Publication Server OPUS Trier UAS

The publication server of Trier University of Applied Sciences is a document management system that can be used by members of the three university campuses to publish academically relevant documents electronically (e.g. technical papers, working papers or theses).

In terms of organisation and content, the publication server is managed by the libraries of the main campus and the environmental campus. The storage, archiving and backup of the data is in the hands of the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz).

Using the publication server offers a number of advantages:

• No costs:
  Publishing your document involves no costs and very little time for you.
• Spreading:
  As an Open Access publication, your document is accessible worldwide to all interested parties at any time and free of charge.
• Searchability:
  Your document can be freely searched and found via the publication server or various search engines.isibility:
• The metadata exchange with OAI services increases the visibility of your document (OAI = Open Archives Initiative, interest group with the aim of making electronic publications easier to find).
• Archiving:
  Your document is stored permanently.
• Naming:
  Your document is assigned a Uniform Resource Name (URN) and thus receives a unique and permanent designation.

In addition, the publication server allows you to search for the publications of other university members.

The document server is operated on the basis of the software OPUS 4 - an open source software under GNU General Public License.

OPUS documentation: opus4.kobv.de.

In principle, all current or former members of the three campuses of Trier University of Applied Sciences can use the publication server to publish scientifically relevant documents free of charge.

The members include:

• professors
• lecturers
• research assistants
• other full-time employees
• teaching staff for special tasks
• enrolled students
• academic and non-academic staff in private employment who work full-time at the university as staff of the university within third-party funded projects.

Documents can be published,

• in which at least one member of Trier University of Applied Sciences is involved as author (corresponding or non-corresponding),
• whose contents are of lasting interest for research and teaching or are connected with Trier University of Applied Sciences in a special way,
• whose publication in Open Access does not violate existing rights of use.

Permitted document types include:

• working papers,
• reports, e.g. research reports, final project reports, etc.,
• books or book chapters,
• university publications, e.g. master's theses, dissertations, etc.,
• conference publications,
• teaching materials and lecture texts,
• preprints,
• reviews,
• journal issues and articles, incl. editorials etc.

Please contact the library if you would like to publish a document that cannot be assigned to the document types provided for selection in OPUS (mail to: openaccess[at]hochschule-trier.de).

The publication server of Trier University of Applied Sciences is currently only intended for the publication of electronic full-text documents in Open Access.

The inclusion of pure literature references or full texts with restricted access is not intended, at least for the time being.

Documents uploaded by academics or other specialist staff at Trier University of Applied Sciences do not undergo any quality control of the content by the library. Only the bibliographic information is checked and supplemented if necessary.

In the case of student works, the library consults with the specialist staff at Trier UAS. Final theses, for example, are only released after consultation with the supervisor.

The library reserves the right to refuse publication in justified individual cases.

Way 1: Use the service of the library

The library will upload your document and enter the metadata for you. Send your document to openaccess(at)hochschule-trier.de.

Open points will be clarified in consultation with you (legal issues, keyword allocation, etc.).

Way 2: Use OPUS publishing function

1. Make sure that you are not infringing the rights of third parties by publishing your document in Open Access. (If you are unclear about your publisher's regulations for a planned second publication, you can find out about them on Sherpa Romeo).
2. Prepare your document for publication:
   
   Format: PDF. Contact the library if you would like to upload docx or xslx files instead, for example as supplementary materials.
   Name: no longer than 50 characters; permissible characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, underscore and hyphen (no umlauts, brackets, spaces or special characters).
   Size: no larger than 600 MB. In case of larger files, please contact the library.
   Rights management (DRM): not copy or access protected.
3. Call up the publication server, select the menu item "Publish" and use the input masks. No registration or login is required.
4. After you have provided your document with bibliographic information (metadata) and uploaded it, it goes through an internal check. The metadata are checked by the library and supplemented if necessary. In the case of student work, the academic staff of the university will be consulted.
5. Within a few days, the library will send you a declaration of consent by e-mail in which you grant the library a simple user right to your work. As soon as you have signed and returned the declaration, your document can be released.

As a matter of principle, there is no provision for subsequently modifying or deleting documents. This takes into account the idea that the documents published via the publication server should be permanently citable and comparable with printed publications.

If you wish to modify an OPUS publication, the modified document must be uploaded as a new document in OPUS. This corresponds to a new edition of a printed publication. The original version of the publication remains on the server and can still be accessed.  

The deletion of an OPUS publication is only possible in justified individual cases (e.g. legal violations).

Please remember:

• All publications on OPUS must comply with the provisions of copyright law (UrhG).
• As a user, you are responsible for complying with the law yourself and may be held liable in the event of misuse. Trier University of Applied Sciences accepts no liability for the content of documents and linked pages.

