Research Commons - FAQ

What is Research Commons?

Research Commons is an open access digital repository to collect, make available and preserve research produced at the University of Waikato. It acts as a storehouse for publications and documents or points to where such items are stored remotely. Research Commons is administered by the University of Waikato Library.

What are the benefits of Research Commons?

• Research Commons provides freely available full-text access to the University of Waikato's research outputs.
• Our research is easier to find by people around the world. Items on Research Commons are picked up by search engines such as Google and Google Scholar. We are also indexed by open access harvesters such as OAIster and KRIS: the Kiwi Research Information Service.
• Increased world wide exposure boosts the impact and citation rates of our research.
• Enhances the University of Waikato’s visibility and prestige by bringing together the full range and extent of our research interests.
• Ensures the long-term preservation of the University’s academic and research outputs.

How do I submit my material to Research Commons?

Any University of Waikato academic staff member, school, research unit, or institute is eligible to participate. Research Commons is organised into collections based on schools/faculties and research institutes.

To submit, contact the Repository Coordinator, Kate Nixon (email: kathrynj@waikato.ac.nz, phone ext. 6224) or contact your Subject Librarian. You can email a list of your publications, send an article as an email attachment, or contact us to collect any items that you have.

The Library will investigate copyright issues before depositing your  work and contact you if there are any queries and to request digital copies of the work if necessary. We can also scan items only available in hardcopy.

At present all submissions need to be processed by the Repository Coordinator. We hope to have self-archiving available in the future.

Theses

University of Waikato PhD and Masters students can submit a digital copy of their completed thesis through the Australasian Digital Theses program.

What about copyright?

There are often copyright restrictions we must consider when deciding if a paper can be submitted to Research Commons. When a piece of research  is published, the author often assigns copyright to the publisher. The rights the author retains will depend on the type of agreement signed.  The Library will check publisher's copyright policies befoe putting items on Research Commons. We will not break copyright leglislation.
Publishers sometimes require we deposit particular versions of the article:

Submitted Version: The version first submitted to the journal, before peer review and final editing have taken place.

Accepted Version:   This is the final accepted draft (after editing and the peer review process has taken place). It does not yet resemble the format of the journal in which it will appear.  Very often we are allowed to host this version on Research Commons. It is sometimes known as a postprinrt or an author's version.

Published Version: This is often referred to as the publisher’s PDF. It is the final published version and has been morphed into the style and format of the journal in which it is to appear. Many publishers stipulate that this version may not be hosted on repositories, but we will use it wherever we are able to.

If we are prohibited from hosting the full-text of a piece of research we will link to the full-text if it is available online elsewhere.

Please see our copyright policy for more information on how items on Research Commons are protected by copyright.

What material can be included in Research Commons?

Research Commons accepts most kinds of research outputs. Examples include:

• Journal articles
• Conference papers
• Reports
• Working papers
• Book chapters

We will accept pre-publication versions of documents (see copyright section for further details). Each participating unit will determine content appropriate for inclusion in its part of the IR.

We also house the University of Waikato's digital thesis collection.

Theses

Research Commons houses digital copies of University of Waikato Masters and Doctoral theses deposited since 2006.

Prior to 2006, digitisation for open access was not mandatory. To find older print theses please check the University of Waikato’s Library catalogue. These theses may be requested by interloan through your local library.

How is Research Commons organised?

Our repository is organised into a hierarchical structure of communities, sub-communities and collections. Our communities represent the Faculties and Schools of the University of Waikato. The collections are groups of related documents, for example, all the papers from a Faculty or Research Unit. The Community and Collection structure may be browsed.

How do I find material on Research Commons?

You can search with keywords in the basic search box or using the advanced search option.You can also browse for papers by community or collection, title, author and date.  See the Help pages for more detailed information.

Who can use Research Commons?

Research Commons is an open access site, which means that anyone with an internet connection can view the content. In cases where we are prohibited from hosting the full-text of the material, it may only be accessible by those persons affiliated to organisations with subscriptions to the database of the publisher or institution which has published the content. This is why we endeavour to host the full-text of the research output wherever possible.

Authors can find out  the number of times their research's abstract page has been viewed and the full text of the work has been downloaded using our easily accessible Research Commons Usage Statistics.

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