reproduce the item in digital form, so that it can be made available for open access in the repository [Note: there is a separate agreement for closed deposits). The terms of the licence which you are asked to grant to the University for this purpose are as follows:

I grant to the University of London the irrevocable, non-exclusive royalty-free right to reproduce, distribute, display, and perform this work in any format including electronic formats throughout the world for educational, research, and scientific non-profit uses during the full term of copyright including renewals and extensions.

The other licence is for the benefit of those who wish to make use of items stored in the repository. For this purpose, we recommend use of the Creative Commons licences, although a selection of other licence types is available.

Creative Commons is a group founded by lawyers in academia (originally in Stanford, Duke and other USA universities) which has developed forms of licence suitable for those contributing items to e-repositories. When you contribute an item to the repository, you can choose a form of licence which will make clear to other users what they can and cannot do with your work. This has the advantage that users will not have to apply to individual contributors on each occasion for consent to copy items or do other things which are permitted by the licence. So, if a teacher at another institution wants to use some of your material in a course, or a publisher wants to include your photo on a dust jacket, they can do so if the licence which you have attached to your material makes it clear that it is permitted. The users still have to give you credit for the content of your contribution whenever they use it, and if they do something which is not permitted by the licence, they will be in breach of copyright and may be pursued through the courts.

You may select from a range of options when you attach a Creative Commons licence to your work. The licence created will reflect the options which you have chosen.

The least restrictive form of such licences is the 'Attribution' licence. This will potentially facilitate the greatest exposure for your work, while still giving you credit for its creation. Other forms of licence are more restrictive; for instance, you may wish to prohibit any commercial use being made of your work. In SAS-Space it is essential to assign the copyright licence to the work at the time it is submitted.

When registering with SAS to undertake post-doctorate research you will have agreed to supply a digital copy of the final thesis, which can also be uploaded by SAS to its institutional repository, SAS-Space to make available as Open Access. All dissertations and theses completed and of which receive a pass mark can be uploaded to SAS-Space. The School will automatically upload your thesis when:

  • the thesis is the result of a PhD or equivalent research degree and receives a pass mark

Students who obtain a distinction for a Taught Degree dissertation will be given the opportunity to opt-in to having their dissertation uploaded to the repository. In all cases it is the responsibility of the student to raise any concerns about their thesis and dissertation at the point of completion including issues concerning third-copyrighted permissions and/or privacy or ethical difficulties in making the research open access. Embargoes can be requested in line with SAS policy.

Theses and dissertations completed in the School, but are not covered by the above, may be included at the discretion of individual Institutes and individual students. We welcome all theses and dissertations that receive a pass mark.

In accordance with principles articulated by the Research Councils UK (RCUK), SAS-Space aims to make access to publicly funded research free to all users, and to extend that principle of access to other forms of scholarly information and literature. We encourage the deposit of research-level outputs produced or sponsored by the Institutes of the School and their libraries, including the work of associated research units and scholarly organisations, and of the staff of Senate House Library.

General principles

The work must be (i) educational, artistic, or research-orientated; (ii) a final version, ready for distribution; and (iii) the full text or full content, not a metadata-only item, abstract or other summary version. The author/owner must be both willing and able to grant to the University of London the perpetual non-exclusive right to distribute the work via SAS-Space.

The only exception to these principles are Closed Deposits, which must be agreed first with the School of Advanced Study.

Articles

These may be from journals, or from printed volumes of collected articles. They should ordinarily have already been through the publisher’s process of peer review, and should have such changes made at that stage incorporated. They may or may not be the publisher’s own typeset version.

Research members of the School of Advanced Study are required to submit a version of peer-reviewed journal articles as part of the School’s Open Access policy.

Publisher embargos: many publishers allow such post-print publication only after the expiry of an embargo period. The deposit process allows for deposited full-text files to be held back for the requisite period, whilst making the descriptive metadata available immediately.

Books

This may include monographs, or volumes with multiple authors. They, like articles, should have passed through whichever processes of peer review pertain, and have had such changes made at that stage incorporated. Embargo periods imposed by publishers may be dealt with in the same way as for articles (see above).

'Grey literature'

This category known as ‘grey literature’ may be defined as (usually) written outputs that are generally original, recent in production, and that have not entered (and generally will not enter) the usual processes of formal publication. This typically includes working papers, conference papers and technical and other reports. Into this category also fall written outputs intended eventually for publication, but not yet accepted and peer-reviewed by a publisher.

Depositors should consider the longer-term significance of their work when preparing to deposit such items. Some outputs, whilst clearly not ephemeral, may well nonetheless have a short ‘half-life’. A good test to apply is: “will I wish people to be reading this in five years’ time?” If not, then SAS-Space is not the place for it.

In the case of conference and seminar papers, preference will be given either to full transcripts of papers, or to sound recordings of the presentation. Slideshow presentations are to be avoided, unless they form an accompaniment to a transcript or recording.

Theses and dissertations

The School policy is to upload on behalf of students all Research Theses produced in the School that receive a full pass (post-viva and post corrections) and all Masters Dissertations that receive a distinction (this is an opt-in service). It is the responsibility of the student to raise any concerns about their thesis and dissertation at the point of completion including issues concerning third-copyrighted permissions and/or privacy or ethical difficulties in making the research open access. Embargoes can be requested in line with SAS policy.

Theses and dissertations completed in the School, but are not covered by the above, may be included at the discretion of individual Institutes and individual students. We welcome all theses and dissertations that receive a pass mark.

Datasets

These commonly include database files or spreadsheets. Depositors are asked to bear in mind that the purpose of such deposit is to make data available for re-use by other scholars. Data must therefore be well formatted and consistent, and fully documented.

Multimedia

Such as photographic collections, video footage, and sound recordings. These might include photographic records of architecture, events or artefacts; video or sound recordings of musical or dramatic performances; recordings of conference or seminar papers. Once again, files should be consistently and intelligibly named and fully documented.

Learning objects

These would typically be modular resources used in Virtual Learning Environments or on freely available websites, including texts or syllabi. Deposit in alternative repositories such as HumBox should also be considered for these types of files.

File formats

Common acceptable file formats include: PDF, Plain text; Postscript, RTF; Microsoft Word (for text); Microsoft Excel (for data); JPEG; PNG; GIF; BMP; TIFF (for images); WAV; MP3 (for audio).