Policies

Scope

Submissions to Digital Commons should be scholarly in nature. Deposits are intended to be permanent contributions to the repository; works that are in progress or ephemeral in nature are not recommended for contribution. The Montana Tech Library determines eligibility of materials for inclusion in Digital Commons collections, and submitting work does not guarantee publication.

Examples of Eligible Materials:

  • Journal articles and essays
  • Conference proceedings, papers, posters and presentations
  • White papers and technical reports
  • Research reports from grant-funded projects with Open Access requirements
  • Academic lectures
  • Books/book chapters
  • Graduate theses and dissertations
  • Undergraduate research (senior design projects, capstone projects, honors theses, etc.)

Student Scholarship

Students may submit work to Digital Commons under the following conditions:

  • It must be scholarly in nature.
  • The submission must be approved by a Montana Tech faculty member.
  • The student and the faculty member acknowledge that some or all of the content in the student submission may constitute an educational record under the Family Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. §1232g). As such, a faculty member cannot require a student to submit scholarship to Digital Commons.
  • The student and faculty member must sign a Student Submission Agreement Form.

Graduate students submitting thesis or non-thesis papers should follow the Montana Tech Electronic Thesis Protocol.

Copyright

See this page for more information on Copyright.

Submission Agreements

Preservation and File Formats

The Montana Tech Library attempts to provide perpetual access and to preserve all material submitted to Digital Commons @ Montana Tech. The Library currently stores submissions in the following file formats:

  • Images: TIFF, PNG
  • Audio: MP3 (DRM-free),WAV, AVI
  • Video: MP4/MPV
  • Data: XML, CSV
  • Text: PDF/A

The Library will attempt to migrate submissions to these preferred formats, but if alternative file formats are submitted that cannot be migrated to a preferred format, the Library cannot guarantee continued access due to unforeseen technology changes.

Withdrawing Materials

The Library will withdraw materials upon receipt of a written request by the author/creator. If a request is made by an individual or entity other than the author/creator, evidence of Copyright ownership must be provided.

Open Access

The Library is committed to open access content. For this reason, the Library does not accept citation-only submissions, except in the case where full-text access is retroactively revoked or challenged.

Processing Timeline

Given limited resources, the wide variety of submission formats, and the time and effort involved in validating copyright clearance, the minimum timeframe that the Library can commit to posting materials on Digital Commons is 10 business days.

Audio and video files should be submitted in a finalized form. Minor edits may be made at the Library staff’s discretion.