Library FAQs
Borrower Category | No. of items |
---|---|
Undergraduates and postgraduates | Unlimited |
Staff and Adjuncts | Unlimited |
CHEC students and staff | Unlimited |
Alumni, Associate (community), reciprocal members, High School Access Program and Lismore TAFE students | 20 items |
Borrowing periods
Item | Borrower category | Loan period |
---|---|---|
Books | All members | 4 weeks |
Prescribed learning resources | On-campus students and staff only | In-library use only |
Audiovisual equipment | On-campus students and staff only | Contact us - Loan period varies according to equipment |
Journals and reference collection | All members | In-library use only |
Your student or staff card is also your Library card.
If you don't have a University ID card see Students Services information on Student ID Cards.
Request an item that is either on loan or available at a Southern Cross campus Library for “click and collect’ from your campus library or to be mailed to your home address:
- From the Library collections find the item you would like to request
- Sign in. You must be signed in to make a request
- Click on Availability information (e.g. "Available at Coffs Harbour...")
- Below the locations information choose 'Request item'
- Select pickup location for 'click and collect' or 'home address' to have the item mailed to you
You will be contacted by email when the item becomes available.
SMS service: If we have your mobile phone number and that's your preferred contact, you will also receive an SMS.
'Click and collect' items will be held for 5 days for collection.
Online students located within Australia will default to the 'home address' unless a campus pickup location is selected.
See also information about finding and requesting SCU Theses.
Request a scan of part of an item that is either on load or available at a Southern Cross campus Library to be emailed to you:
- From the Library collections find the item you would like to request
- Sign in. You must be signed in to make a request
- Click on Availability information (e.g. "Available at Coffs Harbour...")
- Below the locations information choose 'Request scan'
- Enter the details of the section you would like scanned, either chapter/article number or title or page range then 'Send request'
- Your scan will be emailed to you
Please note that the copyright limits apply to scan requests and you must accept the declaration that your request does not exceed copyright limits.
More information about joining the Library is available here:
Please contact the Library via email to library@scu.edu.au to make an appointment to register, stating which campus you wish to join.
You will be asked to provide photo ID (preferably your University staff/student ID card) and proof of enrolment or employment from your University.
Reciprocal membership of SCU Library is free and includes access to physical items on campus only. Borrowing privileges are valid until 28th February of the following year, and re-registration is required each year. Processing your registration may take up to 48 hours.
Membership does not include computer access, but reciprocal users can connect via their own device to the eduroam network if their institution participates.
Open University Australia students are not covered under these arrangements however they are welcome to join as a community borrower.
Borrowed items will be automatically renewed, except under any of the following conditions:
- any item you have borrowed is overdue
- the item is reserved by another borrower
- your borrowing rights have been suspended
- the item has already been renewed two times.
After the second renewal, you will receive a reminder notice that an item is due.
Always return items on or before their due date to avoid penalties.
Items can be returned via the chutes outside the entrances of all campus libraries or via post using the Reply Paid service.
Reply Paid 157
SCU Library
Widjabal Country
Southern Cross University
PO Box 157
Lismore NSW 2480
Please note that Reply Paid does not include tracking of your item. Item tracking can be purchased for an additional fee from Australia Post.
If an item you have on loan is reserved by another borrower you will receive a recall notice for that item.
The item due date will be changed to 14 days from the date on which you are notified of the recall, unless the due date is earlier.
Recalls help to provide all clients with fair access to resources. Loan periods for standard items are generous and will be automatically adjusted according to user demand via the recall system.
You will receive email reminder notifications to your student or staff email address when your loan has been renewed, recalled or is overdue.
These notices are a courtesy only, however, and should not be relied upon for return of materials. Failure to return a borrowed item by the due date may result in loss of borrowing privileges and/or a replacement fee.
Keep track of your loans by logging into My Account.
- If an item is not returned after receiving a 'long overdue' notice the user will be billed for the replacement cost of the item.
- Inter-Library Loans may incur an overdue fine and/or a replacement fee to the amount invoiced by the lending Library.
- Sanctions will apply until the debt is cleared.
Email reminder notifications will be sent to your student or staff email address.
These notices are a courtesy only and should not be relied upon when returning materials. Failure to return a borrowed item by the due date may result in loss of borrowing privileges and/or a replacement fee.
Keep track of your loans by logging into My Account
- If an item is not returned after receiving a 'long overdue' notice the user will be billed for the replacement cost of the item.
- Inter-Library loans may incur an overdue fine and/or a replacement fee to the amount invoiced by the lending library.
- Sanctions will apply until the debt is cleared.
Paying fines
- If paying a fine please phone your campus Library.
- Please note: the Library does not take cash.
If you live closer to another University Library, you may wish to join and borrow from them.
Apply in person to the host library, taking proof of current enrolments such as current fees receipt, enrolment details and photo ID. The host institution may impose fees.
More information is available from the University Libraries Australia and New Zealand (ULANZ) website.
For items not at Southern Cross University, the Library can request a loan from another library (inter-library loan) on your behalf. This service is available for all SCU students, staff members, and researchers affiliated with the University.
How to use the Inter-Library loan service
- When searching the Library collections, click on Sign in on the top right of the screen and follow the prompts.
- Search for the item you want. TIP: For journal articles and book chapters search for the article or chapter title or search by DOI.
- If the item is not held at SCU Libraries, or you see no results, click on the Expand my results toggle on the left of your results.
- Click on the item that you would like to request and select 'Request from another institution' under 'How to get it' OR if your item has not been displayed in the expanded results, click 'Request a nonSCU item at the top of the screen.
- Check the request details and your delivery location is correct.
- Tick the Copyright declaration.
- Click 'send request'.
For RUSH or EXPRESS (pay) requests, please phone the Library at 1800 724 357.
