Frequently Asked Questions


Why should I put my work into University of Bolton Institutional Repository (UBIR)?

UBIR is a showcase for research. Depositing research in a repository such as UBIR not only enhances scholarly communication between institutions, but also within the University of Bolton as you will perhaps gain a more complete view of what other research goes on in your own institution. Moreover, "Online articles are more highly cited because of easier availability". (Lawrence, Nature, 2001, 411:521).

As well as enhanced visibility within the University of Bolton, research deposited in UBIR is also available through services such as OAIster, a cross-searching, multi-repository harvesting service. UBIR is also indexed by most search engines.

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Should I be concerned about quality control/peer review?

Depositing articles in a repository such as UBIR does not in any way preclude you from publishing your research in academic journals. The process of peer review will not be compromised by the archiving of research in repositories; archiving in repositories is complementary to peer review publishing.

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Who is eligible to deposit work into UBIR?

All current University of Bolton academics and researchers are welcome to deposit into UBIR.

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I've written a paper with colleagues from another institution. Can this be deposited?

Absolutely. All we ask is that one or more author is from the University of Bolton. We do ask, however, that you check with your colleagues that it is okay for you to deposit the work into UBIR.

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I work with a school as well as a research centre. Can my work appear in both places?

Yes. Just let us know where you would like to see it and we will make sure that this happens.

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How do get my work into UBIR?

The UBIR Team offers two ways to get your work into the repository: mediated deposit and self-archiving. Mediated deposit means that we will do the work on your behalf; self-archiving means that you can have control of the deposit of your work and actually do the work yourself.

If you wish the UBIR to deposit the work on you behalf, send the articles in electronic form to along with the following information:

  • Author(s).
  • Title of article.
  • Page numbers, if known.
  • Year, volume and issue.
  • Journal.
  • Publisher.
  • DOI (Digital Object Identifier), if available.
  • Collection(s) in e-space to which you would like your work to be submitted.

Alternatively, if you only have a print copy of the article, UBIR will be able to scan it for you. E-mail for further details.

You may chose to self-archive. If you wish to self-archive, create an account at http://digitalcommons.bolton.ac.uk/. Then follow our guide to 'Depositing your research in the University of Bolton Institutional Repository'.

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How can I find out how many times my paper has been viewed?

Statistics on the number of times a paper in UBIR has been viewed are available. Authors who have submitted an article to UBIR will receive a monthly report on their articles' downloads.

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Will publishers allow me to deposit my research?

Most publishers allow the archiving of research in repositories such as UBIR. However, terms and conditions vary between publishers, and although most do allow archiving, many will only allow the final, author version rather than the formatted, publisher version.

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How can I be sure that putting my work into e-space won't be a breach of copyright?

The UBIR Teams takes copyright matters very seriously, and take every step to ensure that a breach of copyright will not occur.

The first step in investigating copyright is to check the SHERPA RoMEO database.This database lists most of the major academic publishers and several society publishers. Based on the information provided by the publishers themselves, the RoMEO database allows us to ascertain what the publishers will and will not allow. In the event of any part of the terms and conditions listed by the RoMEO database being unclear, e-space staff will contact the publisher in question to seek further clarification. For publishers not listed by the RoMEO database, e-space staff will contact the publishers.

If our investigations reveal that it is not possible to include full-text within e-space, then, quite simply, we will not include it.

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What can I do to avoid problems with copyright?

When submitting research for publication, you might consider not signing away the copyright on your research. By retaining the copyright, you will negate many of the problems associated with archiving research in repositories. However, we fully appreciate that publication is your priority, and we understand that in some cases, retaining copyright might jeopardise publication. You might choose to talk to publishers whose policies you consider are particularly restrictive. You could also check your copyright agreements, and you are welcome to contact the publisher first before you come to us.

The easiest way to avoid many of the problems associated with copyright and archiving in repositories is to keep an electronic copy of a Word version of your research, whether that happens to be the peer-reviewed, accepted version or an earlier version. Many, many publishers will allow these to be archived, so don't just delete the file as soon as the article is published: send it to us!

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I don't have electronic versions of old working papers that I'd like to include in the repository. Is it okay to scan the printed page to a PDF file?

Yes--scanning printed pages is a great way to create PDF files for inclusion in the repository. There are two ways to scan a page: using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or scanning the page as an image. Making OCR scans requires careful proofreading and loses the original formatting of the documents. Image scans cannot be searched. The best solution takes advantage of both of these methods. Many software applications allow for the OCR capture of image scans. When documents are scanned this way, users see the image scan but search the full-text of the document. This is the preferred method for scanning documents for the repository.

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When I copy and paste abstracts into the Submit form, some text is missing, quotes look odd, or strange characters appear in the abstract. What's going on?

