General FAQ
- What is the Hiroshima University Institutional Repository (HiR)?
- HiR is a Hiroshima University's institutional digital repository for disseminating and preserving scholarly works created by Hiroshima University staff and students. HiR offers faculty and staff a central location for depositing their research or other scholarly work including journal papers, HU publications, conference materials, research papers and doctoral theses. This HiR purposes are to show scholarly outputs of Hiroshima University and to share information and intellectual content produced by Hiroshima University staff and students with academic society, both inside and outside Hiroshima University.
- Why do we need the HiR?
- HiR maximizes visibility and accessibility of your research, and this is HiR biggest aim. HiR is also contributing to research and scholarly activities by providing gratis materials which are difficult to be obtained. HiR also centralize the maintenance and publication of University member's research output, which will improve university brand-image.
- Who can access works in the HiR?
- Everyone, who have an access to the Internet.
- How will people find my research works?
- There are some routes to the HiR, though search engines such as Google and Yahoo, though specific database comply with OAI-PMH protocol such as JAIRO and OAIster, though a link from CiNii database, though a link resolver via Airway, and through a link from personal or departmental website.
- Why do we need a HiR when we have electronic journals?
- This few years, cost of electronic journals has been increasing. In such a situation, we might cancel our subscription to some electronic journals. The other reason is that there are many researchers and students who are not be able access to your articles in the world. By depositing your publication in HiR, they will be able to access your publication. Isn't it interesting to share your works with them?
- How HiR control the publication quality?
- HiR see that collecting and maintenance all research publication which produced in Hiroshima University and all materials which only exist in Hiroshima University is the most important work. For this reason, HiR is not limiting collection to refereed publication only. However, if the publication has already published in a journal, bibliographic information of the publication (journal title, volume, page, etc) will be displayed so that user can judge quality of the publication.
On Depositing Your Work
- Can I deposit my publication in HiR?
- Yes, if you are staff or student or member of Hiroshima University.
- What material (publication) I can deposit?
- You can deposit electronic files of all kinds of research and scholarly works such as journal articles, conference papers, research papers, books, book chapters, doctoral theses, lecture materials, research data sets. HiR system accepts any file format. However, we recommend the document saved as a secured PDF rather than Word files to prevent plagiarism.。
- How can I deposit a journal article?
- Just send an electronic copy of the article to library@hiroshima-u.ac.jp by e-mail. If the publisher allow, you can send a PDF file of publisher versions, or just send manuscript files in Word, Tex dvi, and image files. HU Library staff can check the copyright information of your articles before deposit.
Please contact tosho-seibi-repo@office.hiroshima-u.ac.jp for more details.
- Can you accept the publisher PDF file?
- It depends on the condition, since some foreign publisher and association study are not allowing their publisher PDF file deposited to repository. In this case, you may send us your manuscript file. There are few association studies which permit their publisher PDF file deposited, for example: IEEE, APS etc. In this case, depositing publisher PDF file is possible. You can check the list of publishers allowing the deposit of their published version PDF in Institutional repositories at: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PDFandIR.html. For association study in Japan, we will take confirmation to each association whenever you deposit your journal article.
- Can you accept the reprint of the article?
- It depends to the condition mentioned above, since reprint of the article is in publisher format.
- Can I deposit memoirs which published by Faculty?
- Yes, you can deposit it after finishing agreement of your copyright on the publication. If you want to continuously deposit your memoirs you may send us your agreement.
- How about memoirs which published in the past?
- You can also deposit your past memoirs publication after finishing agreement of your copyright on the publication. In case of association study's memoirs, we have processed some copyright agreement of a publication which published in past and make it accessible online electronically.
- Can I deposit a doctoral thesis?
- Send an electronic copy and a doctoral thesis agreement by e-mail. If you don't have an electronic copy, send an agreement only. Hiroshima University Library will digitalize your thesis from print version.
- Can I deposit a master thesis?
- Your thesis advisor's signature is required for the master thesis agreement. Send an electronic copy and a master thesis agreement by e-mail. If you don't have an electronic copy, send a print copy and agreement only. Hiroshima University Library will digitalize your thesis from print version.
- Can I deposit movie file of my lecture?
- Yes, please contact tosho-seibi-repo@office.hiroshima-u.ac.jp for further information.
- How can I send a large file?
- In case of a file larger than 10MB, split it into less than 10MB file. Or you can save it into recording media such as CD-R or DVD and send to Hiroshima University Library Institutional Repository Section by mail.
- Can you accept Tex file?
- Yes, but we prefer dvi file rather than tex source file.
- Can I send a text file and image files separately?
- Yes, HU Library will convert them to one PDF file. However, we will not make any layout editing (including inserting image into the text).
- What if I don't want to deposit my article? It's different from the published one.
- It is OK whether you deposit your article or not, as it is not mandate, however if you have the files which is same as publisher version excluding layout, or the article that publishers allowing the deposit of their published version PDF in Institutional repositories, please send them to us.
On Copyright
- What about the copyright?
- Please see here
- Should I get permission from my co-author to deposit our research article in the HiR?
- In case the copyright of the article belong to the author, it is necessary to get your co-author permission to deposit the article. Otherwise, if the publisher has the copyright, you don't have to do so.
- Who will check the copyright condition relating to my work?
- HU Library staff will undertake all copyright checking of your work.
- Do repositories encourage plagiarism? If so, do you have any plan for plagiarism prevention?
- An institutional repository is certainly a plagiarizable resource. However, the high visibility of articles supports the ready detection of plagiarism. It is much easier to detect plagiarism in an open, on-line environment than in a paper-only world. In addition to this, we convert a text and image files to secured PDF file that is prevented from copying and editing.
- If I deposit a pre-print article, I worry on plagiarism…
- You may deposit the article after the article published.
