SAS-Space Content Policy

In accordance with principles articulated by the Research Councils UK, SAS-SPACE aims to make access to publicly funded research free to all users, and to extend that principle of access to other forms of scholarly information and literature. We encourage the deposit of research-level outputs produced or sponsored by the Institutes of the School and their libraries, including the work of associated research units and scholarly organisations, and of the staff of Senate House Library.

General principles

The work must be (i) educational, artistic, or research-orientated; (ii) a final version, ready for distribution; and (iii) the full text or full content, not a metadata-only item, abstract or other summary version. The author/owner must be both willing and able to grant to the University of London the perpetual non-exclusive right to distribute the work via SAS-SPACE

Articles

These may be from journals, or from printed volumes of collected articles. They should ordinarily have already been through the publisher’s process of peer review, and should have such changes made at that stage incorporated. They may or may not be the publisher’s own typeset version.

Publisher embargos: many publishers allow such post-print publication only after the expiry of an embargo period - see SHERPA-ROMEO (www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo) for details of individual policies. The deposit process allows for deposited full-text files to be held back for the requisite period, whilst making the descriptive metadata available immediately.

Books

This may include monographs, or volumes with multiple authors. They, like articles, should have passed through whichever processes of peer review pertain, and have had such changes made at that stage incorporated. Embargo periods imposed by publishers may be dealt with in the same way as for articles (see above).

'Grey literature'

This category known as ‘grey literature’ may be defined as (usually) written outputs that are generally original, recent in production, and that have not entered (and generally will not enter) the usual processes of formal publication. This typically includes working papers, conference papers and technical and other reports. Into this category also fall written outputs intended eventually for publication, but not yet accepted and peer-reviewed by a publisher.

Depositors should consider the longer-term significance of their work when preparing to deposit such items. Some outputs, whilst clearly not ephemeral, may well nonetheless have a short ‘half-life’. A good test to apply is: “will I wish people to be reading this in five years’ time?” If not, then SAS-Space is not the place for it.

In the case of conference and seminar papers, preference will be given either to full transcripts of papers, or to sound recordings of the presentation. Powerpoint presentations are to be avoided, unless they form an accompaniment to a transcript or recording.

Theses and dissertations

Theses and dissertations completed in the School may be included at the discretion of individual Institutes.

Datasets

These commonly include database files or spreadsheets. Depositors are asked to bear in mind that the purpose of such deposit is to make data available for re-use by other scholars. Data must therefore be well formatted and consistent, and fully documented.

Multimedia: photographic collections, video footage, sound recordings

These might include: photographic records of architecture, events or artefacts; video or sound recordings of musical or dramatic performances; recordings of conference or seminar papers. Once again, files should be consistently and intelligibly named and fully documented.

Learning objects

These would typically be modular resources used in Virtual Learning Environments or on freely available websites, including texts or syllabi.

File formats

Common acceptable file formats include: PDF, Plain text; Postscript, RTF; Microsoft Word (for text); Microsoft Excel (for data); JPEG; PNG; GIF; BMP; TIFF (for images); WAV; MP3 (for audio).