Renewing an Inter-Library loan
- Not all Inter-Library loans (ILLs) are renewable, check the loan slip in the item.
- If the item is renewable please email your request to the Library.
Delivery and Fees
Some Inter-Library Loans are subject to fees.
Service | Usual timeframe for supply to the Library* | Minimum fee |
---|---|---|
Inter-campus | 2-3 days | $0 |
Inter-library service | 1-2 weeks | $0 |
For RUSH and EXPRESS Phone 1800 724 357 |
||
Rush service | within 24 hours | $33.00** |
Express service | within 2 hours | $49.50** |
*The timeframes listed are a guide only - we do not guarantee any delivery times. If an item is posted to you, please allow at least another 3-4 working days for this.
** Contact us for an estimate of total cost.
Community membership is available to borrow books and DVDs.
Community members do not have access to Library computers. Those wishing to use the internet or databases are referred to the local public library or to the National Library of Australia's eresources.
Please contact the Library library@scu.edu.au stating which campus you wish to join, to make an appointment.
The School Access Program offers secondary students in Years 10, 11 and 12 the opportunity to join and use the Library at our Lismore and Gold Coast campuses and borrow from our collections.
How to join
Download and complete the School Access Program application form and email library@scu.edu.au to make an appointment to complete your membership.
Further information and contact
Contact your closest campus Library for more information.
Southern Cross University Alumni may register as Library borrowers (on campus) by providing photo ID and proof of Alumni membership. Registration is for a 12-month period and expires on 15 March each year. Please contact the Library, stating which campus you wish to join, and to make an appointment library@scu.edu.au
See also borrowing information and Alumni databases.
SCU Alumni are eligible for free remote access to the Library databases listed below. Access is provided after you register with the Alumni team. User name is your student number (contact the Alumni team alumni@scu.edu.au if you can't remember your student number).
Database | Information |
---|---|
Annual Reviews | Annual Reviews is a nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society. |
Credo | This database includes dictionaries and encyclopedias, useful for background information. |
CSIRO | The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, is Australia's national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world. Contains information, research and publication links. |
DOAB | Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a growing database of academic, independently peer reviewed books with an Open Access license. |
DOAJ | The directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a comprehensive database of open access journals. |
ProQuest | A multidisciplinary set of databases providing online access to an extensive collection of journals and periodicals across a wide range of subject areas. Many articles are available in full text. |
SAGE Premier | SAGE Premier includes international, peer-reviewed journals, including high-impact research titles published on behalf of scholarly and professional societies. |
Wiley Online Library | Wiley Online Library hosts the world's broadest and deepest multidisciplinary collection of online resources covering life, health and physical sciences, social science, and the humanities. |
Our libraries are shared spaces used by staff, students, alumni and members of the local community.
When you are visiting our campus libraries we ask that you:
Take care of yourself:
- Use library spaces and equipment in a way that supports your own safety and the safety of others.
- Look after your belongings and avoid leaving your valuables unattended.
Take care of others:
- Respect other library users by keeping noise to appropriate levels, especially in designated quiet study areas.
- Keep to the group booking limits each day and cancel room bookings if you no longer need them.
- Log off and move away from the computers when you have finished using them.
Take care of our spaces:
- Keep our libraries clean and safe. Please remove rubbish and enjoy hot food outside the library.
To help you get the most out of our services and collections, we will:
- Provide you with access to the information and resources you need.
- Provide you with expert advice via chat, phone and email.
- Provide you with access to borrow our physical collections on campus. If you are unable to visit our campuses, we will send physical collection items to your home address with free return postage.
- Send you email and SMS notifications when items are available for collection and reminders to return Library items on time.
To make the most of your Library experience, we ask that you:
- Return your loans on time.
- Take care of the items you borrow from the Library.
- Check your University email account and respond to any notices from the Library.
- Engage and communicate with our staff in a respectful and appropriate manner.
Follow the steps below to make Find it @ SCU links automatically appear within Google Scholar in your search results:
- Go to Google Scholar
- Click the three horizontal lines (top left) then go to Settings (the cog at the bottom of the list)
- Click Library links
- Type in Southern Cross University and click the search button
- Tick Southern Cross University - Find it @ SCU
If you use EndNote, under Bibliography Manager, select EndNote.
Click Save.
To retain these settings, you must turn on cookies in your browser settings.
To expand the range of databases available to you, you may wish to contact your State Library or get a library card from the National Library of Australia and make use of the eResources provided through this service.
The following databases are also useful.
Database | Description |
---|---|
Newspaper Source | Newspapers from EBSCO. |
Libraries Australia | This online database provides access to the holdings of over 850 Australian libraries |
Trove | Trove brings together content from Australian libraries, museums, archives, repositories and other research and collecting organisations big and small. |
Ulrichsweb | Can be used to identify peer-reviewed journals and other scholarly resources. |
When applying for grants and planning your project the Library can help you find information about your legal and professional obligations. Document your decision-making, including costings, for your grant application.
Review the data management and data sharing requirements of funding agencies, taking particular note of how compliance will be assessed and the consequences of non-compliance. Review the data management requirements of partner organisations, particularly commercial organisations.
Consider the expectations of researchers in your discipline and from other disciplines and how these might affect how you manage your data (including sharing, if possible).
Resources
Seek advice from Cross Connect or contact your Librarian.
Data can be an important research output in its own right as well as providing supporting evidence for published findings. In some disciplines, the availability of data has led to a quantifiable increase in the number of citations for a related publication. Internationally infrastructure and services are emerging that will support the citation of datasets.
When planning a project, consider:
- the audiences for your research and how they could make use of the data you will be collecting - is your work of interest to policy makers, not-for-profit agencies, the commercial sector or the general public, as well as to other researchers?
