Frequently Asked Questions | The Keep: Institutional Repository of Eastern Illinois University

Author Rights and Terms of Use

Author Rights

Copyright & Permissible Use

By submitting content to The Keep, you are verifying that you hold the copyright (either solely or jointly), or have permission of the copyright holder(s), for the content to be submitted. The copyright for items submitted to The Keep is retained by the creator/copyright holder(s). No copyright is transferred to Eastern Illinois University or Booth Library. However, contributors agree that Eastern Illinois University and Booth Library have a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, display, distribute, transmit, copy, reproduce, archive, or otherwise make accessible the content through The Keep.

Creative Commons – Intellectual Property Rights

All works submitted to The Keep have a Creative Commons license in their record and/or on the work itself. The use of the work is governed by the license selected by the content creator.

The default assigned license in The Keep is BY-NC-ND, meaning that any use of your work must give you credit for the work, and that your work may not be used for commercial purposes or for creating derivative content without your approval.

Authors may opt to select a different Creative Commons license. For more information, visit the Creative Commons License Chooser: https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org.

Open Access

The Keep hosts pre-prints, post-prints, full text articles, book chapters, books, journals, conferences, podcasts, audio files, videos, photos, artwork, data sets, citations, and much more. The Keep is staffed by the Scholarly Communications unit of Booth Library. Our mission is to collaboratively empower the EIU community in the inclusive and equitable expansion of the open access digital footprint of EIU, demonstrating our shared values of innovation, accessibility, community engagement, and global impact.

Consistent with our commitment to equitable access, EIU adopted an Open Access Policy on November 5, 2014, which was revised February 9, 2021. This policy supports and encourages EIU faculty to pursue options that provide free, equitable access to their scholarship and creative works.

Eligibility

Faculty and Staff

All current EIU faculty and staff are eligible to contribute to The Keep while employed at the university. Faculty may contribute content created prior to appointment to their EIU position.

Contributions from faculty emeritus and former staff are also welcome, particularly to the collections of digitally archived materials documenting aspects of EIU history.

Permissible use of previously published scholarly works can be checked by using the Sherpa Romeo database of publisher permissions, reviewing your publisher copyright agreement, or by contacting your publisher directly. Additionally, you may consider open access options for publishing your scholarly work, or request broader permissible use rights from your publisher in the process of assigning your copyright to them.

You can submit content here: Submit Your Work

You will be prompted to log in first.

Students

The Keep encourages submission of student created content. This may include student photos from Greek Life, Residence Hall Associations Registered Student Organization events, capstone projects, research posters, art portfolios, podcasts, and honors papers.

Student submissions will be reviewed by a professor or advisor.

Students retain the copyright and intellectual property rights of content that they have created. See the sections above on Author Rights and Creative Commons licenses for more information.

Depositing of master’s theses is required for completion of degree requirements. Students may opt to embargo their thesis for up to a period of two years, preventing access to the full text content of the thesis. Graduate students should confer with their faculty advisor regarding an embargo period, if any, and this is usually chosen due to grant applications or intention to publish.

Students can submit content on the "Submit Research" page.

Community Contributors

People or corporate entities that are not directly employed by EIU may contribute to The Keep if one of the following criteria is met:

Contributor is an alumnus of EIU and wishes to contribute documents, photos, audio recordings, videos, or more, that is appropriate to EIU archival collections or which provides a historical record of an aspect of EIU history and campus life
Content was created collaboratively with a current EIU student, staff, or faculty member at the time of submission, and the EIU collaborator sponsors the submission to The Keep
Content was created for a conference, event, or scholarly meeting hosted at or sponsored by EIU, or via a hosted conference site associated with The Keep, and for which there is an existing collection of materials in The Keep
Content was commissioned, distributed, or published by an EIU office, center, department, college, or unit
Content was added as part of an approved collection

Community members that wish to submit content may use the "Submit Research" link on The Keep homepage left menu, under the AUTHORS section. You will then be prompted to fill in a simple Request to Submit form, which will be sent to administrators of The Keep.

Reuse, Retention, Removal, and Revision of Content

Reuse

All content in The Keep, unless noted otherwise, is copyrighted to the author or copyright holder(s) and under the BY-NC-ND Creative Commons license. Any posting, reproducing, republishing, distributing, or transmitting of the content in The Keep, beyond personal use or educational fair use (Title 17, §107 U.S.C.), requires permission of the copyright holder(s).

Retention and Removal

Eastern Illinois University reserves the right to make content in The Keep available in perpetuity. Content will be retained and published in The Keep unless significant or unusual concerns involving personal safety or legal concerns regarding copyright, libelous content, or privacy arise.

If a determination is made that content should be removed for the above reasons, the full text of the content will be removed permanently for all users. It should be noted that Google search results will continue to show full text content for approximately one week after removal from the repository, due to web crawler lag; also, a metadata-only record of the removed content will remain in The Keep.

Revision of Content

Documents of Record

Archival content, including course syllabi, and approved deposited master’s theses, are considered “documents of record” and as such are unavailable for revision, except in rare cases of extenuating circumstances, such as name/identity change (see below).

Name Change

The Keep is committed to respecting the rights and identities of authors and to reducing or removing barriers to inclusion. Individuals are encouraged to contact us to inform us of a change of name/identity. We will update all metadata, published content, and associated records under our control. No rationale for the change request is required. We may inquire about the individual’s author citations to ensure the change is adapted effectively.

Accessibility

The Keep provides access to a wide range of digital content, including archival and historical content originally created in analog form. In many cases, this type of content is difficult to use with adaptive or assistive technology such as captioning or screen readers. Booth Library is committed to making the materials it provides as accessible as possible, and ensuring that access is consistent with state and federal requirements. Further information about The Keep and accessibility can be found on the Accessibility Statement page.