Rice Digital Scholarship Archive Deposit Guidelines

The Rice Digital Scholarship Archive (RDSA, http://scholarship.rice.edu/) makes accessible, manages, and preserves the university’s intellectual output. Examples of works that fall within the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive’s collecting focus include articles, reports and white papers by Rice researchers; theses and dissertations; datasets; learning objects; conference presentations; and unique digitized materials from the Rice community. By sharing your scholarship through RDSA, you can make it available for a global audience, secure a permanent URL that will make it easier to cite, and ensure that it will be managed and preserved by the library for the long-term.

In determining whether a work is well-suited for the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive, we will consider the following factors:

1. The work must be produced or sponsored by Rice faculty, researchers, staff or students. Undergraduate students must receive prior permission to deposit to the Archive and typically will be asked to secure sponsorship from a faculty member or Rice organization.

2. The work must be scholarly, educational, creative or related to the university's mission.

3. The work must be in a digital format.

4. The work must be complete, permanent and ready to be distributed. (Embargoes are available if you would like to delay access to the work for a specified period of time.)

5. The creator/ copyright owner must be willing and able to grant Rice University the right to publicly distribute and preserve the work via the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive.

6. The library must have the capacity to preserve and sustain the work over the long-term.

1. The work should be well-described and well-documented, according to library and/or disciplinary standards. Please see https://digitalriceprojects.pbworks.com/w/page/48530403/Format%20Support for a list of supported file formats.

2. In general, we cannot house large datasets, but we do offer expertise on identifying appropriate disciplinary repositories.

Would you like to share a work through the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive, or do you have questions? Email cds@rice.edu or call Lisa Spiro, Executive Director of Digital Scholarship Services, at 713-348-2480.

Acknowledgements: This policy is based upon similar policies and research at other university libraries, including MIT, University of Oregon, University of Illinois, and Purdue.

Created: August 26, 2014