- the data management and data sharing requirements of journals you might publish in
- the availability of data journals for your discipline for publishing data outputs
- how you could use data to communicate your results more effectively - data in raw and visualised forms adds interest to your publications and conference presentations
- whether an institutional repository or subject repository can disseminate your data - these services assign your data a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) that will help with citation and impact tracking, and provide information about your data to search engines like Google Scholar and registries like Research Data Australia. (See for more details about depositing in repositories and archives).
Incorporate your data dissemination plans into the sections of grant application forms dealing with publication and research impacts and/or data sharing.
Resources
- A list of data journals (PREPARDE project, University of Leicester)
- Find Data (Australian National Data Service)
Seek advice from Cross Connect or contact your Librarian.
If possible, establish data management related costs and include these in the proposed budget of your grant application if the funding rules allow.
- Costing Tool: Data Management Planning (pdf: UK Data Archive)
Funders may request information about how you plan to manage data, either as part of a grant application or as a separate document. If the funder does not require a formal data management plan, you can record data planning information in an internal document, which should cover the following types of information:
- what types of data will be created
- who will own and have access to the data
- what facilities and equipment and methods will be used to capture and process the data
- where data will be stored during the project and after the project is completed
- how data could be shared or published and what conditions of re-use will apply
- who will be responsible for each of these activities.
All partners should be involved in the development and signoff of a data plan. You can also document your data planning in a variety of other places, including funding and collaboration agreements, ethics applications, and annual reports to funding agencies. Treat these documents as corporate records and retain and dispose of them appropriately.
Resources
- ARC Funding rules and grant guidelines
- Data Management Plans (Australian Research Data Commons ARDC)
Seek advice from Office of DVCR.
Work out who owns the data and how long it needs to be kept. Ethical commitments and the consent you seek from your participants will affect what you can do with the data later, so consider potential data sharing and re-use scenarios well before data is collected and acquired.
For data that you create or collect, you need to:
- Determine what rights, including copyright, will subsist in the data produced by the project
- Establish who will be the rights holder/s for the data. As an SCU staff member, most data you produce will be owned by the University. As a Higher Degree by Research student, you would usually own the data you generate; however, there are certain cases in which you must assign your IP to the University that you should be aware of.
- Consider what terms and conditions should be applied to the data for re-use.
As an SCU staff member, you may have permission from SCU to re-use most of your scholarly works (including data) for research and teaching purposes and to make decisions about re-use using your professional judgment, subject to Part D of the University's Intellectual Property Policy. As a Higher Degree by Research Student, unless you have assigned IP to the University, decisions about the re-use and licensing of your data are yours to make.
Resources
- SCU Intellectual Property Policy
- Good research data practices (Australian National Data Service)
For data that you are sourcing from elsewhere, you need to:
- Establish the rights holder
- Establish the terms and conditions of re-use granted by the rights holder/s and assess whether your re-use fits within these. To establish the terms and conditions of re-use, you will need to:
- Find and keep a copy of any 'express permission' that the rights holder has given. This will usually be a licence or a set of standard terms and conditions that apply to the process by which you have obtained the data, such as downloading from websites and online data archives
- OR, if no express permission is given that enables you to establish terms and conditions of re-use, you must seek permission from the rights holder directly.
Resources
- SCU Intellectual Property Policy
- Good research data practices (Australian National Data Service)
Before the project starts, work out the minimum retention period for the data, using the table provided by NSW State Records Retention Periods in GA47.
To work out the maximum retention period, you need to consider the longer-term value of the data in light of the potential research impact and other factors, such as:
- the research would be difficult or impossible to repeat
- repeating the research would be burdensome for human participants or animals
- the results are of high public interest or contention
- methods or results constitute a paradigm shift for the field of inquiry, or
- the research will result in notifiable intellectual property (e.g. a patent application).
In addition to the data, you also need to retain any corporate records related to the research data that you are generating.
Resources
- Seek advice from Corporate Records Management on disposal and retention of research data.
When completing your ethics application consider data management, and in particular data sharing and re-use, in the context of privacy, confidentiality and consent, cultural sensitivity, and community-based research.
Be explicit in your ethics application about any plans you have to make data available to other researchers or more broadly. Describe your strategies for protecting privacy and confidentiality, e.g. by ensuring:
- that participants will not be identifiable, or
- that informed consent will be sought from participants for the proposed data re-use, or
- that access controls or re-use agreements will be in place.
Be explicit in your consent forms about any plans to make data available, who will be able to access the data, and how the data would be accessed and potentially re-used.
You may enhance your ability to share data later if you identify broad types of access rather than specific services that may be unsuitable or unavailable in the future. For example, saying that you will publish data 'through web-based institutional or subject archives or repositories' will give you more flexibility than if you specify a single repository or archive that may not be available in the future.
Resources
- Working with sensitive data (Australian National Data Service)
- Ethical obligations (UK Data Archive)
- AIATSIS Code of Ethics (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies)
Seek advice from the Office of the DVCR.
Collect data in formats that are long-lasting. The Library provides training in EndNote, and can help you with information about format obsolescence, digital data preservation and documentation organisation. Data that is organised and well-documented is easier to find and use. Regularly assess your options for storing your data and moving it around. If your data is lost, stolen or misused you will lose valuable work and damage your reputation as a researcher.
Assess the durability of the file formats you will use by considering if the format is:
- endorsed and published by standards agencies such as Standards Australia or ISO
- publicly documented, i.e. complete authoritative specifications are available
- the product of collaborative development and consultative processes
- widely used and accepted as best practice within your discipline or other user communities.
You should also assess the long-term accessibility of any hardware and software used to create and manipulate research data.
If you develop software as part of your research, follow available best practice guidelines for developing, releasing and licensing your software.
