AQUADOCS GENERAL POLICIES

METADATA STANDARDS

AquaDocs endorses the use of good practices for the creation, management and exchange of bibliographical metadata as it is recommended by Linked Open Data-enabled bibliographic data (LODE-BD). AquaDocs promotes the use of well-established metadata standards as Dublin Core Metadata Elements or MODS for the exchange of bibliographic metadata.

AquaDocs encourages the use of authority data, controlled vocabularies, and syntax encoding standards whenever possible in order to enhance the quality of the interoperability and effectiveness of information exchange. AquaDocs also recommends the use of resource URIs as names for things, for data values when they are available.

METADATA POLICY

AquaDocs indexes, stores and exposes intellectual works in marine, estuarine/brackish, and aquatic science. All bibliographic data are open according to the Open Data Commons Open Database License. In support of this practice, AquaDocs endorses the OpenBiblio Principles as published 17 January, 2011.

Third parties may collect bibliographic data from AquaDocs via automated mechanisms and facilitate end-user services to support the dissemination and retrieval of the repository’s content. AquaDocs general policy is to allow the harvesting of bibliographic data, but explicitly prohibits the automated harvesting of the full content of the intellectual works.

ACCESS TO FULL TEXT

The purpose of AquaDocs is to make full text research visible, accessible, harvestable, searchable and usable by any potential user with access to the Internet. Searching and downloading full text documents in AquaDocs is free for any user. Only in very special cases, a temporary limitation to access may be applied, according to copyright restrictions, e.g. embargo period.

Single copies of full text items may be reproduced for personal research or study, education or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge provided the following are displayed:

  • The correct citation to authors, title and full bibliographic details
  • The hyperlink and /or URL for the original metadata page
  • The original copyright statement
  • The original Rights permission statement
  • The content must not be changed in any way.

SUBMISSION

DEPOSITORS

Items may only be deposited by accredited registered members of the AquaDocs Communities, or their delegated agents.

  • Eligible depositors must deposit full texts of their publications
  • The validity and authenticity of the full text content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the author.
  • Submitting authors will be responsible for ensuring the documents they archive do not have any restrictions on their electronic distribution. If the submission task is delegated to other persons (e.g. the librarian), then the institute should clearly state the responsibility of the depositor and the author. This statement can be included in an Institute policy or by completing a Permission to Deposit agreement. (Annex 1).
  • Duplication of papers in different open access repositories is permitted.

CONTENT

AquaDocs is focused on research in marine, estuarine/brackish and aquatic sciences related fields. The AquaDocs Editorial Team has the right to reject any deposit not deemed to be within the subject scope of the repository.

Only metadata submitted with a full text deposit will be accepted.

The repository accepts the following type of material:

  • Book/Monograph: A book or a conference volume or complete serial issue
  • Book Section: A chapter or section in a book, monograph or conference volume
  • Conference Contribution: A paper, poster, presentation, other
  • Journal Contribution: An article, review, editorial, letter, meeting abstract, note, other
  • Report: This may be a technical report, project report, documentation, manual or guideline, working paper, discussion paper – includes administrative reports
  • Report Section: A chapter or section in a report
  • Images or Videos: A digital photograph or moving images
  • Dataset: A dataset containing research data connected to an event or an experiment
  • Thesis and Dissertations: A thesis or dissertation submitted for an award of a degree
  • Other: Something within the scope of the repository, but not covered by the other categories. May include Maps, Charts etc

COPYRIGHT

  • Only items complying with copyright conditions should be deposited
  • A Permission to Deposit Agreement should be signed by the author and filed with the Repository Administrator, where a delegated agent is the depositor (Annex 1).
  • Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors.
  • If the repository receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.

