Thompson Rivers University
AC-11: Open Access to Research

TRU offers the following incentive:
The TRU Sustainability Grant Fund is open to all TRU faculty who require financial support with article processing and other open access publication charges. All research must be posted in TRU's open access repository and made publicly available. There is funding available for faculty as an incentive to publish to TRU's open access repository; the funding covers any fees associated with the review and publication process.

TRU has the following open access program:
TRUSpace, TRU’s own institutional repository, and allows the library to begin archiving and making accessible the research and local resources that make the university so unique. The acceptance of content will be staged to allow for the establishment of proper procedures, policies and to ensure that content is optimized for discovery. TRUSpace ensures that TRU meets the open access mandates put forth as part of all tri-council grants. The University Library is excited to be able to bring this resource to life, and believes it holds great promise for putting TRU and Kamloops on the proverbial and literal map.

The goals of TRUSpace are to:

• Enhance the visibility and reach of Thompson River University's scholarship
• Provide free, open and timely access to TRU scholarship
• Preserve and provide long-term access to this digital content
• Encourage scholarly collaboration within TRU and with others
• Capture examples of TRU's community engagement

What TRUSpace includes
TRUSpace collects scholarly and creative materials created by the Thompson Rivers University community, as well as important documents related to the university's history, which are made freely available to the public. Current collection efforts will focus on building up several core content areas:

• Faculty and student scholarship (articles, presentations, multimedia)
• Honours theses and capstone projects
• Documentation of TRU-hosted conferences and events (papers, presentations, programs, videos, proceedings)
• Grey literature (technical reports, research reports, working papers)
• Digitized library collections
• Other types of materials will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Items are added to TRUSpace with the permission of the author/creator, and when permitted under Copyright law.
Who can contribute to TRUSpace?
TRUSpace includes work created by individuals or groups affiliated with a TRU department, program, research team, working group, collaborative project, or conference, such as:

• TRU faculty, researchers, and staff
• TRU faculties, departments, and schools
• TRU research institutes
• Undergraduate students with faculty sponsorship
Other University-affiliated entities will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Submission Guidelines
Faculty/Staff work
1. Author (and co-authors if applicable) reads and signs TRUSpace's non-exclusive license, which:
o warrants that you are the copyright owner and have permission to submit your work to TRUSpace
o attests that the work does not contain material that is libelous, unlawful or violates anyone's right to privacy
o grants TRU permission to make the work available freely and unaltered and that you receive appropriate acknowledgement
o allows the TRU Library to migrate the work to a different format, should technology change
2. Author sends the signed non-exclusive license and the work to be submitted to kgaynor@tru.ca
3. The submission to TRUSpace is reviewed (for author eligibility, content layout & format, and for spam) and metadata added to make your work more discoverable in search engines.

Graduate Theses
After you have successfully defended your thesis:
1. Author reads and signs TRUSpace's non-exclusive license, which:
o warrants that you are the copyright owner and have permission to submit your work to TRUSpace
o attests that the work does not contain material that is libelous, unlawful or violates anyone's right to privacy
o grants TRU permission to make the work available freely and unaltered and that you recieve appropriate acknowledgement
o allows the TRU Library to migrate the work to a different format, should technology change
2. Author sends the signed non-exclusive license and the work to be submitted to the graduate program coordinator. The coordinator forwards the final version of the thesis and required paperwork to Research and Graduate Studies who deposits the thesis with the library.
3. The Library adds metadata to make your work more discoverable in search engines.
If you have any questions about this process, consult your thesis supervisor, graduate program coordinator, or the Research and Graduate Studies Office.

Student work: capstone projects, honours theses, conference posters, etc...
TRUSpace welcomes submission of outstanding examples of student work. Student work submitted to TRUSpace will be publiclyand permanently available worldwide. Students are responsible for the validity and authenticity of their work and require a faculty sponsor who attests that the work is of high caliber and worthy of long-term preservation in TRUSpace.
1. Author (and co-authors if applicable) reads and signs TRUSpace's non-exclusive license, which:
o warrants that you are the copyright owner and have permission to submit your work to TRUSpace
o attests that the work does not contain material that is libelous, unlawful or violates anyone's right to privacy
o grants TRU permission to make the work available freely and unaltered and that you recieve appropriate acknowledgement
o allows the TRU Library to migrate the work to a different format, should technology change
2. Faculty sponsor reads and signs "Sponsorship of Student Work Submitted to TRUSpace" form.
3. Author sends the signed non-exclusive license, signed Sponsorship of Student Work Submitted to TRUSpace form, and the work to be submitted to kgaynor@tru.ca
4. The submission to TRUSpace is reviewed (for author eligibility, content layout & format, and for spam) and metadata added to make your work more discoverable in search engines.

The TRU Library provides ready access to open access information and learning resources for all faculty, students and staff by making BC Campus (and other) open access textbooks, high quality open access journals (via Database of Open Access Journals – DOAJ), research data and other open information resources discoverable via the Library website and our EDS Discover layer. Access to open resources, for learning and research, is a primary value for the TRU Library and we are committed to ensuring minimal barriers to these important resources.
The TRU Library established an open institutional repository called TRUSpace in October 2015, which formally launched in March 2016. TRUSpace currently houses 1799 individual items housed in 32 distinct collections and continues to grow.
TRUSpace is a part of the ARCA network of repositories established through the BC Institutional Repository Network, a part of the BC Electronic Library Network. TRU Library was an early adopter and a founding member of the BC Institutional Repository Network, now called the ARCA Advisory Committee. The University Librarian remains a member of the advisory committee to ensure TRU has access to the most up-to-date offerings in support of open access and learning resources through our consortia partners and to help guide the provincial and regional growth of open access repositories and open access resources.
The Library is currently supporting open access to research in the following five ways:
• TRU’s head librarian sits on the BC Institutional Repository Network Advisory Committee, a provincial group looking at a shared solution for establishing institutional repositories at smaller schools (such as TRU) who have neither the full funds nor the local expertise to set up their own independent repository.
•TRU Library supports Open Access Week programming on a yearly basis to bring attention to issues surrounding open access of interest to the post-secondary sectorand by participating in Open Access Week (http://www.openaccessweek.org/)
• Librarians act as liaisons with each of the eight TRU faculties, as well as subordinate departments, providing research support to faculty and students, including supporting research needs for access to open access information resources and identifying options for open access publishing and dissemination options. They also facilitate discussions around issues of open access and solutions that make sense for each faculty.
• The University Library offers expertise through workshops, departmental liaison activities, one-on-one consultation and via curated information and research guides on a variety of open access issues, including high quality information on the issue of avoiding predatory open access journals (how to recognize and avoid), , open educational resources, open data, data management and open textbooks. Information on these and other topics are readily available 24/7 via the Research Guides tab found on the Library homepage (www.tru.ca/library).
Since 2015, the University Library has been supporting campus wide access to “Digital Commons”, an open access publishing platform that the TRU community can use to create and publish open access journals (or other open access projects) and facilitate meeting and conference planning in support of dissemination of information and knowledge mobilization.
• Librarians are implementing a review process on its collection development policies, including its expectations and responsibilities as it relates to open access.
TRU Librarian(s) regularly serve on provincial and regional committees and working groups that support and promote access to and adoption of open access and open access educational resources, such as the British Columbia Open Education Resources (BCOER) Librarians group (2014 to present) and the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) Scholarly Communication Working Group (2015 to present).