Resources
- Working with research data and Community-endorsed data standards (Australian National Data Service)
- Digital preservation and curation - the danger of overlooking software (Software Sustainability Institute, UK)
Seek advice from Technology Services if required.
Digital data
You should only store master copies of digital research data on:
- SCU systems e.g. Enterprise systems like O365 OneDrive
- SCU approved storage services for the Australian research sector
Consult Technology Services if you need advice about secure storage options. Technology Services can refer you to SCU storage experts and authorised off-site providers. Gathering the following information will help you explain your needs to Technology Services staff:
- current data volume - total size in Mb/Gb/Tb - and likely rate of growth
- number of files and folders, and how they are organised
- location of your workspace/s, e.g. office, lab, home, in the field
- platform - Mac / Windows / Linux
- applications used to access and work with your data
- frequency of update, e.g. working data that changes daily, or data from a completed project that needs to be retained but would not be used often
- data type/s: spreadsheets, database, documents, images, datasets, etc.
- any special security needs, e.g. clinical data, personal data, commercial potential
- access control: Who needs access? Are they from SCU? If not, are they based in Australia or overseas? At universities or at other types of organisations?
Desktop and laptop computers
You should not store master copies of digital data on individual desktop or laptop computers. You should treat these as convenient working areas but not as primary stores.
Local drives fail and are often not backed-up. Local machines are regularly replaced, upgraded, allocated to other people and stolen - data is at risk of being lost or inappropriately accessed.
If you store additional working copies on local computers, schedule automatic synchronisation and/or backups and password-protect and physically secure the machines.
Removable media
You should not store master copies of digital data on removable media like CDs and DVDs, flash memory devices (i.e. USB sticks), and portable hard drives. These are:
- not always long-lasting, especially if they are not stored correctly (CDs/DVDs)
- easy to damage physically (e.g. through magnetism or shocks)
- prone to errors in writing to the media ('burning')
- a risk in terms of data security - they are easy to misplace or lose, usually are not password-protected and are an easy target for viruses and malware.
If you store additional working copies on removable media, schedule automatic synchronisation and/or regular backups. You should password-protect and encrypt the media and ensure they are as physically secure as possible
Choose high-quality products, and follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer for care and handling, including environmental conditions and labelling.
Regularly check the media to make sure that they are not failing, and periodically 'refresh' the data (i.e. copy to a new disk, USB stick, or portable drive).
Cloud services
With the exception of the research sector and enterprise solutions noted above, you must not store research data using services that are provided or managed externally to SCU by third parties. The reasons for this include:
- Protection of intellectual property: Some cloud services assert their ownership of the intellectual property in anything that is uploaded by users.
- Legal requirements: Storage of data that contains personal information outside Australia could be a breach of the Privacy Act.
- Risk management: The Terms and Conditions of some cloud services state that they will take no responsibility for data loss and that they can withdraw the service at any time. There are also documented security breaches of many of these systems.
Resources
- Cloud computing and the privacy principles (Office of the Information Commissioner Queensland)
Seek advice from Technology Services if required.
Seek advice from Technology Services if required to transfer research data.
You should avoid using email for data transfer. Some of the limitations of email include:
- size restrictions - most institutions have limits on the size of emails and attachments (SCU MS Outlook service restricts you to 25MB)
- security risks - particularly if you are working with data that is personally or commercially sensitive and/or utilising personal accounts that may not meet legal and ethical requirements around privacy and confidentiality, and
- version control issues.
You should create and maintain sufficient documentation or metadata (i.e. structured information about the data) to enable research data to be identified, discovered, associated with its owners and creators, linked to other related data or publications, contextualised in time and space, and to have the quality of the data assessed and research results validated.
If you poorly document your data, it will be difficult (or impossible) to find it and manage it in the longer term. Even if you (or others, in future) can find the data, its value will be diminished if it is hard to interpret.
Practices will differ depending on your discipline, but you should always ensure that protocols are agreed early in the project and adopted by all researchers consistently.
File naming for digital files
Digital file names can be important for identifying and finding digital files. You should develop file naming conventions early in a research project, and agree on these with colleagues and collaborators before data is created.
Conventions will differ depending on the nature and size of a research project. In all cases, filenames should be unique, persistent and consistently applied, if they are to be useful for finding and retrieving data.
Identifiers
An identifier is a reference number or name for a data object and forms a key part of your documentation and metadata. To be useful over the long-term, identifiers need to be:
- unique - globally unique if possible, but at the very least unique within your particular systems and processes, and
- persistent - the identifier should not change over time.
The standard for publicly available datasets is the Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). Although DOIs have been traditionally used for electronically published journal articles, they can now be assigned to datasets. SCU can assign a DOI to a collection that you make available through the institutional repository ePublicatons@SCU.
Controlled vocabularies
A vocabulary sets out the common language a discipline has agreed to use to refer to concepts of interest in that discipline. It models the concepts in a discipline by applying labels to the concepts and relating the concepts to each other in a formal structure.
Vocabularies take many forms. They include glossaries, dictionaries, gazetteers, code lists, taxonomies, subject headings, thesauri, semantic networks and ontologies.
Wherever possible, you should use an existing controlled vocabulary. Even if you need to adapt or customise an existing standard, this is preferable to creating something from scratch.
By depositing data in a repository (or archive), you can make sure that your data can be accessed and cited in the long term.
Before depositing, you should consider the implications of doing so, in terms of ownership of intellectual property, and ethical requirements like privacy and confidentiality.
Repositories differ in their discipline focus and the types of research data that they accept. It is common for repositories to specify some or all of the following:
- preferred formats that facilitate long-term access and preservation
- minimum standards for documentation and metadata that enhance the discoverability and usability of the data
- assurances from you, as the depositor, that storing the data and making it available will not infringe upon the rights of others, and
- your assignment of a licence that makes clear what rights re-users are granted.