PRESERVATION

The AquaDocs policy for preservation of documents is:

  • All materials posted in the AquaDocs will be retrievable but AquaDocs strongly recommends authors to use PDF/a.
  • AquaDocs will try to ensure continued accessibility.
  • Supported means that AquaDocs will make the file usable in the future, applying whatever combination of techniques (such as migration, emulation, etc.) as is appropriate, given the context of need. Not all proprietary formats can be supported. These files will still be preserved. It is likely that for extremely popular but proprietary formats (such as Microsoft .doc, .xls and .ppt), AquaDocs will be able to help make files in those formats viewable in the future. Items will be retained indefinitely.
  • AquaDocs regularly backs up its files according to current best practice.
  • Items may be removed at the request of the author/copyright holder, but this is strongly discouraged.
  • Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:
    • Journal publishers' rules
    • Proven copyright violation or plagiarism
    • Legal requirements and proven violations
    • National security
    • Falsified research
  • Withdrawn items are deleted entirely from the database and metadata will not be searchable. If necessary, an updated version may be deposited.
  • In the event of AquaDocs being closed down, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.

FILE FORMATS

AquaDocs will support and preserve the following formats using either format migration or emulation techniques: (supported: we fully support the format; known: we can recognize the format, but cannot guarantee full support)

Adobe:  PDF Supported

MS Word, Powerpoint, Excel doc. docx; ppt; pptx; xls; xlsx Known

OpenOffice odt opp; ods Known

Text txt Supported

VOLUME AND SIZE LIMITATIONS

  • Total files size of upto 300 MB per record has been accepted but it will take a long time to load and even longer for a user to open/download
  • Long-term support for files uploaded in compressed format (zip, rar, 7z, …) is explicitly not guaranteed.
  • Deposit of other file formats (eg. for images, video, audio, spreadsheets) should be discussed with the Repository Administrator.

DISCLAIMER

A disclaimer will be published on the website:

IOC/IODE and IAMSLIC do not warrant that the information, documents and materials contained in the AquaDocs repository website is complete and correct and shall not be liable whatsoever for any damages incurred as a result of its use.

The information, data, statements, geographical boundaries, maps and declarations expressed in documents in this repository do not imply the official endorsement or acceptance by UNESCO. Contributors to this repository are solely responsible for the contents of their uploaded documents, the inclusion of which in this repository does not mean the approval or acceptance by UNESCO.

Submitting authors or delegated agents will be responsible for ensuring the documents they archive do not have any restrictions on their electronic distribution.

_____________________________________

Annex 1. AQUADOCS - DELEGATED AGENTS PERMISSION TO DEPOSIT FROM AUTHOR

Permission to digitize and/or deposit electronic files to the AquaDocs Repository

Understanding that AquaDocs is an open, free repository offered as a global service to the marine and aquatic research communities

 

I, ______________________________________(Authorizing individual) of

 

________________________________________ (Name of Organization)

 

Authorize

_________________________________________ (Name of delegated agent) of

 

_________________________________________(Name of Organization)

 

to digitize and/or deposit, and to distribute via AquaDocs or successive technologies, the electronic files of my work, as well as the right to migrate or convert my work, without alteration of the content, to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation and/or continued distribution.

The author represents that the submission covered by this permission is his/her original work and that he/she has the right to grant this permission to AquaDocs. The author further represents that the submission does not, to the best of his/her knowledge, infringe upon any third-party’s copyright. If the submission contains material for which the author does not hold copyright, the author represents that he/she has obtained the unrestricted permission of the copyright holder to grant this license to the institution, and that such third-party material is clearly identified and acknowledged within the text or content of the submission. In the event of a subsequent dispute over the copyrights to material contained in this submission, the author agrees to indemnify and hold harmless AquaDocs Partners or agents for any uses of the material authorized by this permission.

This is a non-exclusive grant of permission for on-line and off-line use for an indefinite term. Digitization allows AquaDocs to generate image- and text based versions as appropriate and to provide and enhance access using search software.

This grant of permissions prohibits use of AquaDocs digitized versions for commercial use or profit in line with Creative Commons License : Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 . Copyright of the work remains with the author or other copyright holder, and subsequent uses of the submitted material by that person(s) are not restricted by this permission.

AquaDocs is simply an online archive.

 

Signature _____________________

Date _________________________