What is eCommons@TxState?

eCommons@TxState is an institutional repository, or a digital collection of the intellectual output of Texas State University - San Marcos. Its purpose is to centralize, preserve, index and provide open access to the knowledge generated by the university community. eCommons@TxState is a professionally maintained archive that gives the university scholarship increased visibility and accessibility over time. It provides a space for content that has been historically hard to share and preserve.

Who Can Submit Content to eCommons@TxState?

• Any Texas State department, research unit, or center
• Texas State faculty and staff
• Texas State students with authorization from sponsoring department
• Other individuals affiliated with Texas State (e.g. contributors to Texas State sponsored conferences, journals, or special events)

Appropriate Submissions

eCommons@TxState is intended as a repository for scholarly materials. Such materials are very diverse and include but are not limited to working papers, technical reports, proceedings, previously published articles, theses, statistical datasets, lecture series, non-ephemeral teaching materials, presentations, student projects, and works of art, photographs, and audio/video recordings. Materials with a short life cycle (such as most syllabi) are typically not added to eCommons. The library will work closely with departments to ensure the appropriateness of materials added to the repository.

All appropriate content will be posted in eCommons@TxState as long as

• it is in (or can be converted to) a technically feasible file format, and
• it does not infringe upon anyone else’s copyright (the Library can help authors with copyright compliance issues).

In general, eCommons@TxState does not accommodate the posting of bibliographic citations or abstracts alone, without the referenced paper. However, exceptions may be considered on a case-by-case basis.

If you have any questions concerning the appropriateness of potential content, or if you would like to submit material that is not in electronic format, please contact Collection Development Librarian, Selene Hinojosa at 245-1843.

Author Agreements

Authors are required to submit a deposit agreement (Print Version in PDF) that gives the Alkek Library permission to post the material openly on the Web and to take the necessary steps to index and preserve the material, including later conversion of the file(s) into a different format if the existing file format becomes obsolete.

How do I Submit Content?

Documents can be submitted at the eCommons@TxState web site. From the web page for the department series, the author can click a “Submit Paper” link and will be prompted to log in with an email address and password. If the author does not have an existing account, she will need to create one. In the course of the submission process, authors are asked to enter basic information about the work (author, title, keywords etc.) and to agree to a deposit agreement (Print Version in PDF).

Copyright

Authors retain their rights for all content posted in eCommons@TxState. Authors are free to make other copies of their work available on other web sites or formally publish their work without permission from the university.

What if a Work Has Already Been Published

Authors often retain sufficient rights to deposit previously published works in eCommons@TxState without seeking the approval of their first publisher. To determine what rights you have retained, read the agreement you signed with the publisher. If you retained copyright, the work can be submitted to eCommons@TxState.

If you transferred “exclusive” or “all” rights to the publisher or you no longer have the agreement, check the publisher’s general copyright and repository policies at the Sherpa site. Sherpa outlines the policies for over 120 publishers and 8,600 scholarly journals and lists permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement. Please note that there may be special instructions or restrictions that limit your submission to a specific version of the work. For example, a publisher may allow the post print (i.e. the post-peer reviewed version) but not the publisher’s PDF version to be self-archived. Certain publishers such as IEEE allow authors to submit the publisher PDF versions with proper citation credit.

If your publisher is not listed on the Sherpa site, or if you need help interpreting a copyright agreement or publisher’s instructions, please contact Faculty Outreach Librarian Margaret Vaverek at 245-2352.

What if I want to Publish a Work Deposited in eCommons@TxState?

Many journals do not consider self-archiving in a repository to constitute prior publication, and will accept material that has been archived in pre-print form. According to eprints.org, over 90% of the 8,460 publishers  surveyed are “green”, i.e. the publishers allow self-archiving of either the pre-print or the post-print. Many of the remaining 7% “gray” journals will agree to self-archiving if the author asks.

Authors should read any rights transfer agreement with the publisher carefully. If a publisher’s standard agreement seems to preclude either prior or later deposit in an online repository, the author may be able to add wording to the agreement recognizing the existing deposit or allowing a future deposit. For example, the original contract may read:

“The author transfers exclusively to the publisher copyright (including all rights hereunder) in the work for the duration of copyright and all extensions and renewals thereof, in all languages, throughout the world, and in any form or medium now known or hereafter developed.”

To secure sufficient rights to deposit the work in eCommons@TxState and to reuse their own work, the author could modify the language as follows:

“Notwithstanding the above language, I reserve the right to use this work in my teaching and research, for my colleagues at the Texas State University – San Marcos to use this work in their teaching and research, and I also reserve the right to place an electronic copy of this work on a publicly accessible web site.”

More information about negotiating publishing agreements can be found at the following sites:

• Copyright Resources for Authors: Practical guidance when submitting journal articles (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) 
• Change & You (Create Change)
• Reserving Rights of Use in Works Submitted for Publication: Negotiating Publishing Agreements (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) 
• Faculty Copyright Information - Encouraging Retention of Intellectual Property Rights (Cornell University, ILR School, Digital Commons)

Removing and Revising Content

eCommons@TxState has been established as a permanent archive. As deposits are intended to be permanent contributions to the repository, the submitted works should not be ephemeral. Authors or editors of works should ensure that the works they submit are factually accurate and ready for public dissemination, and that they have the right to make them publicly available. If the work is incomplete or if its copyright status is unclear, it should not be submitted to the repository.

Authors may request that the system administrator remove their content, or a version of the content from public view. Authors also have the option of posting a revised version and leaving the original in place to document the progression of their research.

Peer-Review

eCommons@TxState can host peer-reviewed series and journals. If you are interested in using the repository for peer-reviewed content, please contact Collection Development Librarian Selene Hinojosa at 245-1843.

Policy Revision

The Alkek Library will reserve the right to revise these policies at any time without notice.