Repository Policies

Global Alliance for Scientific Studies Repository Policies

The Global Alliance for Scientific Studies Repository is established to preserve, organize, disseminate, and increase the visibility of scholarly and scientific outputs. The repository supports open scholarly communication and long-term access to deposited research materials.

1. Metadata Policy

  • Metadata describing repository records may be accessed free of charge.
  • Metadata may be reused for scholarly, educational, indexing, discovery, and other non-commercial purposes provided appropriate acknowledgement of the repository is given.
  • Metadata may be harvested by academic search engines, indexing services, library discovery systems, and other scholarly information services.

2. Full-Text and Data Policy

  • Access to full-text documents is determined by the copyright, licence, and access conditions associated with each individual record.
  • Where an item is openly accessible, users may read and download the material for legitimate scholarly, educational, and research purposes, subject to the applicable copyright and licence conditions.
  • Commercial reuse, redistribution, modification, or reproduction may require permission from the relevant copyright holder unless expressly permitted by the applicable licence.

3. Content Policy

The repository may contain scholarly and scientific materials including journal articles, reviews, conference papers, books, book chapters, reports, theses, datasets, and other research-related outputs considered appropriate for scholarly preservation and dissemination.

  • Deposited materials should have scholarly, scientific, educational, or research value.
  • Bibliographic information should be sufficiently complete and accurate to identify the deposited work.
  • The repository may perform administrative or metadata corrections when necessary to improve discoverability and record quality.

4. Submission and Deposit Policy

  • Items may be deposited only by authorized users or repository administrators.
  • Depositors are responsible for ensuring that they have the necessary rights or permissions to deposit and make materials available.
  • The repository reserves the right to review submissions for relevance, metadata quality, completeness, copyright concerns, and compliance with repository requirements.
  • Submission to the repository does not transfer copyright ownership unless a separate agreement expressly provides otherwise.

5. Copyright Policy

  • Copyright remains with the copyright holder unless otherwise stated.
  • Depositors should ensure that depositing a manuscript or other material does not violate publisher agreements, third-party rights, or applicable law.
  • If a legitimate copyright concern is reported, access to the relevant material may be temporarily restricted while the matter is reviewed.

6. Preservation Policy

The repository aims to preserve deposited scholarly records and associated digital materials for long-term access. Reasonable technical and administrative measures may include backups, integrity monitoring, format management, migration, and infrastructure maintenance.

Although reasonable efforts are made to preserve repository content, permanent preservation of every file format cannot be absolutely guaranteed.

7. Withdrawal and Retention Policy

Repository records are intended to provide a stable scholarly record. Consequently, deposited items will not normally be removed without a substantive reason.

Withdrawal or restriction may be considered in circumstances including copyright infringement, legal requirements, research integrity concerns, duplicate deposits, privacy issues, or other serious scholarly or administrative reasons.

Where appropriate, the bibliographic record may be retained even when access to the associated full text has been withdrawn.

8. Privacy Policy

Personal information collected through repository accounts, submissions, or administrative processes will be used for legitimate repository operations and scholarly communication. Personal information will not be intentionally disclosed beyond what is necessary for repository services, legal obligations, or information that forms part of the public scholarly record.

9. Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in deposited works are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Global Alliance for Scientific Studies. Responsibility for the scholarly content of individual deposited works remains with their authors and relevant rights holders.

10. Policy Review

These policies may be reviewed and updated periodically to reflect changes in repository practices, scholarly communication standards, legal requirements, and digital preservation practices.