Who can submit materials?

MRU faculty, students, staff, and other employees may deposit materials in the repository. Works by visiting scholars and non-MRU affiliated authors/co-authors may also be accepted. 

How do I submit materials?

Please see the submission page for details

What type of materials can I submit?

Works produced in the course of research, scholarship, teaching, and learning are accepted in the collection. Items you'll find in the repository include 

Articles	Musical scores	Technical reports
Books/book chapters	Presentations	Videos
Datasets	Reviews	University publications
Images	Sound recordings	Unpublished manuscripts
Maps	Theses/capstone projects	Working papers

What file formats are accepted?

The repository is flexible, but prefers common, well-known file formats to help ensure submissions can be accessed by the widest audience and that files can be preserved. Preferred file types for common items include 

• PDF or PDF/A for academic articles, books, chapters, proceedings, presentations, theses, etc.
• JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, JP2, for basic and high resolution images
• MP3, WAV for audio content
• MP4, MOV, QT, M4V, AVI, MKV, OGG for video content
• MS Office documents are also permitted.

If you are interested in depositing a unique or rare file format, please contact us for assistance.

How will others find my work?

Your work will be findable and accessible by a worldwide audience. The contents of the repository are indexed by the main MRU LibrarySearch, by Google Scholar, and several other services and search engines. The repository can also be searched directly. 

I’ve published an article in a journal. Can I submit my article to the repository?

Most journal publishers will allow some form of your published article to be archived in the repository. Your publication agreement usually outlines these terms, or you can try the SHERPA/RoMEO website to quickly find publishers’ policies regarding copyright and self-archiving. Our team can help, so please contact us and we'll do this work for you.

Will posting my manuscript to the repository affect my ability to publish it later?

Sometimes journals/publishers will not publish content that has appeared online elsewhere. Such policies are constantly changing, so we encourage submitters to check with the journal or publisher about their specific policy.

Does the repository meet funding agency requirements?

The repository will help you meet the open access mandate set forth in many funder mandates, including Canada's Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications. Please consult your funding agreement and the granting agency's policies for specific requirements.

Will my submission be protected by copyright?

If you currently own the rights to your work, you can reinforce those rights through a Creative Commons license, or through standard Canadian copyright protections. In cases where rights are shared with or transfered to a publisher, your copyrights are determined by the existing agreement you have with your publisher.

I’m not sure if I have copyright to a work that I want to deposit. Can you help?

Students looking for information about copyright and depositing their work should review the FAQs provided by the Copyright Advisor.

For faculty, if you have an agreement with a publisher or other agency, that usually tells you under what terms you can deposit items. If the work includes third-party content (e.g., images, audio, video, tables, graphs, charts, or other borrowed works), and you do not have copyright permission to redistribute those works, then you may need to remove that content or seek permission from the copyright holder to incorporate them. If you are unsure of the copyright status of an item, you can contact the Copyright Advisor for guidance. If you know that you do not have copyright clearance, you can also contact copyright holders to request permission to deposit the work.

Can I remove materials from the repository?

Please see the withdrawal and takedown statement for details.

Can I restrict public access to my works?

There are circumstances where open distribution of a work may not be possible because of privacy, ethics, or copyright concerns. If you would like to deposit materials that cannot be made public, please contact us to consult with a repository administrator.

[For students] My project involved the collection of data from human participants. Students in my course received approval for this work from the Student Human Research Ethics Committee (SHREC), rather than submitting individual ethics applications to the Human Research Ethics Board (HREB). Can I submit materials relating to this research to the repository?

No - SHREC approved projects are not eligible for deposit. Please speak to your course instructor if you are unsure if your course project falls into this category. 

Individual student projects that have received ethics approval from HREB can be submitted to the repository.

Where can I get help?

Please contact us with any questions and concerns.