ESU Institutional Repository (ESU IR)

What type of content is in the ESU IR?

The central scope of ESU Institutional Repository is to reflect the intellectual and creative output of ESU students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community partners. Content should be educational or research-oriented in nature. 

Examples of appropriate content includes, but is not limited to:

• Published articles
• Undergraduate Honors Theses, Master's Theses, Doctoral Dissertations
• Conference papers, presentations, technical reports
• Course projects and papers
• Datasets
• Multimedia and audio-visual materials 
• Learning objects
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• Archival material produced by administrative offices and academic units such as newsletters, administrative reports, strategic plans, and conference/special events materials.

If you have any questions about the ESU IR's content, please email the Scholarly Communication & Research Librarian Michelle Donlin at mdonlin@esu.edu.

ESU IR promotes open access

The ESU Institutional Repository (ESU IR) is intended as a resource for open access research.  Since ESU IR materials are freely available, ESU research and creative works become more accessible online. For student works or those previously unpublished, the ESU IR provides a convenient publishing outlet. Each work is assigned a unique URL, which can be listed on resumes, CVs, applications, personal websites, etc.

ESU theses and dissertations may have limited access due to an embargo period. Embargoes are restrictions that allow only the title, abstract, and citation information of ESU theses and dissertations to be released to the public, while the full text of the work is not available for a specified period of time. 

Why would a thesis or dissertation have an embargo?

While most ESU students choose to share the full text of their thesis or dissertation immediately, some students choose to limit the access to the full text for an embargo period ranging from 6 months to three years.  After the embargo period ends, the full text will be openly accessible. Students may choose an embargo for a number of reasons including:

• The author wants to patent something described in the work.
• The author wants to publish the work in whole or in part in the future and is concerned that making the work public will interfere with this (i.e. avoid getting “scooped”).
• The author has previously published the work in whole or in part, and the publisher is restricting public release of the work in some way.
• The dissertation includes data covered by a nondisclosure agreement for a specified period of time, including personal information, company secrets, or intellectual property.

What is copyright?

The constitutional purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

Copyright gives authors and creators the power to allow or prohibit certain uses of their “original works of authorship" that are "fixed in a tangible form of expression.”  To learn more, review the What is Copyright? webpage from the U.S. Copyright Office or Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17).

What are my rights as a copyright owner?

Copyright protection is granted automatically. This means the moment an original expression of the author becomes fixed in a tangible medium, the author has exclusive rights. The © symbol is not necessary (since 1989). You are not required to register your copyright, however, registration is necessary to enforce the exclusive rights of copyright through litigation.

As a copyright owner, some of your rights are to:

• Reproduce the work: make copies in any medium
• Prepare derivative works based upon the work: translations, adaptations (books, articles)
• Distribute copies to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership or by rental, lease, or lending
• Perform or display the work publicly: generally for creative works
• Authorize others to exercise these exclusive rights, subject to certain statutory limitations.

Any or all of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights can be transferred.  For example, when you want to publish an article or a book, compare potential publisher's publication agreement to see if you would retain the copyright or if the copyright would be transferred it to the publisher. Keep in mind, there are exceptions to a copyright owner’s exclusive rights such as fair use.  

If I add my work to the ESU IR, do I retain the copyright?

Yes, you retain the copyright of your work.  Authors/owners fill out a permission form that grants ESU's Kemp Library a non-exclusive, perpetual right to archive the electronic version in the library's digital collections to make the work publicly available online. Because authors retain the copyright for all content posted in the ESU IR, they are free to reuse the content elsewhere.

If you want to deposit content into the ESU IR, you must be the author/copyright owner of the work submitted. If the work has multiple authors, each author should fill out the appropriate ESU Rights and Permission form.  If the submission contains material for which the author does not hold copyright, and that exceeds fair use, permission to use the material must be clearly identified and acknowledged within the text or content of the submission.

The ESU Institutional Repository is a part of the scholarly record and is intended to provide persistent access to deposited material. Once an item is deposited, a record is created with title, author, abstract, and other pertinent information. 

Under certain circumstances, however, it may be necessary to remove material from the ESU IR. A request for removal should be directed to the Scholarly Communication & Research Librarian Michelle Donlin at mdonlin@esu.edu and include the reasons for withdrawal. The author will need to fill out an updated permission form documenting the new access preference.