The University of Malta’s Institutional Repository (OAR@UM) accepts digital content which is of scholarly, educational or administrative nature created by or owned by academics, support/technical staff and students of the UM.
In order to be deposited on OAR@UM, the content must fulfil the following criteria:
The content must be in digital form. Many electronic file formats are accepted. However, plain text, XML and PDF/A, Mp3 & Mp4 are recommended (seelist of Recommended File Formats [PDF]).
Accompanying material should be submitted in a zip file.
The work should be complete and ready for distribution.
The author/owner must be willing and able to grant the UM Library the right to distribute the work and preserve it via OAR@UM.
The content must not include any sensitive/confidential personal data.
Individual files deposited on OAR@UM should generally be less than 1GB in size. Larger files will be treated on a one to one basis.
Examples of appropriate content include:
theses/dissertations
articles (pre prints & post prints)
conference proceedings
books
book chapters
data sets
audio visual (recordings & videos)
ephemera,
research posters and images
exhibitions
out of copyright material and grey literature
reports
National intellectual output and heritage may also be accepted for submission. This will be reviewed by the OAR@UM Team in collaboration with the Library Management on a case by case basis.
By default, the rights’ setting for content on OAR@UM is Open Access (OA) meaning that anyone having Internet connection can read the content online for free. OAR@UM offers four levels:
Open Accesse.g. published scholarly articles, book chapters, postgraduate dissertations, etc.
Restricted Access to UM Faculty, Staff and Studentse.g. undergraduate dissertations, UM administrative reports, etc.
Embargo Levele.g. dissertations embargoed for a limited period, articles under contract with publishes or sponsors, etc.
Closed Accesse.g. raw data, scholarly publications on the book market, etc.
Access and use of the content made available on OAR@UM is based on your acceptance of the Terms of Use:
In any publication, users must acknowledge the deposited work, its original author(s)/creator(s), and publisher where applicable.
A link to the digital content of OAR@UM is allowed for purposes of non-commercial research or private study use only (see Copyright Guidelines).
Further distribution or other uses of the digitised work without formal permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.
OAR@UM cannot grant or deny copyright permissions.
When any permissible use is made of the materials, OAR@UM must be referred as the source of the digital content and links to the item on OAR@UM must be included where appropriate.
Items must not be sold commercially without formal permission of the copyright holder.
Requests for restrictions on access should be addressed to OAR@UM Team who in collaboration with the Library Management will review restrictions on a case by case basis.
Users must attain copyright clearance:
When the work has already been published in a journal/book, an agreement with the publisher must be established.
From heirs of the author(s) of the work(s) who own the copyright - hence, permissions must be sought from them.
The Intellectual Property Rights are owned by the UM in case of material produced under its auspices.
There are two ways to submit your research output on OAR@UM:
self deposit
mediated deposit which is done on your behalf by the OAR@UM Team
It is vital that:
The work deposited on OAR@UM is the research output carried out by academic members of staff through their recruitment with the UM.
In case of multiple authors, the submitter is responsible to attain consent from the other authors to deposit the work on OAR@UM. The sole signature of the submitter is accepted. Nevertheless, it is highly recommended to supply the Library with a written consent from the other authors.
When the work has already been published in a journal/book, an agreement with the publisher must be established and copyright clearance should be attained.
Permission and copyright clearance is achieved from heirs of the author(s) who own(s) the copyright.
Self deposit For self deposit, it is highly recommended to use OAR@UM help or attend to one of the training workshops. Deposit of materials must be accompanied by sufficient metadata describing its content, provenance and formats.
Make sure that you have the access rights to deposit the material in your respective community/collection, and if you would like a new community to be created, contact OAR@UM Team with the following details:
name of academic
user name
email address
name of Faculty/Institution/Centre/School
name of department
Mediated deposit The Library also offers a Mediated Deposit service. Academics are to send a pdf attachment of their research publication via email so that their work namely article(s), book(s) and book chapter(s) will be deposited on their behalf by OAR@UM Team. Where applicable, academics are to specify any embargo periods.
If you have other content (E.g. raw data, research reports, images, audio visual, etc.) and you would like us to add it on your behalf, contact OAR@UM Team with the details of the items in question.
Metadata can be described as "data about data" and is composed of structured information describing print and online resources for the purposes of indexing, identification and retrieving. OAR@UM uses Dublin Core standards to organise its metadata.
Deposit of materials must be accompanied by sufficient metadata describing its content, provenance and formats. Copyright applies to all the metadata submitted for items on OAR@UM. The said metadata can be:
accessed free of charge
reused for private study and non-commercial purposes
Please contact OAR@UM Team if you would like to reuse the metadata commercially.
The UM Library is committed to ensure sustainable management of works deposited on OAR@UM and long term access and preservation. Consequently, the UM Library will:
retain the items indefinitely
ensure continued readability and accessibility
migrate the items to new file formats where necessary
back up the files according to current best practice
retain the original file for all items, in addition to any upgraded formats
transfer the database to another appropriate archive in the event that the repository is closed down
take necessary actions in connection with any other factor(s) deemed necessary
UM is not responsible for theft, loss or damage of the works deposited on OAR@UM.
