Policies and Terms of Use
All materials within the University Digital Conservancy (UDC) are subject to the following policies and terms of use. The Digital Conservancy is also home to the Data Repository for U of M (DRUM) which has additional selection criteria, access and use policies that are unique to this collection.
UDC and DRUM Collecting Policy
DRUM Human Participant Data Policy
DRUM Human Participant Data Guidelines
UDC and DRUM Collecting Policy
The University Digital Conservancy is a program of the University of Minnesota Libraries that provides long-term open access to a wide range of University works in digital formats. It does so by gathering, describing, organizing, storing, and preserving that content.
Works produced or sponsored by the U of M faculty, researchers, staff, and students are appropriate for deposit in the Digital Conservancy. Works might include pre- and post-prints, working papers, technical reports, conference papers, research data and theses.
Works produced or sponsored by administrative and academic units may also be appropriate for deposit in the Digital Conservancy; see Regent’s Policy on Libraries and Archives. Works might include digital departmental newsletters, administrative reports, compilations of University data, meeting agendas and minutes.
The following statements are meant to guide contributors in determining appropriate types of submissions for the Digital Conservancy.
Contributors must be U of M affiliates with a valid Internet ID to place the works they deposit in the Digital Conservancy.
Works should be free from access restrictions and appropriate for open access by all users of the Digital Conservancy.
The Digital Conservancy must be granted permission to distribute and preserve all works placed in the repository, though, the author/original copyright owner retains copyright on all works.
The Digital Conservancy welcomes works in most digital formats. Digital preservation support will be provided at different levels for specific formats as specified in the Digital Conservancy Preservation Policy.
The Digital Conservancy is also home to the Data Repository for U of M (DRUM) which has additional selection criteria and policies.
Deposit License
By depositing this Content (“Content”) in the University Digital Conservancy (“Digital Conservancy”), I agree that I am solely responsible for any consequences of uploading this Content to the Digital Conservancy and making it publicly available, and I represent and warrant that:
I am either the sole creator and the owner of the copyrights and all other rights in the Content; or, without obtaining another’s permission, I have the right to deposit the Content in an archive such as the Digital Conservancy.
To the extent that any portions of the Content are not my own creation, they are used with the copyright holder’s express permission or as permitted by law. Additionally, the Content does not infringe the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of another, nor does the Content violate any laws or another’s rights of privacy or publicity.
The Content contains no restricted, private, confidential, or otherwise protected data or information that should not be publicly shared.
I understand that the Digital Conservancy will do its best to provide perpetual access to my Content. In order to support these efforts, I grant the Regents of the University of Minnesota (“University”), through its Digital Conservancy, the following non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide rights and licenses:
to access, reproduce, distribute and publicly display the Content, in whole or in part, in order to secure, preserve and make it publicly available, and
to make derivative works based upon the Content in order to migrate the Content to other media or formats, or to preserve its public access.
These terms do not transfer ownership of the copyright(s) in the Content. These terms only grant to the University the limited license outlined above.
Deposit License in Other Formats
The full text of our Deposit License is available above or when you complete a deposit in the UDC or DRUM. You can also view and sign a Deposit License in the following formats:
Deposit Agreement for Individuals (web form) or printable PDF - used by authors and/or their proxies who want to submit works to which they own the copyrights.
Deposit Agreement for Organizations (PDF) - used by individuals authorized by an organizational unit of the University to submit works to which the University unit may or may not own copyrights.
Copyright Policy
Using Materials in the Digital Conservancy
Individuals who use this site are solely responsible for their uses; copyright permissions or other legal or ethical issues may need to be addressed in order to make use of Digital Conservancy materials.
Contributor(s) retain all copyrights and related rights in their works. Where open licenses or other usage rights are not indicated, users should contact contributors for any permissions needed to use materials that are available on this site.
Sharing Your Materials via the Digital Conservancy
Contributors must have the legal right to upload their materials to the Digital Conservancy, and to grant the necessary non-exclusive licenses to the Digital Conservancy for access and preservation. A jointly-owned Work may be deposited by any of the joint owners, provided the Contributor promptly notifies the other joint owner(s) of the deposit. (Many jointly-authored works are also jointly-owned.)
A work for hire may be deposited by the employer or contracting party that owns the rights of copyright in the Work.
A Work that has been disclosed to the University’s Office of Technology Commercialization (“OTC”) shall not be deposited in the Conservancy without OTC’s prior approval.
