ORA: Oxford University Research Archive: Depositing to ORA

There are three routes of deposit to ORA. The main route of deposit for publications and 'grey literature' (such as working papers and reports) is via Symplectic Elements, which is also the chosen route for Oxford academics to ‘Act on Acceptance’. The other deposit portals are for theses and research data only.

1. Symplectic Elements: For ‘Act on Acceptance’ and publications such as journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, reports, working papers, etc.
2. ORA Deposit: For research theses (e.g. D.Phil., M.Litt. & M.Sc. by Research), or any type of digital research data, especially data that underpins publications, or data where the funding body requires archiving and preservation. 
3. Bulk upload: With consultation a spreadsheet can be populated with details of publications and submitted to ORA with a zip file of any associated full text files. This process requires developer intervention and collaboration with Rsearch Services staff. Uploads would need to be scheduled in a list of jobs before material can be uploaded to the research archive - please contact ORA if this is something you would like to explore. 

When you’ve had a paper accepted for publication, please Act on Acceptance – deposit the accepted manuscript (the final peer-reviewed version) into our ORA within 3 months of acceptance.

Journal articles and conference papers accepted for publication from 1 April 2016 onwards must be deposited in order to be eligible for the next REF.

The green button takes you to Symplectic Elements (Single Sign-On access). 

Not sure what ‘Act on Acceptance’ means? Find out more at https://openaccess.ox.ac.uk/

A note on full text

Under publisher policies and copyright agreements that may have been signed when publishing material, for the deposit of full text to an institutional repository, such as ORA, only certain versions of the text are allowed.

Most journal publishers will allow authors to include at least one of the following versions of an article in a repository:

• The submitted version (before peer review)
• The accepted version (including changes based on peer review, but without the publisher’s formatting)
• The publisher’s version (formatted as in the online journal)

Our recommendation is to deposit the latest version permitted by the publisher. Publishers usually explain their policies on their websites, but the information can be hard to find. A very helpful tool is the SHERPA/RoMEO website run by the University of Nottingham, which summarises self-archiving policies in an easily readable format. This can searched by journal title or publisher name at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php. RoMEO pages include links to publishers’ websites for more detail.

Each full text deposit made to ORA will be reviewed by a member of the ORA team, so we are able to advise regarding the full text file if there appears to be a contradiction regarding publisher policies. Additional advice can be sought by emailing the Open Access helpdesk 

Thesis deposit guidance:

https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/digitaltheses

Data deposit guidance:

https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ora-data/getting-started

ORA (Oxford University Research Archive) is the institutional repository for the University of Oxford and is home to the scholarly output of its research members. 

Contact us at: ora@bodleian.ox.ac.uk, or via our contact form.