Belmont Digital Repository (BDR) Policies & Guidelines
About the BDR
The Belmont Digital Repository (BDR) is a collection of scholarly, research, and creative works produced by Belmont faculty, students, and staff. The Belmont Digital Repository is administered jointly by the Lila D. Bunch Library and the Law Library in cooperation with individual departments and academic units of the University.
Mission
To collect the diverse scholarly and research outputs of Belmont University as well as digitized materials of historical value to the Belmont community in one digital space. The goals of the repository are to preserve intellectual works created by the Belmont scholarly community; to enhance the visibility, accessibility, and discoverability of Belmont scholarship; to support the University in its efforts to attract, retain, and graduate extraordinary students by strengthening our reputation as a leader in teaching and learning through technology; and to enhance the library’s role in the research practices of the university.
Administrative Responsibility
Belmont University Libraries (Lila D. Bunch and Law) are responsible for administering the Belmont Digital Repository. This includes, but is not limited to: implementation, policies and guidelines, strategies, training, and ongoing assessment.
This work will be done chiefly by the Digital Projects Executive Team, consisting of representatives from both libraries.
Scholars interested in contributing to the BDR may contact their Library liaison or BDR administrators at
Content
Given its mission and scope, the BDR will house a variety of types of media including text, images, audio, and video.
The BDR will accept the following recommended file formats, as per the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) guidelines for preservation. The BDR Administrators retain the right to accept, reject, convert and optimize file format and size for download and distribution.
Recommended File Formats |
|
|---|---|
| Text Based | File Name Extension |
| Acrobat PDF/A | |
| Comma Separated Version | .csv |
| Open Office Formats | .odt, .ds, .odp |
| Plain Text (such as UTF-8) | .txt |
| XML | .xml |
| Image Based | File Name Extension |
| JPEG | .jpg |
| JPEG2000 | .jp2 |
| PNG | .png |
| TIFF | .tf/tiff |
| Audio Based | File Name Extension |
| AIFF | .aif/.aiff |
| Free Lossless Audio Codec | .flac |
| MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) | .mp3 |
| WAVE | .wav |
| Video Based | File Name Extension |
| AVI | .avi |
| Motion JPEG2000 | .mj2/.mjp2 |
| MPEG 4 | .mp4 |
| QuickTime | .mov |
While the BDR is not a link repository, records may contain links to supplementary content outside of the BDR. However, it is the responsibility of the original author and not the repository administrators to ensure that supplemental links are active and unbroken.
Content Organization
Content within the repository is organized by Collection and can be browsed and/or searched by College/School, Department, Author, or Subject. The individual scholarly works themselves live in collection series and publications. Each collection series, publication, and specific item has its own individual permanent URL to facilitate sharing and linking to these specific areas within the Belmont Digital Repository.
See the table below for more specific information:
| Name | Examples |
| Collections | Doctoral Nursing Program Scholarly Projects Ward-Belmont Collection |
| Publications | Belmont Law Review |
Collections
A collection consists of specific papers or projects that are centered around a common theme or that were created for a specific purpose (e.g. theses, BURS papers, scholarly publications etc.).
Publications
A publication meets the following criteria: has an editor and/or editorial board; has submission requirements; is published on a regular schedule.
Submissions
Content may be submitted to the BDR by:
- Current and retired faculty at Belmont University
- Current students at Belmont University
- Current staff at Belmont University
Eligible content for the BDR meets the following guidelines. These guidelines are subject to change as the BDR evolves.
- The work must be scholarly, educational, historical, or research-oriented in nature;
- The scholarship contributed must have undergone at least one process of review by faculty (for student work), by the department, or via publisher peer-review process;
- The historical items contributed must have undergone review by someone with expertise relating to those items and/or the Bunch Library archivist;
- The work must be in a digital format;
- The work must be in a finished form and ready for distribution;
- The author/copyright owner must be willing and able to grant Belmont University the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute the work via the Belmont Digital Repository.
