Policies

Metadata Policy

1. Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
2. The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes and re-sold commercially provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record are given.

Data Policy

1. Anyone may access full items free of charge.
2. Copies of full items generally can be:
   • reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium
   • 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
   • the content is not changed in any way
3. Full items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or citation analysis
4. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holders.

Content Policy

1. This is a multi-institution subject-based repository.
2. Subject Specialities: Multidisciplinary
3. ETD Individuals holds electronic theses and dissertations(ETDs) only.
4. ETDs may include:
   • unpublished pre-prints (not peer-reviewed)
   • final peer-reviewed drafts (post-prints)
   • published versions
5. ETDs are individually tagged with their peer-review and publication status.

Submission Policy

1. Items may only be deposited by accredited members, academic staff, registered students, and employees of the institution, or their delegated agents.
2. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.
3. Eligible depositors must deposit metadata for all their publications.
4. The administrator only vets items for the eligibility of authors/depositors, relevance to the scope of ETD Individuals, valid layout & format, and the exclusion of spam
5. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is checked by internal subject specialists.
6. Items can be deposited at any time, but will not be made publicly visible until any publishers' or funders' embargo period has expired.
7. Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
8. If ETD Individuals receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.

Preservation Policy

1. Items will be retained indefinitely.
2. ETD Individuals will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
   • Items will be migrated to new file formats where necessary.
   • Where possible, software emulations will be provided to access un-migrated formats.
3. ETD Individuals regularly backs up its files according to current best practice.
4. The original bit stream is retained for all items, in addition to any upgraded formats.
5. Items may not normally be removed from ETD Individuals.
6. Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:
   • Proven copyright violation or plagiarism
   • Legal requirements and proven violations
   • National Security
   • Falsified research
7. Withdrawn items are not deleted per se, but are removed from public view.
8. Withdrawn items' identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely.
9. URLs will continue to point to 'tombstone' citations, to avoid broken links and to retain item histories.
10. Changes to deposited items are not permitted.
11. Errata and corrigenda lists may be included with the original record if required.
12. If necessary, an updated version may be deposited.
13. In the event of ETD Individuals being closed down, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.