Identifying a suitable repository for your data and discussing requirements with the repository staff is a valuable part of data planning.
Cross Connect
SCU staff have access to an institutional data repository that is not discipline-specific. The service is run by the Library and is suitable for a wide range of data. You can upload research data and make it openly accessible. You can also use the data repository to record and showcase:
- data that is hosted elsewhere - you provide metadata about the collection and links to the hosting site, and
- data that is not available online but may be accessed through negotiation with the collection custodian - you provide metadata about the collection and an access statement that tells users how to negotiate access.
Data and metadata that you choose to share publicly can be cited by others, and will be discoverable through Cross Connect, Research Data Australia, Google, Google Scholar and other services that expose your research to new audiences and potential collaborators.
Library staff will assist you in assessing and describing your data set.
Consideration should be given to:
- technical complexities - e.g. large volumes, high dependency between files, requirement for specialised hardware or software
- risk management
- data sensitivity and de-identification
- the user community has special requirements about how data needs to be delivered.
Resources
Digital repositories (Digital Curation Centre, UK)
Seek advice from crossconnect@scu.edu.au if required.
Other digital data repositories
In many disciplines, national or international repositories are available to support the long-term access to research data.
Re3Data is a searchable directory of research data repositories. In September 2014, almost 1,000 data repositories were listed in Re3Data.
In deciding whether to deposit to a repository outside SCU, consider the sustainability of the service (in terms of staffing, funding arrangements, and support from its host institution) and assess its level of support for and within your discipline.
If you add a metadata record to Cross Connect or your SCU Profile that links to the other archive or repository holding your data, your collection can still appear on Cross Connect or your SCU Profile as one of your research outputs.
Resources
- Re3Data (website)
When you disseminate data that you own or manage, you need to think about how you want others to reuse it. It is your responsibility to communicate clearly the terms and conditions that you want reusers of your data to follow.
All rights reserved: relying on the Copyright Act
You can reserve all your rights under the Copyright Act. This means people can view and download a copy of your data for private research and study only. They must credit you as the creator, and potential reusers would need to seek your permission for any other type of activity, including re-publishing.
While reserving all your rights can be useful for publications, in the case of data it can limit the research impact of your work by restricting other researchers from undertaking common activities such as deriving data or aggregating your data with other datasets.
If your goals in disseminating your data are to facilitate the greatest reuse possible, then applying an open licence will be more effective than relying on copyright legislation.
Some rights reserved: standard open licences
For openly accessible data, a standard licence is the most effective way of ensuring appropriate reuse. An open licence lets you reserve some rights as the owner of the material, but grant reusers more rights than they would have just under copyright legislation.
Adopting a standard licence is often a pre-condition to depositing in a repository or archive, but licences can also be applied to resources disseminated via the web or other means.
SCU researchers are encouraged to consider using open licences. Licences enable you to clearly indicate to others your wishes about how the data can be reused and how you want to be attributed.
The Australian National Data Service recommends AusGOAL (the Australian Governments Open Access and Licensing Framework), which has been endorsed as the preferred policy and licensing suite for government information across Australia. AusGOAL is now officially being extended into the research and innovation sector. AusGOAL's core is a suite of six standard Creative Commons (CC) licences that give you a great deal of flexibility in expressing your wishes. A good principle to apply is to use the least restrictive licence that is applicable to your data collection. If you want your data to be as widely used as possible, the Creative Commons Attribution Only licence (CC-BY), would be the most useful for that aim.
Some rights reserved: restricted licences and custom reuse agreements
If you would like to make data available only under certain conditions or by negotiation, you can use a restrictive licence or other written agreement (such as a Data Transfer Agreement). You might consider this when data contains personal or other confidential information, or if you want to impose some other condition such as a time limit on use or some form of payment.
Agreements of this kind could be constructed from a model template or developed for you especially to meet the requirements of a specific project. Examples of this approach include:
A restricted licence provides you with more protection and enables you to be specific about terms and conditions, but it can also be time-consuming and, if legal advice is required, expensive.
No rights reserved: copyright waivers and public domain dedications
Some licences or agreements allow you to place your work in the public domain. When you apply these to your work, you waive all your rights and the protections offered by copyright, including the right to be credited as the creator.
You should think carefully before using a 'No rights reserved' licence. Standards and tools for data citation are emerging, and in future citation of data may be an important metric for research impact. Waiving your rights means that neither you nor SCU must be credited if data is reused.
If you are required by an archive or repository to use a copyright waiver or public domain dedication, you should find out whether any "community norms" statements can be applied: these will not be legally binding but can signal your wishes to potential reusers, where this is practical.
Resources
- How to Licence Research Data (Digital Curation Centre, UK)
- Data Creator Flowchart (Australian Research Data Commons)
- Creative Commons Australia (website)
Seek advice from copyright@scu.edu.au.
When the required retention period has come to an end, you may need to destroy data to meet ethical requirements or because you determine the data no longer has any value.
The destruction process must be irreversible, meaning that there is no reasonable risk that any information may be recovered later. You must take extra care when dealing with records that contain sensitive information.
Print materials should be shredded and pulped. For non-sensitive materials, office shredders can be used. For sensitive materials, order a confidential waste bin through Facilities.
Data in digital formats must be processed so the information is irretrievable. These processes can include deleting or overwriting information, purging magnetic media through degaussing (exposure to a strong magnetic field), or destroying the physical media (e.g. CD-ROMS, DVDs).
Resources
Seek advice from the Corporate Records Unit if required.
You must not remove master copies of any working data that belongs to the University or to a third party with which the University has an agreement. The University's IP policy allows you to take a copy for teaching and research purposes; if you intend to use the data for other purposes (e.g. commercial), this should be agreed in writing with the Head of School or Research Centre.
