Submitting a paper
Publications in the Victoria University Research Repository (VURR) include peer-reviewed journal articles, theses and other materials of research and scholarly natures.
There are a number of guidelines related to copyright and the University's policy that are important to consider when submitting material to the Research Repository.
Contributing to the Research Repository
Material which represents publicly available research and scholarly output of the University can be submitted to the Victoria University Research Repository.
It is a mandatory requirement that refereed research papers written by VU educational and research staff be submitted to research repository. Other material must satisfy the requirements of the research repository policy & guidelines to be accepted and made publicly accessible.
The creator of an original work is considered the 'author'. Papers which have been co-authored with colleagues from other universities or institutions should also be deposited.
Current VU staff and higher degree research candidates may upload their complete set of publications, regardless of where they were working at the time of publication of their papers.
How to submit
The University has implemented a research publication system called Elements, which gathers information on your research publications.
Once you have claimed a publication you can deposit it into the Research Repository by clicking on the deposit icon from within Elements. You can attach a full-text copy of your publications at the same time.
For assistance or training in using Elements, contact the Research Librarian or your college librarian. These details are available on the VU Intranet (requires VU login when off campus).
You can also send an email to the Research Repository team at for assistance.
Acceptable formats
Materials can be accepted in the following formats:
- PDF (the preferred format)
- HTML
- Postscript
- MS PowerPoint
- MS Word
- Image JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF
- Video MPEG, QuickTime, AVI
- URL link to the accessible full text content where it resides on another website.
Theses
Submission of theses to VURR is coordinated by the Graduate Research Centre (GRC):
- Qualifying students must complete a VURR Submission form as part of the GRC thesis deposit process.
- Students must submit three copies of their thesis, including one for the Library, which will normally be in electronic format.
- The Library copy should preferably be in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF format and on a CD.
- Students lodging an electronic copy of a thesis with a completed VURR submission form agree to allow the Library to publish the material in electronic format.
- Restriction of access to full text of submitted theses may be possible in specific cases. In order for access to the full text to be restricted, contact must be initiated by the author with the GRC and a Restricted Access to a Thesis form completed and submitted. The GRC will be responsible for approving restrictions and will advise the Library as appropriate.
Quality control
All submissions are assessed for compliance with the policy before they are made available for open access.
The Library ensures the metadata of submissions meets established metadata standards in the Research Repository.
Where authors or researchers maintain home pages, links should be provided to the article or document that has been submitted to research repository as the authoritative VU service.
Pre-print versus post-print
The repository policy characterises pre-prints as being the version of the paper before peer-review and post-prints as being the version of the paper after peer-review, with revisions having been made.
This means that in terms of content, post-prints are the articles as published. However, in terms of appearance this might not be the same as the published article, as publishers often reserve for themselves their own arrangement of type-setting and formatting. Typically, this means that the author cannot use the publisher-generated PDF, but must make their own PDF version for submission to a repository.
For more information on this particular definition of 'pre-print' and 'post-print' visit Sherpa/Romeo. Sherpa/Romeo is a project that collects information from publishers regarding their policies in relation to open access repositories. In order to maintain consistency, VU uses the definition of 'pre-print' and 'post-print' as described by Sherpa.