Rights Policy

Rights Policy #

As outlined in the Preservation Implementation Plan, Scholars Portal’s preservation strategies are based around the transformation of ingested content into file formats conducive to long term preservation, in addition to bit-level preservation. In order to enable the full realization of this strategy, there are two main rights that need to be acquired from content providers: local loading and transformation.

Local Loading #

This is the most basic of the rights necessary for inclusion in Scholars Portal’s repository system. This right refers to the ability of Scholars Portal staff to keep a local copy of the licensed materials on its servers for persistent access purposes. By securing this right, Scholars Portal has obtained sufficient control of the material to be able to ensure its integrity and continued availability through the practice of bit-level preservation, as defined in the Preservation Implementation Plan.

Transformation #

Content providers granting transformation rights have consented to having their content normalized or migrated to new formats for the purposes of long-term preservation. In the interest of long-term preservation, it is important that Scholars Portal be allowed to transform files in its care from formats deemed as being in danger of becoming obsolete into ones more suited to long-term interpretability. This is the right necessary to enable the “full” preservation level.

Without this right having been assigned, Scholars Portal can only ensure file integrity, not the preservation of the intellectual contents of an archival unit.

Rights Venn Diagram

Approved #

May 12, 2011 by the OCUL Directors

Review Cycle #

Regular