When copying abstracts from a word processing file or a PDF file, and pasting the text into the submission form, you are taking text from an environment that may support fonts and special characters (like symbols or "smart quotes"). Because the abstract is intended to be presented on the web, the format of the abstract needs to be reduced to plain text with no fonts or special characters. We recommend the following changes to keep your titles and abstracts legible on the web:

  • Change "smart" single and double quotes to straight quotes.
  • Change an ellipsis to three periods (...)
  • Change em- and en-dashes to hypens.

If you would like to use bold and italic in your abstracts, you may do so using the corresponding HTML codes. If submitting an abstract in HTML format, please be sure to select the corresponding option on the submission form.

The following HTML tags are recognized by the system and may be used to format an abstract (use lowercase tags):

How to include HTML tags

HTML tags
<p> - paragraph
<p>This is the first paragraph.</p>
<p>This is the second paragraph.</p>

This is the first paragraph.

This is the second paragraph.

<br> - line break
<p>This is a line of text with a linebreak here. <br> This is text after</p>

This is a line of text with a linebreak here.
This is text after
<strong> - strong/bold
<strong>bold text</strong>

bold text

<em> - italics/emphasis
<em>italicized text</em>

italicized text

<sub> - subscript
Text with <sub>subscript</sub>

Text with subscript
<sup> - superscript
Text with <sup>superscript</sup>

Text with superscript

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How do I include accents and special characters in the abstracts and titles?

The repository software supports the ISO 8859-1 character set (this includes the numbers 0-9, upper- and lower-case letters A-Z, and standard English punctuation). Although you may take advantage of the complete character set, we recommend you consider not using special characters as these may inhibit user searches, both on the web and on the site.

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How do I revise a submission?

To revise a submission:

  1. From the My Account page click Submission Management.
  2. In the list of pending submissions, click the title of the article you want to change. (If you are revising a published submission, click on the Published Submissions link in the top left and select the title of the article from the resulting list.)
  3. Click Revise Submission from the list in the top left.
  4. Enter your changes in the Revise Submission form, and click Submit at the bottom of the page to submit your changes. (You only need to modify the portion of the form that corresponds to the changes you wish to make.)
  5. If you are revising a pending submission, you may continue with the publication steps if appropriate. If you are revising a publised submission, be sure to click the option to Update the site to incorporate your changes to the web pages.

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How can I submit a multi-part file, such as multiple chapters for a book?

Combine all the sections together as one Microsoft Word file or PDF file and submit that.

To make one PDF file from multiple files, open the first PDF file, then choose Document>Insert Pages from Acrobat's menus to insert the second file (indicate it should go after the last page of the first file), and repeat for all documents. The result will be one compound PDF file which may then be submitted.

If you feel that the one large PDF file might be too large for some people to download, we suggest that you submit the consolidated file as the full text of the article, and then upload the separate chapters or sections of the document as Associated Files. These files will appear on the web page alongside the complete document. For more information about uploading associated files, see below.

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Can I post related files (sound clips, data sets, etc.) alongside the published article?

Yes. The bepress system refers to these supplementary items as Associated Files. You will be prompted to submit Associated Files when you upload your submissions. The name of the files you upload will appear on the web site along with your short description of it. Viewers must have the necessary software to open your files; that is not provided by the bepress system.

Please be sure that there are no permissions issues related to use of the associated material. Sometimes, especially with images, you must write a letter seeking permission to use the material before it can be posted.

Also note that where possible, items such as images, charts and tables that are referenced in the document (or otherwise an integral part of the document) should be included directly in the article itself and not posted just as associated files.

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Can I post a reprint from a journal?

It depends on what the journal allows, which is usually specified in their agreement with the author. If it would not violate copyright to post the reprint on your repository site, you're welcome to do so. Permissions for many publishers can be found at SHERPA RoMEO.

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A working paper in our repository site has been published in a slightly revised form in a journal. What should I do?

Many journals do not have any restrictions on working papers that preceded an article, especially if substantial revisions were made. The faculty member should check his/her author agreement with the journal to confirm that there is no problem with leaving the working paper on the site. The repository would constitute noncommercial use.

It is a good idea to include the citation to the published article on the cover page for the repository working paper. To add the citation:

  1. From your My Account page, click Submission Management.
  2. Choose the option at the top of the screen to view the Posted Submissions.
  3. Locate the paper in the list at the bottom of the screen, and click the title.
  4. Click Revise Submission, scroll to the bottom of the revision form to the Comments section, and enter your comment there. Click the button at the bottom of the page to submit the revision.
  5. Click the Update link to update the article so that the new comment is visible to readers.
  6. If you need to remove the full text from the site, click the Remove Submission link in the sidebar, and click the confirmation button to remove the submission and notify the author.

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What do I do if I have a query about my submission?

If you have a query about your submission, please contact the UBIR team at .

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