A reliable archive for your research

The HKUST Institutional Repository (IR) is managed by library professionals to provide open and perpetual access to your research output. Documents are safely stored in the Library server. Hyperlinks to your work will stay valid even if the database platform is migrated or upgraded.

Each document has a precise and persistent url, which is handy for communication with your collaborators, publishers, conference organizers, and the like.

Disseminating non-published research

The IR provides a dissemination channel for works that are not going through traditional publishing. Working papers, seminar presentations, and other scholarly work are welcomed for submission to the IR.

One click to your research portfolio

You may use a script in the following format to access all your works in the IR:

http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/ir-author.pl?lastname+firstname

e.g. http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/ir-author.pl?chanson+samuel

e.g. http://library.ust.hk/cgi/db/ir-author.pl?chang+chih-chen

This script serves as a key to open your research portfolio, directly and quickly accessing the full-text of your works. As we attempt to standardize UST authors' names, you may first check your name entry by browsing authors before constructing the script.

Distribution rights

When you deposit documents in the IR, you are required to grant HKUST the non-exclusive distribution rights. Such rights in no way prevents you from publishing the work in a research journal or distributing it in any other fashion. You retain full copyright of the work.

Published articles and publishers' policies

Archiving your papers in the IR does not conflict with your submission to journal publishers.

Many publishers let you retain certain self-archiving rights while asking you to transfer your copyright to them. The RoMEO Publisher's Copyright Listings summarizes many of such policies. The following is based on the RoMEO list:

Publishers that allow archiving published version at an institutional repository

• American Institute of Physics (AIP)
• American Physical Society (APS)
• American Society for Cell Biology
• Cambridge University Press (12 months embargo)
• Hindawi
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)

Publishers that allow archiving pre-referred or post-referred version at an institutional repository

• American Mathematical Society (AMS)
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Elsevier
• Emerald
• Institute of Physics (IOP)
• International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE)
• Optical Society of America (OSA)
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)

If a paper already in the IR is to be published by a publisher which prohibits such self-archiving, you may request to withdraw the paper from the IR.

You are encouraged to negotiate with publishers so as not to give up your copyright and distribution rights. To protect your interest, you should manage the rights to your work in a manner that allows the broadest possible access. At a minimum, you should retain self-archiving rights and rights for personal educational use, and avoid granting an exclusive long-term license that extends beyond first publication. For the publisher's part, a rights management arrangement that grants the publisher exclusivity for first publication should prove sufficient to enable the publisher to earn a reasonable return on its investment and ensure the journal's viability.

The IR is intended to complement, not compete with the existing journal publishing system. The editorial and referee process of scholarly publishers plays a crucial role in scholarly communication that cannot be supplanted by an institutional repository. However, the IR can serve to register work with a date stamp and establish priority of ideas and intellectual property. The Repository can greatly increase the exposure a work will receive.

Versions

An article goes through different phases from its draft to the final published, definitive version:

• Pre-refereed versions: the drafts submitted to the publisher; also known as preprints.
• Post-refereed version: the final version that is ready to be published; also known as postprints.
• Publisher's version: the published version as it appears in the journal, usually with a copyright statement, citation and page numbers printed on the pages.

The first two versions are "pre-published versions".

Articles in the IR may be archived as different versions. To differentiate a pre-published version and the final published version of the same paper, a stamp is added to the pdf file in the IR.

Links to published versions are provided in many cases.

New Submission

You may use the online submission form to send your work to the IR. Library staff will process and add it within a few days. If electronic files are not available, you may contact the Library Reference Counter (x6760) or send email to lbir@ust.hk to arrange for your submission. Library staff will scan the printed copy and create a PDF file upon request.

Revised Versions

The IR treats any revised versions and the first draft as separate records. You are encouraged to file a submission form for every update that is to be archived. However, they may choose to REPLACE the previous version if it is not a published item (i.e. a journal article or a book chapter). In this case, the revision would bear the same handle number (e.g. http://hdl.handle.net/1783.1/5678) as the previous one. To replace an existing document, email your request to lbir@ust.hk. See also the following withdrawal policy.

Withdrawal

HKUST Library foresees that there may be times when it will be necessary to remove items from the IR. It has been decided that when specifically requested to do so by the author, items will be removed from view. But, to retain the historical record, such transactions will be noted in the metadata record. Since any Repository item that has existed at some time may have been cited, we will always supply a "tombstone" when the item is requested, which will provide a withdrawal statement in place of the link to the object. The metadata should be visible, but not searchable. These items will be made unavailable for metadata harvesting.

For any question about the Institutional Repository, contact your subject librarians or the Institutional Repository Coordinator.