VTechWorks Policies

VTechWorks is an open access repository. Access to some works may be temporarily restricted, but VTechWorks largely hosts content that is meant to be publicly accessible immediately or in the near term.

Content: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu          Contact: vtechworks@vt.edu

Content in VTechWorks will as a rule meet the following criteria, although exceptions can be granted. Write vtechworks@vt.edu to discuss exceptions.

• The work is produced, submitted, or sponsored by Virginia Tech faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, or students.
• The work is related to education, research, service, or extension activities, or the work has historical value to the Virginia Tech community.
• The author/owner is willing and able to grant Virginia Tech the non-exclusive right to preserve and provide access to the work.
• The complete text, image, audio, or video of the work is stored in VTechWorks, even if the file is not publicly available. VTechWorks is a content repository and does not accept metadata-only records.
• The work is appropriate for inclusion in the collection to which it is submitted.
• The work exists in a recommended file format that will facilitate long-term access and preservation, though any digital format will be accepted.
• If the work is part of a series, other works in the series should also be deposited so that VTechWorks can offer as full a set as possible.
• The work is static and, for example, not a live data stream. It is not possible to execute files or run software through VTechWorks.

In general, content in VTechWorks is meant to capture the intellectual output of Virginia Tech in all its variety. Types of content in VTechWorks include (but are not limited to):

• Journal articles, pre-prints, and post-prints, i.e., versions of scholarly and peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication
• Books, including scholarly monographs and textbooks
• Theses, dissertations, and other capstone and student works
• Technical reports and white papers
• Presentations, including lecture notes, slides, and videos of scholarly talks
• Posters, e.g., digital files of posters that were presented at conferences or symposia
• Conference proceedings, especially symposia hosted or sponsored by Virginia Tech
• Extension materials, e.g., content created by Virginia Cooperative Extension
• Learning objects, e.g., modules, syllabi, lecture videos, etc., especially when deposited for preservation purposes
• Creative endeavors including media, art, and music
• Performances, e.g., audio or video recordings of recitals, dramatic readings, and the like
• Patents and other intellectual property records
• Administrative documents, including policies, rulings, official statements, strategic and operational plans, annual reports, newsletters, and other materials generated by colleges and departments that document the activities and history of Virginia Tech
• News articles and press releases produced by University Relations or other Virginia Tech news outlets
• Data that supports a particular thesis, dissertation, report, article, or book may be deposited in VTechWorks along with that piece of writing as part of a single item record with multiple files. Independent data sets should be deposited in Virginia Tech’s data repository, VTechData.

Content that is generally not appropriate for VTechWorks includes:

• Primary sources such as historical images (unless related to the history of Virginia Tech).
• Data sets that are published independently for reuse by other researchers as a separate publication; such data may be deposited in Virginia Tech’s data repository, VTechData, at http://data.lib.vt.edu. However, data that supports a particular thesis, dissertation, report, article, or book may be deposited in VTechWorks along with that piece of writing as part of a single item record with multiple files.
• Material not associated with Virginia Tech. One notable exception is the Networked Library of Theses and Dissertations, which contains theses and dissertations produced at institutions around the world which have no digital repository of their own.
• Content that contains sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information (PII). Such information includes, but is not limited to, names of research participants, birth dates, addresses, social security numbers, and the like. Depositors must ensure that all content submitted to VTechWorks is fully anonymized or scrubbed of sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information prior to deposit.
• Abstract or citation-only records. VTechWorks is a full-text repository whose purpose is to expand open access to scholarship. Although VTechWorks may have accepted abstracts or citation-only items in the past, VTechWorks now accepts only content in its entirety (e.g., full-text articles, full-text books or book chapters, complete presentations).
• Content whose text is not searchable or machine-readable. For [pictures] textual content to be discovered through VTechWorks, as well as through search engines such as Google and Google Scholar, it must have undergone Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which is the transformation of images of text into machine-readable text.
• Works that the depositor does not have the legal right to deposit.

There are currently no restrictions on file size or the number of files that you can deposit. However, VTechWorks reserves the right to refuse to ingest materials whose volume would present a strain on its resources. In many cases, grant- or department-funded projects provide a budget for storage, preservation and access; in these cases, VTechWorks may provide more storage for a nominal fee.