Before leaving the University, you should arrange access for at least one other researcher or your Head of School or Research Centre to the data and any documentation relating to it.
Copies of completed data that you have deposited in the Cross Connect can remain in the care of the University. They will continue to be found and cited using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) assigned to the collection at the time of publishing.
You must remove from University systems any working data that belongs to you. On leaving SCU, it is your responsibility to ensure this data is stored and managed correctly, that the privacy and confidentiality of the data is kept intact, and that the data is deposited or disposed of appropriately at the end of the retention period.
The NHMRC and ARC have both mandated that research resulting from NHMRC or ARC funding is to be made available on Open Access via the institutional repository, for SCU that is Cross Connect.
The mandates are based on the premise that:
The Australian Government makes a major investment in research to support its essential role in improving the wellbeing of our society. To maximise the benefits from research, publications resulting from research activities must be disseminated as broadly as possible to allow access by other researchers and the wider community.
ARC Open Access Policy Version 2021.1
Any Research Output Published in respect of ARC Funded Research must be made Openly Accessible within a twelve (12) month period from the Publication Date and must include acknowledgement of ARC funding and the ARC Project ID.
- Applies to outputs from funding granted after 1 January 2013
- Applies to books, book chapters and journal articles.
Read the ARC Open Access policy
From 1 July 2012 NHMRC have mandated:
...any publications arising from an NHMRC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve month period from the date of publication.
- Applies retrospectively
- Publication must include the Grant ID number
- Relates to anything published after 1 July 2012 as a result of an NHMRC grant no matter how old the grant
- Applies to peer-reviewed journal articles only
Read the NHMRC Open Access policy.
APCs are charged by Open Access publishers to cover the costs of publishing instead of raising revenue from subscriptions
The APC will vary usually depending on the impact factor of the journal.
In some cases, this APC may be covered by the Library's Read and Publish agreements.
The Accepted Manuscript, or post-print, is the final version of your manuscript before publisher markup and after any reviewers comments have been addressed. It is word-for-word identical to the published version.
Some commercial publishers apply an embargo to the Accepted Manuscript.
This will usually be outlined in your author agreement. The Accepted Manuscript can be added to Cross Connect and your SCU Profile where the system will apply an embargo period as per the publisher's requirement.
We are happy to help you interpret your publisher agreement. Email crossconnect@scu.edu.au if you have an enquiry.
To comply with the ARC and NHMRC mandates the Accepted Manuscript must be submitted to Cross Connect and made available on Open Access within 12 months of publishing. Both mandates state that if you are unable to supply an Open Access version of your paper then the metadata i.e. the citation details, must at least must be included in the Institutional Repository.
Different publishers apply different copyright restrictions on their Accepted Manuscripts, Library Systems staff will check the copyright for you and make your Accepted Manuscript available wherever possible.
The Post Print, or Accepted Manuscript, is the final version of your manuscript before publisher markup and after any changes by reviewers. SHERPA/RoMEO provide a list of Publishers allowing the deposition of their published version/PDF in Institutional Repositories.
You can provide Library Systems staff with the Accepted Manuscript by:
- Attach it to your Research Publications submission to DVCR
- Attach it to the publication on your SCU Profile
- Emailing crossconnect@scu.edu.au
You can ensure your rights to post an Accepted Manuscript, if not already permitted, by requesting an addendum to your Author/Publisher agreement. The NHMRC has recommended the following wording to be added to the contract you sign with your publisher;
The Author has the right to archive their version of the article (Word document) after peer-review, with revisions having been made, on their institutional website and their personal website, provided in all cases a link to the journal article on the Publisher web-site is included.
Open resources SCU Library guide - Links and information about open access and open educational resources
DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
DOAB - Directory of Open Access Books
SHERPA/RoMEO - for publisher copyright policies and self archiving rules, search by Journal Title
If you wish to have a list rolled over from a previous term, contact the myReadings team.
Note: The list will be rolled over from the last time this unit had a published myReadings list.
If any changes are needed, please give a detailed explanation of the changes requested (an annotated list of what to add or remove).
Please submit all tables of contents or bibliographies for new lists to myreadings@scu.edu.au prior to the deadline.
The Library will:
- check the copyright status of all items
- create the reading lists in myReadings and notify you when the list is complete
- ask for a digitised file for any items not held in the Library if required.
If you wish to have a list rolled over from a previous term, contact the myReadings team.
Note: The list will be rolled over from the last time this unit had a published myReadings list. If any changes are needed, please give a detailed explanation of the changes.
Deadline for submission is the end of Week 4 of the preceding Term.
Email your list to myreadings@scu.edu.au.
2024 deadlines* (week 4 of the previous term):
- Summer Term - 24 November 2023
- Term 1 - 2 February 2024
- Term 2 - 29 March 2024
- Term 3 - 24 May 2024
- Term 4 - 26 July 2024
- Term 5 - 20 September 2024
* You can still submit lists after the deadlines, but we cannot guarantee that they will be available in time for the start of teaching.
Before teaching staff can start using myReadings, there are a few simple steps to follow:
- Contact the myReadings team to arrange training.
- After training, the myReadings team can give you access to the list.
- Accept the email invitation to register as a list publisher.
- If you haven't already done so, set up your profile and login.
- Install the 'bookmarklet' tool to your browser. (See tutorials on Bookmarking and 'My Bookmarks')
- Start collecting bookmarks for books, journal articles, websites, etc - whatever you wish to provide in a list for your students.
myReadings provides students with:
- links directly to key readings, allowing students to spend more time reading items on their lists, rather than searching for them,
- easily identified 'prescribed' readings and optional lecturers' notes,
- the ability to add their own notes to myReadings items, enhancing engagement.
myReadings lists can be customised to suit your needs.