Submission requests are made via the Digital Collection Proposal Form. All submissions are approved by the Digital Projects Executive team and subject to review by the CIO and VP of Institutional Effectiveness.
Collections and publications can be added to over time. All individual works will be accepted only if they are part of larger Collection that has been approved by the Digital Projects Executive Team. These individual works are also subject to review by the CIO, and the VP for Institutional Effectiveness.
The following information is required for submission of an individual work:
- The title of the submission
- An abstract (up to 250 words)
- A list of keywords (10 maximum)
- Electronic format of your file or secure hyperlink to your file.
- Signed distribution agreement
Distribution Agreement
Prior to submitting content to the BDR, a contributor will be required to sign a Distribution Agreement. The Agreement states that the Contributor of the Work must either own the rights to the Work or must have written permission from the rights holder to submit it to BDR.
If a Contributor accepts the Distribution Agreement, they are granting the BDR, on behalf of Belmont University, a non‐exclusive, royalty‐free license to distribute the Work. All other intellectual property rights remain unchanged. If a Contributor owns the rights to the Work, s/he will continue to maintain those rights and the responsibility for enforcing them. Contributors retain the right to revoke the non‐exclusive license by contacting .
Co-Authorship
If the Work was written by two or more authors, each joint author has the ability to grant a non‐ exclusive license (by accepting the Distribution Agreement) without the permission of other joint author(s). The BDR policy is as follows:
- Any co-author can give permission for deposit.
- Any co-author can object and request take‐down, which will be honored.
- In cases of disagreement, the full‐text will be suppressed from public view until the co-authors can reach an agreement about its status.
To prevent potential disagreements between co‐authors, it is recommended that you talk to your co‐author(s) prior to submitting to the repository.
Access & Withdrawal
To prevent potential disagreements between co‐authors, it is recommended that you talk to your co‐author(s) prior to submitting to the repository.
If a department/project ceases to exist, then all BDR content from these departments will be retained as part of the collection. The library would continue to preserve items but no new content would be accepted as part of the collection.
Embargo
In some cases, a publisher or author may request an embargo on distributing a full work through the repository. In this case, a descriptive record and abstract would exist in the BDR and be discoverable, but the document and/or media itself would not be. Contact for details regarding embargoed work.
Withdrawal
Digital project administrators reserve the right to de-accession items or collections at their discretion; requests for removal of content must be forwarded to the administrators, and will be acted upon on a case by case basis.
The following are potential provisions for withdrawing items:
- Removed from view at request of the author.
- Removed from view at request of the author.
- Removed from view at the library’s discretion.
- Removed from view by legal order
The full text of a work may be removed from the BDR by sending a request to the repository administrators at . If the work is removed, a record describing the original version of the paper will remain on the site at the same URL; however, BDR administrators retain the right to remove this record as well. Items requested for withdrawal will be removed from public view within 24-hours of the request.
Withdrawal of a Work from the repository does not mean automatic deletion. Work will be kept in the dark archive for historical purposes and to ensure that access can be restored if the reason for removal ceased. Deletion of items from the repository would be highly unlikely and will be considered on a case by case basis.
Terms of Use
All content users must respect the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner.
For previously published works (journal articles, book chapters, etc.) for which the publisher retains copyright, permission has been granted (where necessary) to post this material in BDR. For any use which exceeds personal use or fair use under U.S. copyright law, permission may be required by the copyright owner of the material.
For previously unpublished scholarly or creative works, the right to download or print any portion of this material is granted by the copyright owner only for personal or educational use. The author/creator retains all proprietary rights, including copyright ownership. Any editing, other reproduction or other use of this material by any means requires the express written permission of the copyright owner.
Material may not be copied, distributed, displayed, altered, or used for commercial purposes, unless specified by a Creative Commons License.
Except as provided above, or for any other use that is allowed by fair use (Title 17, §107 U.S.C.), you may not reproduce, republish, post, transmit or distribute any material from this web site in any physical or digital form without the permission of the copyright owner (not necessarily the author) of the material.
Version 1.1
04/12/2021
