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Guidelines and data protection information

Section 1 - Basics

1.1 Objectives and content criteria for ELSA

The online publication service offers all members of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts the organisational and technical framework conditions for the prompt electronic publication of scientific documents. Within the framework of this service offered by S(kim), scientific documents are made available on the Iiternet and/or intranet of the TH OWL in compliance with quality standards. The long-term archiving of electronic documents is guaranteed.

 

1.2 Legal framework

The author grants the provider of the publication server the following rights of use:

  • the permanent right to conversion for the purpose of long-term archiving or visualisation, in compliance with the preservation of the content (the original archiving remains intact),
  • the right to change and/or complete the metadata supplied by the author or publisher if necessary,
  • the right to make the metadata accessible and usable to anyone without restriction.
1.3 Electronic documents published and distributed via ELSA

Scientists, students and other persons whose work is related to the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts can submit publications to the archive in an accepted file format or instruct S(kim) staff to archive them. The content of the documents may not be altered. The following types of electronic documents are stored:

  • Current publications, preprints and copies/postprints of previously published publications by members of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts with scientific content
  • Publication series of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences, publications and publication series edited by members of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts such as collective works, congress volumes, research reports, journals (e-journals) or series
  • Publications and publication series of institutions and persons associated with the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts
  • Documents from students of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts such as bachelor's, master's, diploma, magister and seminar theses.
1.4 Long-term availability and security

The publication is saved and archived in ELSA as a PDF file. This is protected against manipulation. In principle, the aim is to make the documents permanently and freely available; however, they are guaranteed to be available for at least 10 years. Archiving beyond this depends on the availability of the format, the viewing software and the conversion options. The finally published documents can no longer be changed or deleted. Distribution is restricted to access from the IP address range of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts. 

International standards such as the guidelines of the Open Archives Initiative(OAI) are utilised and further developed for the indexing, storage and archiving of electronic documents. Statistics analyse the number of accesses to each document per month, the use of the publication server per day and the indexing by search engine robots per month.

1.5 Organisational regulations

The university publication server ELSA is operated by S(kim). S(kim) is also responsible for the hardware and software of this server. Electronic publication is free of charge for members of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts and members of institutions associated with the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Electronic documents for dissemination via ELSA are usually submitted using an upload form. Additional work required for publication, such as the preparation of electronic documents or conversion into other formats, is supervised and carried out by S(kim) staff.

S(kim) is the point of contact for all questions relating to the publication service.

1.6 Publication data

The purpose of this repository is the worldwide publication and provision of metadata and full texts from members of the TH OWL. For this purpose, S(kim) stores, processes and publishes personal data of the persons involved in the publication of documents:

  • First and last names
  • Unique author identifiers such as ORCID
  • Information on organisational affiliation, e.g. laboratory, academic departments, institute

This serves to provide clear proof and recognition of authorship, the ability to cite and better retrievability of the documents. When the dataset is published, this personal data is made available to third parties via interfaces:

  • to the German National Library in the context of the allocation of URNs (Uniform Resource Names)
  • to the registration agency DataCite for the unique assignment of a publication identifier DOI (Document Object Identifier)
  • to academic and general search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, BASE
  • to third parties worldwide, via interfaces such as OAI (Open Archives Initiative)

 

Section 2 - Legal framework

2.1 Declaration of consent / publication contract

The authors and publishers are solely responsible for the content of the documents. S(kim) accepts no liability for the content of the publications provided and linked external sites. The author or publisher assures that the document does not violate legal regulations, official orders or other rights of third parties. The authors or publishers undertake to clarify the copyrights and exploitation rights of third parties or to obtain their consent. If the author or publisher becomes aware of the existence or emergence of legal obstacles, they shall inform S(kim) immediately. The authors' copyrights shall be respected.

The user is responsible for compliance with the legal provisions and may be held liable in the event of misuse (Publication contract - Veröffentlichungsvertrag).

2.2 Exploitation rights

The authors, as the intellectual creators of the documents, own all exploitation rights in accordance with copyright law. When the document is published in ELSA, the author assigns a non-exclusive exploitation right to the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts - represented by the S(kim). This means that the author or editor of the work may publish the document elsewhere (e.g. in a scientific journal or as a monograph).

