The King's University
AC-11: Open Access to Research

Institutional Repository Policy

Overview

An institutional repository is an open access digital archive of the intellectual output of an institution. It may include both research outputs such as articles and theses and, in some cases, teaching materials of lasting value. Repositories provide public access to scholarly materials, preserve them for future reference, and advance the institution’s public profile. They also offer one way for researchers funded by Tri-Agency or other grants to comply with open access requirements.1 Many Canadian universities have established institutional repositories during the past decade.

Policy The Research Database on King’s public website (https://www.kingsu.ca/research/featured) will function as King’s Institutional Repository. The Research Database pulls information from each faculty member’s Publication List (stored on Sharepoint and updated as part of annual professional activities reporting) to provide a searchable list of scholarly output.

All continuing faculty members are eligible to submit items to King’s Research Database. They may also submit items created by their supervised undergraduate students.

All items included in a continuing faculty member’s Publication List are eligible for inclusion in the Research Database. This includes journal articles, books or book chapters, conference presentations, creative works, and other scholarly output. In general, teaching outputs are not included in King’s Institutional Repository, unless they appear in the Publication List. The default is that all items entered into the Publication List will appear in the Research Database. If faculty members wish to hide any items from the Database (such as unpublished works or consulting reports), they have the option to do so.

The Research Database includes basic information about all research outputs and may include links to outputs stored elsewhere, such as on a personal website or disciplinary repository. Faculty members also have the option to upload the research outputs themselves (e.g. pdfs or audio files) to King’s Institutional Repository so that they can be accessed by members of the public. Faculty members must obey copyright laws and publishing agreements when uploading research outputs, and must ensure that any co-authors are in agreement. Each faculty member is responsible for ensuring that they have the right to post an item before uploading it to the database. The Research Committee will provide faculty members with relevant information and guidance.

Uploading an item to the Research Database does not affect its copyright; the author or copyright holder retains copyright. However, by uploading an item, faculty members give King’s the non-exclusive right to distribute and preserve the item. If an item has not been previously published, faculty members should apply a Creative Commons licence to the item before uploading it.

The King’s University Library provides access to subscription databases as well as open access databases including Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Public Library of Science (PLOS), Federal Science Libraries Index, and Google Scholar. We intend to continue to grow this list.