Approved by UL order No. 1/113 on 11.04.2017

1. General Provisions

1.1. The University of Latvia (hereinafter –UL) E-resource Repository Policy is based on UL’s Open Access Policy.

1.2. The UL E-resource Repository (hereinafter – Repository) Policy defines its scope, tasks, responsibilities, and legal, maintenance, and development requirements.

1.3. The Repository aims to promote UL’s international visibility and provide global, free online access to UL’s scientific and research achievements, thereby enhancing their dissemination, reuse, impact, and citation.

1.4. The Repository ensures an Open Access platform for the permanent preservation, access, and online dissemination of research results.

1.5. The Repository’s structure is designed to clearly reflect UL’s structural units’ research results, publishing activities, and digitized resources.

1.6. The Repository may include research results from collaborative projects between institutions or publications from other institutions, if stipulated by cooperation agreements.

2. Repository Policy

2.1. Content:

2.1.1. The Repository includes UL staff’s research results in digital (electronic) format:

2.1.1.1. Journal articles and other periodicals;

2.1.1.2. Monographs and books;

2.1.1.3. Chapters of monographs/books;

2.1.1.4. Conference materials;

2.1.1.5. Educational materials;

2.1.1.6. Doctoral dissertations;

2.1.1.7. Master's and bachelor's thesis, and other student works;

2.1.1.8. Research reports and data;

2.1.1.9. Video materials;

2.1.1.10. Images and other formats.

2.1.2. Full texts and metadata must be deposited for all publications accepted for publication that are:

2.1.2.1. Developed under EU, Latvian state, or LU-funded projects;

2.1.2.2. Included in peer-reviewed scientific publications (collections, conference materials).

2.1.3. The author’s final manuscript or publisher’s version must be deposited. If it is not permitted to submit those versions, a pre-publication version may be submitted if available to author and allowed by the publisher.

2.1.4. It is recommended to submit also the resarch data on which the publication is based.

2.2. Exceptions:

2.2.1. Research results intended for commercial purposes;

2.2.2. Research containing confidential or secret information;

2.2.3. Culturally sensitive materials;

2.2.4. Materials conflicting with the author’s legal obligations towards co-authors or other collaborators or third-party’s legal rights.

2.3. Copyright:

2.3.1. Repository is maintaineded in accordance to Latvian Copyright Law and UL regulations;

2.3.2. Authors must ensure that all the necessary third-party copyright permissions are acquired before depositing the material;

2.3.3. Copyright holders retain their legal rights to deposited materials;

2.3.4. Guidelines and publisher policies are available on the Repository website.

2.4. Access:

2.4.1. Materials are freely accessible via the Repository website and search engines (Google, BASE, OpenAIRE, OAIster, etc.);

2.4.2. All materials include bibliographic metadata for harvesting and indexing;

2.4.3. UL mandates that all the materials have to be deposited according to the Open Access principles whenever it is permitted by the regulations of the Copyright Law and license agreements. If it is not possible, detailed metadata have to be submitted, providing the location of the original (for example a link to an online database), and choosing one of the following access options to the full text file:

2.4.3.1. Embargo period – access to the full text is closed for up to 6 months (12 months for social sciences / humanities publications);

2.4.3.2. Restricted access (e.g., UL/faculty/institute staff only);

2.4.3.3. Closed access (full text available only to author/uploader/research group).

2.4.4. Access may be restricted if:

2.4.4.1. Publisher prohibits Open Access;

2.4.4.2. Publisher sets an embargo period;

2.4.4.3. Author awaits publisher’s permission for Open Access.

2.5. Submission:

2.5.1. Publications may be deposited by authors themselves or other authorized persons (e.g. copyright holders or their representatives);

2.5.2. Publication can be submitted through:

2.5.2.1. Mandatory deposit (self-archiving). All LU researcher publications from 2017 onward must be deposited once they are accepted for publication or it can be presumed that they are is accepted for publication:

2.5.2.1.1. Authors or their representatives perform self-archiving;

2.5.2.1.2. Dissertations and student theses are imported from LUIS;

2.5.2.2. Deposit of digitized materials: in accordance with Copyright Law digitised copies of printed materils may be deposited in special collections;

2.5.2.3. Publication of new original articles, research reports, or other materials.

2.5.4. Each item must include metadata compliant with international standards (Dublin Core):

2.5.3.1. Mandatory fields: author, title, publication date, language code (ISO), document type, keywords, identifier (ISSN/ISBN, DOI, URI, etc.). Publications without Open Access to full-text must include abstracts in Latvian and English;

2.5.3.2. Each document must be linked to one or more thematic fields from the Repository’s classification system.

2.5.4. Accepted file formats are:

2.5.4.1. PDF (pdf) (scanned PDF documents must have a resolution of at least 300 dpi and support automatic full-text search (have OCR text embedded);

2.5.4.2. ODF (odt, ods, odp);

2.5.4.3. HTML (htm, html);

2.5.4.4. XML (xml);

2.5.5.5. Text (txt, asc);

2.5.5.6. JPG (jpeg, jpg, .jpe jfif, .jfi, .jif), PNG (png), TIFF (tiff, tif);

2.5.6.7. WAV (wav), AIFF (aiff, aif, aifc);

2.5.6.8. MPEG (mpeg, mpg, mpe) and other formats.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

3.1. UL staff (authors) must only submit documents they are legally allowed to publish, in accordance with applicable laws and author-publisher agreements. Before archiving a published work in Repository submitter must make sure that he has acquired the necessary rights in accordance with publishers policy regarding self-archiving of published works in Open Access repositories (in accordance with author-publisher agreement).

3.2. Researchers obligation is to deposit their publications in Repository as soon as possible.

3.3. Repository administrators assign rights to submit the publication to a specific collection. Administrators retain rights to approve or reject submissions based on policy compliance.

3.4. UL Study Department is responsible for collecting dissertations and student thesis from LUIS in accordance with LU study agreements and copyright regulations.

3.5. UL Library:

3.5.1. Manages daily operations, structure, content, and metadata quality of Repository;

3.5.2. Trains and advises users;

3.5.3. Oversees implementation of UL's Open Access Policy.

3.6. UL IT Department:

3.6.1. Is responsible for importing dissertations and student thesis from LUIS to Repository;

3.6.2. Updates software and ensures its compliance with copyright, including its compliance with Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting resource planning;

3.6.3. Ensures security (integrity, confidentiality, authorized access) of Repository;

3.6.4. Verifies legality of Repostory’s use and authenticates users by using the user name of UL information systems;

3.6.5. Is responsible for maintenance of hardware, network infrastructure, backups, and software updates un upgrades.