A Work held by a unit of the University may be deposited on behalf of the unit if determination of authorship is impossible or impractical.
Information About Rights You Grant to the University
Contributors do not at any point lose copyright ownership or any other rights in the materials that already exist. Contributors (or their proxies) grant non-exclusive rights to the Regents of the University of Minnesota. Non-exclusive indicates that these rights are also retained by the existing rightsholders, and that they can be granted again in the future to other parties. The University asks for the rights needed to preserve your materials for as long as possible, and to share them with the world; this includes the rights to distribute your materials, and to make copies and change file formats in order to keep them accessible. For more details, read the Deposit Agreement, below.
Withdrawal Policy
Content submission to the University Digital Conservancy is permanent. Under certain circumstances an item in the Digital Conservancy may be removed from view (e.g. due to a violation of University Digital Conservancy deposit agreement). In order to retain the historical record, upon an item’s removal the following statement is displayed:
“Item Withdrawn. The item you are trying to access has been withdrawn from the University Digital Conservancy. If you have any questions, please contact Digital Conservancy staff.”
Preservation Policy
The UDC and DRUM are committed to providing long-term access to the digital works they contain. UDC deposits are considered permanent, while DRUM commits to a 10-year period of preservation that may be extended in accordance with University policy on research data management. Deposits that violate our policies and terms of use may be withdrawn from the repositories at any time in accordance with the withdrawal policy.
Our repositories accept deposits in any format, but some formats more readily facilitate preservation and access than others. To that end, digital preservation support will be provided at different levels for different formats. The Digital Preservation Program of the University Libraries maintains a list of Preferred File Formats – formats listed in the “highest confidence” column of their website will receive additional format monitoring and migration services.
Adhering to best practices, the Digital Conservancy and University Libraries staff use digital preservation strategies that adapt to the changing technological environment. Preservation steps may include format migration, normalization, and/or emulation. Which steps the Digital Conservancy will take to perpetuate accessibility of a file are determined by the nature of the file format. More information about preferred file formats, digital preservation strategies, as well as the Libraries’ digital preservation framework can be found on the Libraries’ Digital Preservation website.
DRUM Specific Policies
The Data Repository for U of M (DRUM) is a part of the University Digital Conservancy and all of the above policies apply to DRUM as well. The policies below are specific to DRUM only.
DRUM Data Collection Policy
The Data Repository for U of M is run by the University Libraries and accepts research data at no cost that meet the following collection criteria:
Data must be authored by at least one University of Minnesota researcher with an active U of M Internet ID.
Data must be non-restricted data that DO NOT contain any private, confidential, or other legally protected information (e.g., personal identifiable information). See the University Policy on Data Security Classifications. See the Human Participant Data Policy if you are uploading data collected from or about humans.
- The library offers advice on how to manage and deidentify sensitive data.
Data must be deposited for open access – this means that visitors to the Data Repository site may download and reuse your data. Data that is not suitable for reuse should not be shared in the Data Repository. Authors will have the option of restricting access for a maximum of two years (see End-user Access Policy).
Data are digital. Individual files must be smaller than 5 GB and the total dataset must be no larger than 50 GB. Larger data files are considered on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us at datarepo@umn.edu to discuss larger data sets.
Data must include adequate documentation describing the nature of the data at an appropriate level for purposes of reuse and discovery. All data receive curatorial review and data that are incomplete or not ready for reuse may not be accepted into the repository.
The data should be in a final publishable state.
Data should consist of original and/or unique data that cannot be easily acquired elsewhere.
It is the responsibility of individuals who are uploading data to make sure that they have the necessary rights or permissions to share any materials they did not themselves generate. Most University of Minnesota researchers will have the necessary rights to share materials that they generated, under the University policies on Copyright Ownership and Research Data Management: Archiving, Ownership, Retention, Security, Storage, and Transfer.
Data, portions of data, or accompanying documentation that contain copyrightable materials (e.g. text, images, video, audio, etc) that did not originate with the depositor may present significant legal issues for deposit and sharing. Data that contain such third-party copyrightable materials may be subject to additional curatorial review, and/or may not be accepted into the repository.
- Learn more about copyright issues and data.
Larger or out-of-scope data may be considered for projects with federal grant funding requirements. Please contact datarepo@umn.edu with specific inquiries.
Data that do not meet our collection criteria will not be accepted into DRUM, or may be subject to removal after publication.
