Do you have a copy of the work you wish to submit to Scholarly Commons? Good, then you have everything you need to make a submission! We have tried to make the process of submitting to Scholarly Commons as painless as possible. I’ll lay out some guidelines here and suggestions to get you started.
In order to submit you will first need to register with Scholarly Commons. This will allow you to access the “My Scholarly Commons” page and the site admins will be able to assign you a collection to work with.
Describing is the most important part of submitting an item because it makes your submission searchable not only in our database but throughout the web. We have included the most common metadata fields in our description page and you should be able to locate all the information you need on the first or last page of your paper or presentation. Each field also offers a short explanation or you can contact the administrators if you have questions. If you are submitting several items for a group, try to remain consistent in the metadata you include so that these items will all turn up when a search is conducted!
The next description page is a little less defined. You can include additional information about your submission or include special keywords to make your item more visible to users. The series and report numbers can help users differentiate between similar or consecutive works or presentations.
Now you have to actually upload your document. We accept a wide variety of format types. You can also place an embargo on your item if you want to delay access to it. This may be required by your publisher; be sure to check their website or Sherpa/Romeo for more information.
Finally you’ll have the chance to look over all your metadata (descriptors) and documents and verify that the submission is correct.
With Open repository you have two licensing options. The First is a Creative Commons License which is completely optional and contains various options as to the extent of the license. Read more about this at creativecommons.org. The second is the GRU standard licensing agreement. You must agree to this before your submission can appear in our repository; however, if you choose at the end of your submission to not agree to our license your record will not be erased. You can access it at any time under “My Scholarly Commons” until you agree to the license and complete your submission.
And that’s all there is to it! Your submission will be reviewed for metadata standards and consistency before appearing on our site. You can browse Scholarly Commons or look for more information on our home page.
Detailed instructions are available from the Scholarly Commons website as a Quick Guide.