OAR@UM is a digital collection of the University of Malta’s intellectual output and when an item is deposited, a link will be generated and a citation of the item will always remain.
OAR@UM Team may withdraw items due to:
author has replaced its work with an updated version
compliance with journal publisher rules
proven copyright violation and plagiarism
falsification of data
confidential or defamatory material is discovered
content does not conform to existing legislation or to content policy criteria
any other circumstance deemed to arise.
The submitter fully indemnifies UM against any third party claims with regards to copyright violation, breach of confidentiality, defamation and any third party right infringement. Procedures for complaints: If anyone wishes to submit a complaint in regards to the item(s) available on OAR@UM, this should be made in writing and forwarded to OAR@UM Team. The complaint must have the following information:
your contact details
bibliographic details of the item, including URL
an overview of the nature of the complaint.
OAR@UM Team in collaboration with the Library Management will:
Acknowledge the complaint.
Review the complaint and:
- If the complaint is justified, the resource will be removed or access will be suspended waiting for pending verification. - If the complaint is unjustified, the complainant will be informed.
Full investigation and legal advice will be sought from the UM Legal Office.
The submitter will be informed of the complaint and will be given the opportunity to defend it.
When the investigation and legal advice have been carried out, a full report will be issued to the complainant and the submitter.
If the investigation proves that the complaint is justified, the material will be permanently withdrawn from OAR@UM.
Withdrawal of item(s) by the submitter
Files may also be removed following justified requests made by the submitter / owner of the work(s). A record will still be kept of the publication retaining existing links, and item histories with:
A link to the replacement version where available.
A note explaining the reason for withdrawal.
UM adopted an Open Access policy [PDF], ensuring that the future research created under the auspices of the UM will be made available in Open Access. The Policy was approved by the Senate on September 20, 2017.
1. Journals published by UM The OAR@UM Team is responsible for creating the necessary structure on OAR@UM as follows:
Community: Faculty, Institute, Centre, etc.* e.g. Faculty of Medicine & Surgery
Sub-Community: Journal title e.g. Maltese Medical Journal
Sub-Community: Year of Publication e.g. 1990
Collections: Volume and Issue no. e.g. MMJ, Volume 2, Issue 1 *In case the journal is issued by a department, it will be attributed to the respective department.
The editor-in-chief of the journal has to contact the OAR@UM Team so that new collections are created each time a new issue is published.
Uploading articles: Articles can be uploaded either through self-deposit or mediated deposit.
Self-deposited content must be uploaded by the editor in chief. In instances where content is uploaded by a third party, a form [PDF] (the same form can be used for the whole issue but has to be uploaded with each item) has to be signed by the editor in chief. All approval forms have to be printed on Department Letterheads and submitted with each article deposited.
A mediated deposit service is also available.
2. Journals not published by UM The OAR@UM Team is responsible for creating the necessary structure on OAR@UM as follows:
Community: External Research Collection
Sub-Community: Subject general e.g. Sciences
Sub-Community: Subject more specific e.g. Zoology
Sub-Community: Journal title e.g. Bulletin of the Entomological Society of Malta
Collections: Volume and Issue no. e.g. BulESM, 2013, Volume 6
The editor-in-chief of the journal has to contact the OAR@UM Team so that new collections are created each time a new issue is published.
Uploading articles: Articles can be uploaded either through self-deposit or mediated deposit.
Self-deposited content must be uploaded by the editor in chief in case he/she is part of the UM staff complement. In instance where content is uploaded by a third party (the third party has to form part of the UM staff complement), a form [PDF] (the same form can be used for the whole issue but has to be uploaded with each item) has to be signed by the editor in chief. All approval forms have to be printed on Department Letterheads and submitted with each article deposited.
A mediated deposit service is also available.
3. Magazines In the case of magazines with opinion and feature articles, the magazine will be uploaded as a whole, and the feature articles will be duplicated at article level. It is at the discretion of the editor in chief to decide which articles should be included within the feature article collection.
The OAR@UM Team is responsible for creating the necessary structure on OAR@UM as follows:
Community: Faculty, Institute, Centre, etc. e.g. Information & Communication Services
Sub-Community: Department e.g. The Communications & Alumni Relations Office
Collections: Whole issue e.g. Think Magazine
Feature articles e.g. Feature articles - TM
The editor in chief of the journal has to contact the OAR@UM Team so that new collections are created each time a new issue is published.
Uploading articles: same procedures as with journals mentioned above in points 1 and 2 apply. Also, according to whether the magazine is published by UM or not.
There are two ways to scan a page, either by using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or by scanning the page as an image. Creating OCR scans require careful proofreading and lose the original formatting of the documents. On the other hand, image scans cannot be searched. The best solution is to take advantage of both methods. Many software applications allow for the OCR capture of image scans. When documents are scanned this way, users see the image scan but search the full-text of the document. We highly recommend scanning documents at 600dpi using this method for material deposited on OAR@UM.