- Create myReadings lists using bookmarks: list creation is dynamic and a variety of resources can be added to a list, including books, ebooks, book chapters, journal articles and webpages.
- Save time and effort: items saved as bookmarks can be used in multiple lists and lists are simple to update.
- Import reading lists via an RIS file: import your readings from EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero or other reference management tools.
- Structure lists in whatever way best suits the unit content: lists can be organised by week, topic, module or resource type.
- Gather valuable data: if you are given publisher or owner access, you can see the analytics dashboard for each of your reading lists. The dashboard shows the number of visits to a list and how many times links to resources have been clicked. Monitor which items on the list are under-used and which are used most often.
Copyright legislation restricts the amount that SCU Library can make available online to 10% or one chapter of a text. MyReadings keeps track of copyrighted material and raises alerts when the University is at risk of breaching copyright. For more information on copyright, see SCU's Copyright site.
The Assessment, Teaching and Learning Procedure specifies how learning resources best contribute to the Southern Cross Model for student engagement in a unit. This includes the provision that learning resources will not exceed 20 items per unit within a myReadings list and only consist of prescribed learning resources.
Please contact the myReadings team directly by email if you have any questions regarding materials on myReadings.
To help us answer your query quickly, please provide us with:
- Unit code and name
- Term unit is being offered
- Reading number and author
- Details of the problem
- Log in to Cross Connect to access your profile.
- If you are unable to log in, please contact crossconnect@scu.edu.au to confirm access.
- Click the Edit profile button to add the required information.
- In the Profile section
- Add your Identifiers (Scopus, WOS) and Connect to your ORCID iD
- Upload a professional headshot.
- In the About section
- Enter your Research topics (these can be FOR codes or keywords). Please note: after typing each keyword you will need to click the Add ‘keyword’ button (or select the FOR code from the dropdown list) for the Research topic to be added.
- Add Links
- Update your Biography and expertise section
Please note: Changes to the Biography and expertise section must be emailed to crossconnect@scu.edu.au to update. - Add Honours, if applicable
Please note: SoLT awards can be listed as Honours here but must also be entered as Activities for reporting. - Add Education, if desired.
- In the Affiliations section, your current SCU affiliations will be automatically added and updated from the HR system. Add any desired previous or current non-SCU affiliations.
- Your Contact details are automatically added and updated from the HR system.
- Proxies does not need to be updated unless you would like someone else to edit your profile on your behalf.
- Notifications can be changed if you do not want to receive emails from your SCU Profile on Cross Connect.
Once you've completed building your profile, click the < Back link to preview.
If your profile is not yet live, you will see a “make your profile public?” banner at the top of your screen. Click this to request a live profile or email crossconnect@scu.edu.au.
The Library Systems team will activate your profile and arrange an import of your publications. Do not hesitate to contact crossconnect@scu.edu.au if you have any questions or require assistance with your SCU Profile on Cross Connect.
Further information about Cross Connect and SCU Profiles
To add or flag Outputs you MUST sign in. Go to Cross Connect and sign in using your SCU username and password.
If the output is already on your profile you can flag the output as SoLT by sending a message.
If the publication is not already on your profile:
- Click Add Output/Activity button in the top right corner
- Click Output
The Essentials - In the ‘What are you submitting?’ section, Select output type
- Browse the list or start typing in the Select output type box to find the applicable type e.g. review, article, proceeding, etc.
- In the ‘Search’ section
- If you have a DOI enter it in the Title or DOI box and the system will attempt to auto-populate the article details
- If you do not have a DOI, enter the Title
- In the ‘Add your files’
- Add the Accepted Manuscript or other CC-licensed files (do not add the published version of an article unless it is CC-licensed)
- Click the Describe it button in the top right of the input screen to proceed with the submission
Describe it - Enter the full title, topics, co-authors, abstract, and any other fields as applicable for this output type, it is okay to leave fields blank
- Click the Specify button in the top right of the input screen to proceed with the submission
Specify - Enter the publication status, dates, DOI and any other fields as applicable for this output type, it is okay to leave fields blank
- Click the Relations button in the top right of the input screen to proceed with the submission
Relations - Search for or add any related Grants
- Click the Review button in the top right of the input screen to proceed with the submission
Review - Click the tickbox to agree to the Terms and conditions
- Click the + Add notes or instructions for this output link
Type one of the following notes (depending on the SoLT category of this output):- Please flag as: Scholarly Reviews - SoLT
- Please flag as: Original Research - SoLT
- Please flag as: Evidence Based Practice - SoLT
- Review the remaining Submission summary and click the Submit button in the top right of the input screen
Your output will be sent to the Library Systems team to review the metadata before adding it to your SCU Profile.
Once approved, the output will appear under the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching facets within Cross Connect and will also be included in our Institutional Reporting of SoLT activities.
To add or flag Outputs you MUST sign in. Go to Cross Connect and sign in using your SCU username and password.
Message via output on profile
Confirm if the output has already been flagged as SoLT by looking at the details of the output. At the very bottom of the details, there will be a Local Field indicating if this item has been flagged as Original Research, Scholarly Reviews, or Evidence Based Practice.
To flag an output as SoLT, browse the list of outputs on your SCU Profile:
- Find the desired output in your list of publications
- Click the three vertical dots to the right of the output
- Select Messages
- Type one of the following messages (depending on the SoLT category of this output) and click Send:
- Please flag as: Scholarly Reviews - SoLT
- Please flag as: Original Research - SoLT
- Please flag as: Evidence Based Practice - SoLT
- Library Systems staff will add the flag to your output and it will appear under the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching facets within Cross Connect.
The output will also be included in our Institutional Reporting of SoLT activities.
