What is a DOI?

A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a character string that uniquely identifies an electronic document. Using a DOI to link to online publications is a much more stable method than using a URL as these can change. All major publishers now make use of DOIs for scholarly publications. A DOI remains the same for the life of the document and the repository can use them to ensure the online version of a document will always be accessible.

For more information on DOIs, visit CrossRef website.

What if there's an error on one of my repository records?

Once you have deposited an item, you cannot go back and edit it. However, repository staff can help so if you spot any errors on a record, please email the Repository Team.

I only have a paper version of my item. How can I deposit?

You can send paper copies to the Repository Team at Computing and Library Services, Room CS5/23. Copyright permitting, we can scan and deposit your item.

I'm unable to view a full text document on the repository - why?

We endeavour to make the majority of full text documents open access so anyone, anywhere, can use our repository to view journal articles, conference papers and many other scholarly outputs. However, many publishers impose embargoes or strict copyright conditions on the use of their publications so we may have to restrict the full text document and only allow the metadata to be available. There are usually ways to work around the publishers conditions, such as depositing the accepted version rather than the published version, so for more information on individual publishers, please visit SHERPA a site hosted by the University of Nottingham which lists hundreds of publishers and their terms and conditions on open access publishing and copyright.

The item types listed do not cover my research output - what can I do?

Please email the Repository Team.

I deposited an item but it's not showing on the Repository yet

Once you deposit an item, it won't automatically display on the repository or your staff profile pages. It will be moved to a Review area and a member of the repository team will check the item and then will move it to the live archive. After an overnight update, the item will display. We aim to edit, or if there is a problem with the submission, to contact authors within 2 days of the deposit.

I have been asked for the Author Version/Accepted Version of my journal article to deposit - what is that?

The 'Accepted Version' of your research is the author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version.

Versions (for journal articles)
Draft Early version circulated as work in progress
Submitted Version The version that has been submitted to a journal for peer review
Accepted Version The author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version
Published Version The publisher-created published version

For further clarification go to the Versions toolkit.

For information about which versions are accepted by the major publishers please visit SHERPA or email the Repository Team.

When I put my author name into the Homepage search box, why does it bring up items I haven't authored?

If you put an author's name as a general search term in the Quick Search box on the home page, the search will find any instances of that name, anywhere in a repository entry, such as in the title, abstracts, citations, references and full text. To narrow a search for papers in the repository by author, select the Advanced search, and type the Author's surname into the 'Creators/Editors' field. This will only return results for papers by that author.

However, it should be noted that the majority of searches the Repository receives come from Google (Scholar) and Summon. The Repository is primarily designed to be fully searchable by these resources on a worldwide scale.