Peer-reviewed journal article submission policy

Peer-reviewed journal article submission policy

Peer-reviewed journal articles will be accepted in the first phase of the expansion project. We anticipate a significant need in the near future when our faculty members respond to the Tri-Agencies Open Access Policy on Publications. The Policy requires grant recipients to make their journal publications open access within 12 months of publication. Deposit in UWSpace is one option for achieving compliance with this requirement.

Who can submit journal articles?

Submissions must be authored, or co-authored, by a member of the University of Waterloo Community or authored in collaboration with a member of the University of community. Submissions must be made by, or with the explicit permission of, the person or persons holding the copyright of the submission. No changes to copyright ownership occur with submission to UWSpace. As part of the submission process, each submitter must enter into a non-exclusive distribution licensing agreement approved by the Waterloo Library and the University. In so doing, the author agrees that the article can be openly accessible and preserved in UWSpace. The submitter will grant the Waterloo Library the right to preserve and disseminate the submitted content via UWSpace.

Who has access?

Files (the main PDF and all supplementary files) in UWSpace are either publicly accessible or embargoed for a limited period of time not exceeding 12 months. All metadata is publicly accessible upon submission. Journal articles accessible in UWSpace are freely available on the public internet. Open access (OA) means unrestricted online access; the articles are copyrighted and can be used under fair dealing and other exceptions in copyright law.  Files provided with a Creative Commons license have additional re-use rights.

What files can be submitted?

Submissions must be articles that have been published or accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The submitted file may be the final, peer-reviewed manuscript (post-print) or the publisher's version/PDF (version of record). Authors can check the Sherpa/Romeo database to locate publishers' policies applicable to submitting your article to UWSpace. However, it is recommended that you consult your publishing agreement (in consultation with legal counsel, if necessary) or contact your journal’s editorial staff directly to verify that you have permission to archive your article. The information provided by Sherpa/Romeo is correct to the best of their knowledge but is not legally binding.

All articles must be submitted as PDFs. UWSpace encourages researchers to format their files so that they are compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).

When can the article be submitted?

Submission may occur as soon as an article has been accepted for publication. Open access to the article may be delayed as required by the publisher. Open access will automatically be triggered when the specified publication embargo period has lapsed.

Where is the work deposited in UWSpace?

UWSpace is organized using the University of Waterloo's faculties and academies structure.

• Communities are faculties or affiliated institutions

• Subcommunities are departments or research centres

• Collections are the arrangement of research types produced by a department or research centre

Authors can submit their article into the appropriate collection in UWSpace, e.g., Applied Health Sciences (Faculty of); Kinesiology; Kinesiology articles.

Policy for withdrawal of your work from UWSpace

Under some circumstances items may be removed. To avoid loss of the historical record, withdrawals will be recorded in the form of a note in the Description.provenance field of the metadata record. The content of the note should be one of the following:

• "removed from view at request of the author"

• "removed from view at University of Waterloo’s discretion"

• "removed from view at University of Waterloo Library's' discretion"

• "removed from view by legal order"

Since any UWSpace item that has existed at some time may have been cited, we will always supply a "tombstone" when the item is requested, which will include the original metadata (for verification) plus one of the above withdrawal statements in place of the link to the object. The metadata should be visible, but not searchable. These items will also be made unavailable for metadata harvesting.