• Login

*PURE and Strathprints*

Items are added to Strathprints via Pure (Strathclyde's Current Research Information System). Strathprints is locked from depositing items directly. Registration is also disabled. Strathprints is still the Open Access face of University research and the publications data from PURE is immediately passed through to Strathprints after validation. The cataloguing rules for adding publications in PURE remain as detailed in this page.

The depositing process

Detailed instructions on how to deposit items in PURE which are then transferred to Strathprints are available Pure Training web pages

The following types of item can currently be deposited:

• Journal articles
• Book chapters
• Monographs
• Conference papers
• Patents
• Reviews
• Theses

The deposit process

Two options for submission to the service are available:

Self-deposit: authors can deposit full text and supply details of their own publications in PURE.

Mediated deposit: Authors can choose to send a copy of the full text of publications to their Departmental Administrator for PURE research outputs or to George Macgregor, Institutional Repository Co-ordinator e-mail george.macgregor@strath.ac.uk ext. 4468. Repository staff will create a record for the publication in PUREand add the full text. Papers should be sent as an attachment, and the body of the message should include the full bibliographic details of the publication.

Where funding bodies require authors to make their publications available in subject-based repositories, e.g. PubMed Central, arrangements can be made to link to the copies held there so that no duplication of effort is required.

Whichever method is chosen Library staff will check all publication details for accuracy before validating in PURE. In each case publisher copyright policies will be checked to ensure that full text can be made available.

In cases where full text has been self-deposited but publishers do not allow it, Library staff will contact authors directly to advise them of this.

Versions of papers

Most publishers will not permit authors to make the published pdf version of their articles available in repositories. However, many publishers permit authors to deposit their articles in repositories such as Strathprints so long as this is the author post-print or author final version of the article. There is no standard definition of these widely used phrases but they are commonly taken to refer to the version of an article after the refereeing and editing process has taken place. The text of the article therefore may be exactly the same as in the published pdf version. However, publisher formatting e.g. logos, copyright statements etc. should not be included. Depending on the processing mechanism adopted by publishers it may be necessary for authors to produce a suitable version by updating the version originally submitted to the publisher to reflect subsequent changes.

Authors should therefore deposit their own final versions unless a publisher has confirmed that the published pdf version may be used for this purpose. For primarily text based articles this should not prove too problematic. However, many articles have associated images which may be sent to publishers as a separate file. Such files can be made available separately along with the main article, however, repository staff are not able to assemble a single file from multiple files.

Authors should seek to keep a suitable version of all articles. This can take the form of a Word file or a pdf file. All articles received as Word files will be converted to pdf by repository staff.

Many articles will have multiple authors. In order to prevent different versions of the same article being made available in different repositories it would be sensible to collaborate with co-authors on the version of the article to be used for this purpose.

Depositing full-text, Setting Access Rights and the Eprint Request Button

The Library continue to support the Research Publications Digital Deposit Mandate

"Staff are required to deposit: Bibliographic details of all research outputs, and the full text of research outputs where appropriate; where copyright restrictions permit, the author final draft (or postprint) of the full text of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings."

The deposit of the author's final, peer-reviewed draft of all journal articles, in Strathprints is requested immediately upon acceptance for publication. Whether access to that deposit is immediately set to Open Access or provisionally set to Closed Access (with only the metadata, but not the full-text, accessible webwide) is left up to the author, with a strong recommendation to set access as Open Access as soon as possible. In PURE this means the individual academic can flag the visibility (or not) of the full text to ‘Public – no restriction’ or ‘Backend - restricted to Pure users only’. They can also apply an embargo inserting the date when the embargo ends and the item will be made available Open Access. These restrictions are transferred to Strathprints.

This Immediate Deposit Optional Access policy is greatly preferable to, and far more effective than a policy that allows delayed deposit (embargo) or opt-out as determined by publisher policy or copyright restrictions. The restrictions apply only to the access-setting, not to the deposit, which should be immediate. Closed Access deposit is purely an institution-internal book-keeping matter, with the institution's own assets, and no publisher policy or copyright restriction applies to it.

If there needs to be an embargo period, Strathprints has an EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST button that allows any would-be user to request (by entering their email address and clicking) and then allows any author to provide a single copy of the deposited draft, by email, on an individual basis (a practice that falls fully under Fair Use). This provides almost-immediate, almost-Open Access to tide over research usage needs during any Closed Access period. Academics can ask for this button to be removed if they do not wish to receive requests for particular items. Alternatively they may wish to upload a post-print or author final draft version of the full-text, which can be made Open Access.