Recommendations of the German Science and Humanities Council:

In its 2001 "Recommendations on the digital provision of information by university libraries" ("Empfehlungen zur digitalen Informationsversorgung durch Hochschulbibliotheken)", the German Science and Humanities Council writes: "(The German Science and Humanities Council) [...] is of the opinion that authors should not assign their exploitation rights to publishers across the board with the release for commercial exploitation and grant them an exclusive right for all types of exploitation [...]. There should be a consensus in the academic system that the author should retain the right to secondary exploitation in order to offer a new electronic edition for the possibility of independent online publication, for example via the server of a university [...]."

2.3 Rights of use

The author transfers to S(kim) the non-exclusive right of use for the unlimited publication of the documents uploaded to the university publication server ELSA.

Publication on ELSA does not preclude further publication of the documents in journals or monographs or on other servers. In accordance with the recommendations of the German Council of Science and Humanities, all scientists at the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts are advised to secure a corresponding further right of use when concluding publishing contracts and to publish the documents they have written in open access - possibly after an embargo period. Many publishers now allow self-archiving in institutional repositories or on the author's homepage, although this is often linked to the requirement of embargo periods between the initial publication by the publisher and the open access provision on the Internet. The publishers' self-archiving regulations are listed in the SHERPA/ROMEO-Liste. If you have any further questions, please contact your publisher. There is no remuneration. Commercial use of the publications by S(kim) is excluded.

2.4 Licences

The author is recommended to use Creative Commons Licences. By granting a licence, certain uses of the work can be released for the benefit of the general public. The following licences are available for ELSA:

  • CC0 1.0 -  Public Domain
    By granting the CC0 licence, the work is made available to the general public. No conditions of use are specified. The content can be copied, modified, distributed, performed and used commercially. There are also no neighbouring rights.
     
  • CC-BY 4.0 - Creative Commons Licence: Attribution
    This licence allows the content to be reproduced, distributed and publicly performed. Adaptations may be made and distributed. The content may be used commercially under the following conditions: The name of the author/rights holder must be mentioned. The licence is based on the international Creative Commons initiative. The licence permits very extensive use and is Open Access compliant.
     
  • CC-BY-SA 4.0 - Creative Commons Licence: Attribution, ShareAlike 
    This licence allows the content to be reproduced, distributed and publicly performed under the following conditions: The name of the author/rights holder must be mentioned. This content may be used for commercial purposes. The content may be modified (including translations of the work), but the modified version may only be distributed under the conditions stated here. The licence is based on the international Creative Commons initiative. It is considered Open Access compliant.

The following Open Data Commons are available for data publication:

  • Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) Version 1.0
    Allows to copy, distribute and use the data, to produce works from the data, and to modify, transform and build upon the data: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/
     
  • Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) Version 1.0
    Allows to copy, distribute and use the data, to produce works from the data, and to modify, transform and build upon the data. It requires the attribution of any public use of the data, or works produced from the data: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/
     
  • Open Database License (ODBL) Version 1.0
    Allows to copy, distribute and use the data, to produce works from the data, and to modify, transform and build upon the data. It requires the attribution of any public use of the data, or works produced from the data. Adapted version of this data, or works produced from an adapted data must also offer the data under the ODbL: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/

You can select the licence(s) in the publication process and in the publication contract.

Section 3 - Data protection

3 Data protection information

The protection of your personal data is of particular concern to the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts. This data protection declaration informs you about the type, scope and purpose of the processing of personal data when using the online publication service ELSA (electronic publications and articles) of S(kim), which is operated with the LibreCat software

You can download the complete information on data protection as a PDF at the following URL: https://www.th-owl.de/files/subwebs/datenschutz/Datenschutz/hinweise/Datenschutzhinweise_ELSA.pdf

Section 4 - Software documentation

4 Software documentation

The university publication server ELSA is operated on the basis of the LibreCat software. LibreCat is documented under the URL: https://github.com/LibreCat/LibreCat/wiki

Section 5 - Imprint

5.2 Responsible supervisory authority

Ministry of Culture and Science of the state of North Rhine Westphalia,
40221 Düsseldorf

S(kim) from the OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts is responsible for the editing and maintenance of the database as well as the content of the authors' pages in accordance with § 55 para. 2 RStV.

S(kim) is responsible for the hardware and software of this server.

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