African Higher Education Research Online

Data Policy for full-text and other full data items

1. Anyone may access full items free of charge.
2. Copies of full items generally can be:
   (a) reproduced and given to third parties in any format or medium
   (b) for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge,
provided:
   (a) the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given
   (b) the content is not changed in any way
3. Some full items are individually tagged with different rights permissions and conditions.
4. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holders.
5. This repository is not the publisher; it is merely the online archive.

6. Full items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or citation analysis
7. Mention of African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) is appreciated but not mandatory.

Content Policy for types of documents held

1. This is a multi-institution subject-based repository.
2. African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) holds all types of materials except:
   (a) Learning Objects
   (b) Other special item types
   (c) Special materials: Powerpoint files
3. Papers may include:
   (a) unpublished pre-prints (not peer-reviewed)
   (b) final peer-reviewed drafts (post-prints)
   (c) published versions
4. Papers are individually tagged with their peer-review and publication status.
5. Principal Languages: English; French; Portuguese

Submission Policy concerning depositors, quality & copyright

1. Items may only be deposited by academic staff of the subject community, or their delegated agents.
2. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving.

3. Theses completed towards master's degrees may be accepted, in cases where the content represents quality research and the thesis provides information not easily obtained by other means.
4. Eligible depositors must deposit full texts of all their publications, although they may delay making them publicly visible to comply with publishers' embargos.
5. The administrator only vets items for
relevance to the scope of African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO), and valid layout & format
6. The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is not checked.
7. Items can be deposited at any time, but will not be made publicly visible until any publishers' or funders' embargo period has expired.
8. Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
9. If African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.

Metadata Policy for information describing items in the repository

1. Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
2. The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes provided:
(a) the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record are given
(b) African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) is mentioned
3. The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission.

Preservation Policy

1. Items will be retained indefinitely.
2. African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
   (a) Items will be migrated to new file formats where necessary.
3. African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) is working with external partners to convert or migrate file formats
4. African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) regularly backs up its files according to current best practice.
5. Items may be removed at the request of the author/copyright holder, but this is strongly discouraged.
6. Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:
   (a) Proven copyright violation or plagiarism
   (b) Legal requirements and proven violations
   (c) National Security
   (d) Falsified research
7. Withdrawn items are not deleted per se, but are removed from public view.
8. Withdrawn items' identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely.
9. URLs will continue to point to 'tombstone' citations, to avoid broken links and to retain item histories.
10. Changes to deposited items are not permitted.
11. If necessary, an updated version may be deposited.
12. In the event of African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO) being closed down, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.