University of Houston Libraries

Table of Contents:

• Copyright
• Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD)
• Open Access
• Repository & Collection

Does submitting my work to the UHIR affect my copyright/my ownership? 

No. Faculty, staff, and students retain full copyright to their work while granting non-exclusive rights to UH and Texas Digital Library to copy, display, perform, distribute, and publish their work within copyright law or any applicable license agreement. UH Libraries will manage these non-exclusive rights. 

I don’t know what copyright I have to my works. Can I still deposit them in ROAR? 

Probably. Over 80% of all journals allow their authors to deposit a version of their published work to a repository, even if the author has given the copyright to their work to the publisher. To determine your journal or publisher’s policy towards submitting to an institutional repository, we recommend consulting SHERPA/RoMEO (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo), a public database of publisher copyright policies. For help determining your rights as an author or for clarification around copyright issues, please contact Xiao Zeng (xzeng4@central.uh.edu), Open Publishing Librarian. 

Who should I contact regarding ETD submission or embargo extension? 

For any questions or issues related to ETD, including requirements, submission, embargoes, please refer to the Graduate School’s Thesis and Dissertation Policies, where you’ll find detailed policy guidelines and FAQs. If you need to request an embargo extension, please contact the UH Graduate School (gradschool@uh.edu) and complete the Special Circumstance Form. 

For further assistance, contact your College ETD Coordinator or the Graduate School directly.  

What should students be aware of regarding metadata and embargoes for ETDs?

Students and departments should be aware that embargoes only apply to the content of the ETD, not the metadata. It's important for students to ensure that sensitive information, such as patent details, is not included in the metadata (e.g., the Abstract) to avoid unintended disclosure.

Why is my thesis/dissertation still showing up in Google Scholar even though I requested an embargo?

An embargo prevents the full text of your thesis/dissertation from being publicly available, but your abstract and metadata may still be visible in University of Houston Institutional Repository (UHIR) and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database and indexed by search engines like Google Scholar. This is normal and does not mean that your thesis/dissertation is publicly accessible.

How does the embargo I set with UH Libraries apply to ProQuest, and what happens after it expires?

When you first submit your thesis or dissertation, the initial embargo period you set with UH Libraries (up to two years) is also applied to ProQuest. After that default period expires, UH Libraries can extend the embargo for the copy in the UH Institutional Repository (UHIR) If you complete the Special Circumstance Form and approve by the UH Graduate School (gradschool@uh.edu).

However, embargo extensions do not transfer automatically to ProQuest. To keep your work under embargo in ProQuest, you must contact directly at ProQuest Supportor submit a support case to request that the work be embargoed at any time. Otherwise, once the ProQuest embargo ends, your full text will become accessible to users at subscribing institutions (though not open access to the general public).

If I make my work available Open Access, what control do I have over it? Isn’t it more vulnerable to theft, plagiarism, or unauthorized reuse? 

Open Access ensures as well as any other method of distribution that you will receive credit whenever your work is cited or used. ROAR gives you the option to assign a legally binding Creative Commons license to every work you deposit, allowing you to control how that work may be used by others. UH Dataverse gives you full control over who can view your data sets and how that data can be reused. 

Doesn’t Open Access endanger publishers? 

Publishers are quickly adapting and in many cases embracing the Open Access movement. Over 80% of traditional journals allow some form of Open Access, and roughly 25% of all scholarly journals are now Open Access journals. That number is growing in nearly every discipline, and in many fields of study, Open Access journals stand near or at the top of impact factor rankings. 

I have already posted my research papers to ResearchGate or academia.edu. Isn’t that enough? 

When scholars use ResearchGate or academia.edu, they are providing their data to a for-profit venture capital backed company who reserves the right to create derivatives of their intellectual property and leaves the researcher vulnerable to copyright violations and publisher takedown notices. Both sites need to turn a profit for their investors, and they’re doing it by selling information about you and leveraging your intellectual outputs. Further, these sites are not search engine optimized, nor do they comply with funder open access mandates; your work will be more visible and secure when it is deposited in ROAR. In short, if you care about discoverability and retaining control over your research, social networking sites are not open access solutions. 

I want to create a new collection/community in the institutional repository. How should I proceed, and who should I contact? 

To create a new collection or community in the institutional repository, please contact the UHIR Administrator (cougarroar@uh.edu). They will guide you through the process and help ensure that your collection is set up correctly. Additionally, the UHIR supports batch import services, so if you have a large volume of content to submit, the administrator can assist with that as well. 

Before scheduling a meeting, please be prepared to answer a few questions: 

1. How many projects per year are students producing?
2. What will be the deadline or timeframes for students to submit their projects? (Semesterly, annually, or what?)
3. Is there interest in adding older projects to the repository?
4. What exactly are the output(s) of the capstones? (File types, format, size, amount, etc.)
5. Do these capstones go through a defense or approval process? If yes, how is approval documented?
6. Where will the finished projects be collected? How will these files be shared with library staff?
7. Will students want to request embargoes? If so, how will this request be communicated to the library?
8. What metadata will be required to access projects in the UHIR?
9. What title and summary should be used for the collection in the UHIR?

These will help us better understand your needs and ensure a smooth setup. You may also find it helpful to read through the repository policies page for more information.