General: Granting the simple user right

In order to be able to publish a document on OPUS, you have to grant the Trier UAS Library a simple, non-exclusive right of use within the meaning of § 31 para. 2 UrhG (German Copyright Act) to your work. This is done with the help of the contract that will be sent to you after uploading the document.

The simple user right allows the library to publish your document freely accessible worldwide on the internet, to store your data as well as to convert it if necessary. This right also applies to the German National Library and, if required, to subject-specific libraries with a national collection mandate.

Your copyright as author remains with you as a right that cannot be passed on.
 

First publication (grey road):

If you as an author publish a work on OPUS that has not already been published, you use OPUS for a first publication.

Since you only grant the university library the simple user right when you publish, there is nothing to prevent you from further publication of the document (e.g. in journals or on other servers). However, please note: By granting the simple right of use, you can no longer assign exclusive user rights (e.g. to publishers).   
 

Second publication (green road):

If the work you publish on OPUS has already been published elsewhere - e.g. by a commercial publisher -, you use OPUS for a secondary publication. Whether such a second publication is permissible depends on the agreements made for the previous publication(s), such as the regulations of the publisher contract.

Publishers and user rights: Usually, publishers claim the exclusive right of use. This means that you lose the simple user right to your work when you sign the contract; a second publication is not permitted without further ado. However, publishers are increasingly willing to support the Open Access idea and allow secondary publication of scientific articles on document servers under certain conditions. The Open Access regulations of the individual publishers can be looked up on Sherpa Romeo.
 

Note: Collaborative work

In the case of joint works whose parts cannot be exploited separately, your co-authors are considered co-originators of the work (§ 8 UrhG). Publication should be agreed jointly.

If you want to publish a document in Open Access, you can use various licences to set conditions and restrictions for the further use of your publication.

Creative Commons licence agreements are particularly widespread. Their designs are based on the following basic building blocks:

• BY (attribution): The name of the author must be mentioned in the case of further use.
• NC (non-commercial): The work may only be used for non-commercial purposes.
• ND (no derivatives): The work may not be modified, e.g. no translation is permitted.
• SA (share alike): After a modification, the work may only be distributed under the same licence conditions.

By selecting individual components, you can grade the release of your work. Depending on the composition, the Open Access idea is realised to a greater or lesser extent. For OPUS publications you can choose between:

• CC0: complete release, no restriction (insofar as legally possible)
• CC BY: attribution
• CC BY-SA: attribution + sharing under the same conditions
• CC BY-NC: attribution + non-commercial
• CC BY-NC-SA: attribution + non-commercial + sharing under the same conditions
• CC BY-ND: attribution + no derivatives
• CC BY-NC-ND: attribution + non-commercial + no derivatives.

You can find a decision-making aid for selecting the appropriate CC licence type under CC Chooser.

The Trier UAS Library provides its users with a wide range of services on behalf of the public and on the basis of its user regulations. This includes the provision and operation of the publication server OPUS. Personal information is processed in order to make the publications you have uploaded accessible and to archive them.

Trier UAS Library collects and uses your data exclusively within the provisions of the data protection laws of the European Union and the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and only for the purpose of fulfilling the requirements associated with the operation of OPUS. A personalised evaluation of the collected data does not take place.

The detailed data protection declaration is available to you as a PDF document:

Link: Privacy Statement of Trier UAS Library

The documents deposited in OPUS can be searched worldwide via the OPUS user interface and via search engines. Access to the OPUS search is free of charge and does not require registration.

Search options of the OPUS user interface:

• simple search,
• advanced search,
• browsing (including browsing for new publications, document types, classifications).
   

OPUS search operators:

• Boolean operators: AND (or space), OR, NOT,
• Phrasing: "...", e.g. ["manual therapy"],
• Right truncation: *, e.g. [sustainab*],
• Placeholder: ?, e.g. [boy?ott].

Documents are permanently deposited in OPUS and protected against modifications. The bibliographic information belonging to a document has been checked individually for correctness by the Trier UAS Library. The citability of the documents is thus guaranteed.

How a document deposited in OPUS is to be listed in a bibliography depends on the citation system chosen. In the case of internet documents, you will usually also have to enter a persistent identifier or an internet address.

Tip: In the metadata of an OPUS document you will find a URN and sometimes a DOI.

• If a DOI is given, select it as the internet source reference (in the specified form of your citation system).
• If there is no DOI and a URN is not provided in your citation system, click on the URN. The link will take you to a page whose URL you can use as the internet source reference.

The provision of the publication server is a new service. We would be very happy to receive queries or suggestions.

Write to our library locations or contact:

• Dr. Stefan Bagusche
  Trier UAS Library
  Phone: 06782 17-2012
  E-mail: openaccess[at]hochschule-trier.de