SOAR Community & Collection Policies

(Definitions, Rights, and Responsibilities)

 

1.0 What is a SOAR Community?

 

A SOAR “Community” is an administrative unit, such as a school, department, college, institute, or center, at the Wichita State University that produces scholarly content, has long-term stability and can assume responsibility for setting Community policy.  Each community must be able to assign a coordinator who can work with SOAR staff at the Wichita State University Libraries.

Individuals faculty, researchers, or groups wishing to establish a SOAR community that do not fall into this definition, can create sub-communities within the university-wide Faculty and Researchers Community.

 

1.1 What responsibilities does a SOAR Community take on?

• Makes decisions about community and collection definitions

• Arrange for submission and description of content

• identify a SOAR Community coordinator within the community, typically a member of the faculty or departmental administrator

• Notify WSU Libraries of organizational changes affecting collections

• Reply to annual reconfirmation of community information

• Understand and observe the University Libraries policies relevant to SOAR, and educate community submitters regarding those policies

• Clear copyright for items submitted when copyright owner is other than author(s) or WSU

• Decide upon a submission workflow for each collection

• Identify a SOAR support resource, typically the departmental computer support representatives as needed

 

1.2 What rights does the SOAR Community retain?

• Decide policy regarding collections/content to be submitted (within SOAR guidelines)

• Decide who may submit content within the community (within SOAR guidelines)

• Limit access to content at the item level to WSU

• Remove items and collections (as outlined within “Withdrawal Policy”)

• Approve addition or elimination of sub-communities

 

 

1.3 What is a SOAR Collection Coordinator?

• A SOAR Community can host numerous collections.  Each collection will have its own coordinator(s) who will oversee the building of the collection. 

 

1.4 What responsibilities does a SOAR Collection Coordinator take on?

• Arrange for submission and description of content

• Decide upon a submission workflow for each collection

 

1.5 What rights does a SOAR Collection Coordinator retain?

• Decide who may submit content to a collection

• Decide what submissions to add to the collection

• Customize interface to collection (to the extent supported by the software)

 

1.6 What is a SOAR Contributor?

• A SOAR contributor is author, collection owner, editor, or curator who submits a document into a SOAR database.

 

1.7 What responsibilities does a SOAR Contributor take on?

•  Ensure that he/she either hold copyright for items submitted or has obtained appropriate copyright permission for items submitted when he/she is not copyright holder

• Ensure that the items submitted meet the SOAR Content Guidelines

 

1.8 What rights does a SOAR Contributor retain?

• Copyright for a work is retained by copyright holder and does not revert to SOAR or the Wichita State University

• Contributor has a right to limit access to content at an item level to world wide, WSU-only or to specific individuals or groups (if Collection Owner/Coordinator agree with this)

 

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2.0 What are Wichita State University Libraries’ responsibilities?

• Retain and maintain content submitted to SOAR

• Distribute content according to access levels determined by the submitter

• Preserve content using standard preservation techniques

• Provide information on SOAR and other electronic scholarly communication research

• Notify communities of significant changes to content, e.g. format migration

• If Wichita State University Libraries ceases to support SOAR, return collections to existing communities and transfer to University Archives for consideration collections of communities that have ceased to exist

 

2.1 What are Wichita State University Libraries’ rights?

• Amend metadata for items in SOAR

• Refuse or de-accession items or collections under certain circumstances- as outlined in “Withdrawal Policy”

• Renegotiate terms of original agreement with Communities

• Perform appraisal for long-term archiving when Communities cease to exist or within 30 years of the creation of a collection

• Move Collections to reflect current Agreement between Wichita State University Libraries and Communities

• Migrate items if format is in danger of obsolescence

• Set quotas (size of files, number of items) to determine what constitutes free service and after which point to charge a fee for storage

• Charge fee for activities requiring extensive centralized support from Wichita State University Libraries (e.g. digitization of print items)

 

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3.0 What are Wichita State University’s responsibilities?

• Set policy at the University level regarding issues that affect SOAR, e.g. copyright rules, thesis requirements, etc.

• Support functions mandated by existing policies.

 

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