To add or edit Activities you MUST sign in. Go to Cross Connect and sign in using your SCU username and password.
- Click Add Output/Activity button in the top right corner
- Click Activity
Add Activity - Enter the Activity Title
This title should succinctly describe the activity (Note: only the title and date are included when you export your CV) - Select from the Activity Category picklist: “Teaching”
Please Note: All SoLT activities are entered under “Teaching”
Other categories can be used for activities to display on your profile but they will not be flagged as SoLT - From the Activity Type picklist select the relevant SoLT category
If you do not see the SoLT categories in the Activity Type list, ensure you have the Activity Category of "Teaching" selected above.
- Click the Submit button in the top right of the input screen
NOTE: Your activity has been successfully added and is public.
YOU MUST ENTER FURTHER DETAILS.
- Further details required:
- Click the edit (pencil) next to the title information
- Add a Start date (year or full date, if applicable)
- Optional: add an End date (year or full date, if applicable)
- Click the Save button
- Enter Course Information, if relevant
- Enter Keywords
- Add keywords allows for free text entry. After typing each keyword you will need to click the Add ‘keyword’ button to add it to the list of keywords
Click Save after adding all keywords - Add topics provides a search of FOR codes to select from after you start typing
Click Save after adding all topics
- Add keywords allows for free text entry. After typing each keyword you will need to click the Add ‘keyword’ button to add it to the list of keywords
- Add a Description
- This should be a detailed description of the activity and will be displayed below the title on your profile.
- Add SoLT Attributes
- Select all that apply
- Click Save button
- Add Fields of Education and values to a total of 100
- Add any files or links, completing the pop-up form
Please Note: Files will be immediately visible and downloadable. Please DO NOT add any Third-Party Copyright material. If unsure contact copyright@scu.edu.au
- Add Associated Academics
- Click the pencil icon next to your name to add your role in the activity
- Click + Add member to search for associated academics, assign a role and click Add button
All SCU colleagues can be found under search existing. Adding a SCU colleague will automatically add this activity to their profile
- Add Associated Organisations if relevant to highlight external collaborations
- Add Location, if relevant
Your activity will display automatically on your SCU Profile under the Scholarship of Learning & Teaching tab.
All SoLT activities are sent to your ADE or Head of Work Unit as a scheduled report for approval as the selected SoLT category. Once approved, the activity will also be included in our Institutional Reporting of SoLT activities.
To add media mentions to your SCU Profile on Cross Connect, please email the details of the media mention, including link where available, to crossconnect@scu.edu.au.
Please indicate if this media mention is an example of SoLT Engagement and Contribution to Communities (per How to showcase your Learning and Teaching achievements)
To add grants to your SCU Profile on Cross Connect, please email the details of the grant, including grant ID, names and roles of all investigators, and link where available, to crossconnect@scu.edu.au.
Please indicate if this grant is an example of SoLT Scholarly Collaboration and Activity (per How to showcase your Learning and Teaching achievements)
To add your Masters or PhD Thesis to your SCU Profile on Cross Connect, please email the details of the thesis, including link where available, to crossconnect@scu.edu.au.
Please indicate if this thesis should be tagged as Higher Level Qualification - SoLT (per How to showcase your Learning and Teaching achievements)
Flag multiple outputs as SoLT
To review all the outputs listed for you, you can browse Cross Connect for your outputs and filter by those that have been tagged (or not tagged) as SoLT):
- Browse to the Outputs list on Cross Connect
- Enter your name in the search box to narrow down the results
- Use the facets on the left to Refine the results. Select the tickbox next to your name under Author/Creator
This will return all Outputs in Cross Connect assigned to you - To view which outputs have been tagged as SoLT:
- Use the facets on the left to Refine the results. Select the tickboxes next to the SoLT categories under Scholarship of Learning & Teaching.
- To view which outputs have NOT been tagged as SoLT:
- Use the facets on the left to Refine the results. Under Scholarship of Learning & Teaching, hover over each of the SoLT categories and select the circle with the diagonal line through it. This will remove all outputs with a SoLT tag from the search results.
- Copy/paste or take a screenshot of the outputs you want to tag as SoLT
- Email crossconnect@scu.edu.au with the list of outputs you to tag, identifying which SoLT category to apply to each output:
- Scholarly Reviews - SoLT
- Original Research - SoLT
- Evidence Based Practice - SoLT
Library Systems staff will add the flag to your outputs and they will appear under the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching facets within Cross Connect.
The outputs will also be included in our Institutional Reporting of SoLT activities.
To determine if an individual output is tagged as SoLT
To find out if an individual output is tagged as SoLT, browse to the output either from your SCU Profile or from the Outputs list on Cross Connect:
- Click the title of the output to open the full record.
- Scroll to the Details section of the output
- Click the option to 'Show the rest' of the details
- Scroll down to the bottom of the details
- If there is an Additional Field with the SoLT information, this output has been tagged as SoLT.
To review all your outputs to see which are tagged as SoLT
To review all the outputs listed for you, you can browse Cross Connect for your outputs and filter by those that have been tagged (or not tagged) as SoLT):
- Browse to the Outputs list on Cross Connect
- Enter your name in the search box to narrow down the results
- Use the facets on the left to Refine the results. Select the tickbox next to your name under Author/Creator
This will return all Outputs in Cross Connect assigned to you - To view which outputs have been tagged as SoLT:
- Use the facets on the left to Refine the results. Select the tickboxes next to the SoLT categories under Scholarship of Learning & Teaching.
- To view which outputs have NOT been tagged as SoLT:
- Use the facets on the left to Refine the results. Under Scholarship of Learning & Teaching, hover over each of the SoLT categories and select the circle with the diagonal line through it. This will remove all outputs with a SoLT tag from the search results.