DRUM Human Participant Data Policy
Data involving human participants will be subject to additional review to ensure that it meets our requirements for public sharing. Data that we determine is insufficiently de-identified or which has not properly consented participants to the sharing of individual-level data in a public repository may be rejected from DRUM, or may be subject to removal after acceptance.
DRUM Human Participant Data Guidelines
If you are uploading human participant data:
You will be asked to provide the consent form, information sheet, or other participant agreement and email it to datarepo@umn.edu.
A Digital Conservancy curator will evaluate the submission for the following criteria:
The dataset has been de-identified by removing direct and indirect identifiers. A Digital Conservancy curator may make further de-identification recommendations.
The consent form, information sheet, or other participant agreement should not contain any language that restricts sharing data. Examples of restrictive language include:
“Data will only be shared in aggregate.”
“Data will only be seen by the research team.”
“Data will be destroyed.”
The consent form, information sheet, or other participant agreement should explicitly state that data will be shared at the individual level and that data will be shared publicly (anyone on the Internet can access the data). Please note that “records” are not equivalent to data.
If the dataset does not meet the above criteria, a Digital Conservancy curator will evaluate the language in the consent form versus potential harm caused by sharing without participants’ knowledge. See evaluation rubric below:
If the data is not at all sensitive in nature and clearly de-identified, the curator will likely accept the dataset into DRUM and share resources for best practices for the future.
Consent form language consultation (e.g., clear data sharing language, altering UMN templates, etc.)
Data sharing information sheet for full transparency with research participants
If the data is sensitive or unable to be de-identified, the curator will recommend participant re-consent or redirect to another repository that allows for restricted access to the data.
If a researcher or research team continues to submit datasets that have not acquired appropriate consent after two educational opportunities that led to acceptance of the data into DRUM, the Digital Conservancy reserves the right to reject the data. We will make recommendations for alternative repositories that allow for restricted access to the data.
If a Certificate of Confidentiality is mentioned in the consent form, the language about data sharing in DRUM would need to be very explicit or the dataset will be rejected. We will make recommendations for alternative repositories that allow for restricted access to the data.
Contact datarepo@umn.edu before you start your submission to ensure that your consent form, information sheet, or other participant agreement aligns with open data sharing practices.
DRUM End-User Access Policy
The Data Repository is an open access repository and makes collection holdings freely available, worldwide. Data authors may choose to make their data openly available immediately, or temporarily delay access to data until after an embargo period has passed.
Open Data (default): These data are available for immediate download. Users may contact the author with questions regarding the data. Authors may choose to apply a Creative Commons license to their data, which will give users certainty that they do not need permission for any uses allowed by the license. However, even without a Creative Commons license, users will be able to download and use data - subject to the DRUM Terms of Use.
Embargo: In some cases, an author may choose to restrict access to their work, for up to 2 years. Access to these files will not be granted until after the embargo period has expired and the data are fully open to the public.
DRUM Terms of Use
Conditions
Authors who share their data here expect that it will be re-used to some degree. Users are expected to abide by the University of Minnesota Acceptable Use Policy, and other University policies, where applicable. However, by using or downloading the data, you signify your agreement to the conditions of use stated below:
The user will not make any use of data to identify or otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals discovered inadvertently or intentionally in the data.
The user will give appropriate attribution to the author(s) of the data in any publication that employs resources provided by the Data Repository.
If your use or publication requires permission, you must contact the authors directly; administrators of the Data Repository cannot respond to requests for permission.
Disclaimer
Data are offered with no warranty or claim of fitness for any purpose. In no event shall the University be liable for any actual, incidental or consequential damages arising from use of these files. The Data Repository is intended to facilitate data sharing and the University of Minnesota Libraries staff are available to assist users with finding, accessing, and downloading the data. However, Libraries staff are limited in our ability to assist with using, analyzing, or understanding the data, and requests of this nature should be directed first to the author(s) of the data.
Related U of M Policies
The following are University of Minnesota Policies that may be related to submitting content to the Digital Conservancy.
Contact Us
Need Help? Contact us with your questions via email or our simple contact form. You can contact us in several ways:
- For general questions about the UDC, theses and dissertations contact udc@umn.edu
- For questions about the Data Repository contact datarepo@umn.edu
- For data management consultations and Data Management and Sharing plans, contact Research Data Services at data@umn.edu
If you are not sure who you need to talk to, use our contactform and we will get you to the right person.