VTechWorks Policies

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

Theses and dissertations in VTechWorks have been approved by the Graduate School and cannot be changed, withdrawn, or embargoed after deposit without the approval of the Vice President and Dean for Graduate Education. Email her at grads@vt.edu to request any change to your thesis or dissertation.

Please note that by Graduate School policy, Virginia Tech theses and dissertations may be withheld from public view at the request of the student for an initial year. If you were a graduate student at Virginia Tech who graduated more than one year ago and would like to request that your thesis or dissertation be withheld for an additional year, you will need to obtain permission for this extension from the Vice President and Dean for Graduate Education: grads@vt.edu Once you have received permission, you may forward the email to vtechworks@vt.edu, whereupon we will withhold your thesis or dissertation for an additional year.

To change to an item you deposited via the VTechWorks submission process, you can do so if you have sufficient privileges for the the item's collection (i.e., if you are an "administrator" or "approver" for that collection). We recommend that you add an erratum note or create a new version of the file instead of deleting the original file to ensure that links to your original file do not break and that all versions of all files are preserved. File names should never be changed after files are uploaded to VTechWorks as this will change the URL to that file.

If you are unable to change an item you have deposited to VTechWorks, please contact us at vtechworks@vt.edu. This includes items deposited in VTechWorks via the EFARS system, which can only be removed or changed by VTechWorks staff.

VTechWorks staff try to ensure that all material in the repository can legally and ethically made available fully and freely online. If you believe that material in VTechWorks is legally or ethically problematic, please let us know.

Requests for amending or removing material in VTechWorks should be made in writing, either by emailing vtechworks@vt.edu or by sending a letter to

VTechWorks
University Libraries, Virginia Tech (0434)
560 Drillfield Dr.
Blacksburg, VA 24061

Your request must contain at least the following information:

• your own name and contact information
• the nature of your concern (e.g., copyright infringement, breach of privacy, research misconduct, defamation)
• the title and author(s) of the item(s) you wish to have removed or amended
• the URL(s) of the item(s) you wish to have removed or amended

Upon receiving a request for removal (e.g., "takedown request"), we will promptly acknowledge receipt by email or letter and will make an initial assessment of the validity of the concern. This initial assessment will verify that VTechWorks does indeed hold a copy of the material in question and will establish who owns it and who deposited it. If the concern involves copyright, we might ask you at this stage to furnish proof that you are the copyright holder of the work in question or are the copyright holder's designated representative.

If after the initial assessment the complaint is deemed reasonable and likely to be valid, we will remove the item temporarily pending resolution of the case. We will then contact the depositor and/or owner of the content to notify them of the complaint and will work with all parties to bring the case to a conclusion. Each case will be analyzed and judged individually. Where necessary, cases will be escalated to University Legal Counsel, but we will strive to reach a mutually agreed-upon solution first. Library staff will make a decision concerning the action to be taken within thirty days, and will notify both the complainant and depositor. Actions taken might include

• the material remains public in the repository in its original state
• the material is amended in consultation with the author and/or rights holder, and the amended version replaces the original version in the repository
• the material remains in the repository unchanged, but access to the material is restricted to Virginia Tech or withheld for a certain period of time (i.e., embargoed)
• the material is removed from the repository, but the descriptive metadata record(s) for the material remains available
• the material and all metadata records(s) are both deleted from the repository