Why should I submit my work to Cornerstone?

• Visibility and Discoverability = Adding your work to Cornerstone will Increased visibility and discoverability of your work, the work of your department and the work of your students. Works are indexed by Google, Google Scholar and other major search engines and can be easily found all in one centralized place!
  
• Dissemination = Placing a publication in Cornerstone allows for fast and effective dissemination of research and scholarship to a worldwide audience. Cornerstone is a supplement to traditional publishing venues and not a replacement. Think of Cornerstone as a means to highlight and showcase the intellectual output of the University.
  
• Accessibility = 24/7 access to scholarship and research with permanent links to your work even if you leave the University. Even if you have already published a work, you can provide open access to anyone, anywhere by placing your work in Cornerstone. Cornerstone is not subscription based and there is charge for access!
  
• Grant Requirements = Depositing your work in Cornerstone will help to fulfill grant requirements and calls for data management plans (i.e. NSF).
  
• Partnership building = By adding works to Cornerstone, you and your research is presented to a worldwide audience which in turn can lead to discussions and collaborations with others beyond the campus community. When a work is submitted to Cornerstone, it is added to the Digital Commons Network™, a collection of works from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide that use Digital Commons®.
  

What types of materials can be submitted to Cornerstone?
Works produced by current students, staff, faculty, and staff/faculty emeriti of Minnesota State University, Mankato can be voluntarily, self-submitted to Cornerstone. Submissions must be research-based-scholarly or creative works, or works of institutional significance. Works outside this focus require special consideration on a case by case basis

There are no format or size restrictions on files. Files of any type can be submitted, including multimedia files such as audio and video. We do, however, ask that you abide by certain format standards and that you contact us before uploading large data or multimedia files. Any textual file will be uploaded and saved as a PDF and not as a Microsoft Word document. All submissions must be approved for inclusion and must abide by certain guidelines.

All works submitted must be clear of copyright violations and plagiarism, must not violate any laws of the United States, the State of Minnesota or International laws, break any University or MinnState policies (such as policies defined in the Minnesota State University, MankatoStatement of Student Responsibilities or MinnState Board Procedure 1C.0.1 - Employee Code of Conduct), breach proprietary contracts, invade a person’s privacy, or include materials used solely for commercial or monetary gain.

See our Submission Guidelines page for general and specific submission guidelines.

What platform does Cornerstone use? Cornerstone is built using bepress Digital Commons®. Digital Commons® is a bepress product. bepress was built by scholars to serve the needs of scholars. In the late 1990s, academic journals were plagues by slow turnaround times, limited access, and unreasonable prices. Publishers wanted to maximize profits, while editors wanted to maximize readership and share ideas. In 1999, UC Berkeley Professors Robert Cooter (Law and Economics), Aaron Edlin (Economics and Law), and Benjamin Hermalin (Economics and Business) banded together to launch a sustainable alternative: Berkeley Electronic Press, now simply called bepress. The heart of bepress has always been about listening to faculty and library needs and responding with simple, technology-based solutions that support librarians and scholars in navigating the changing world of scholarly publishing. bepress was founded by faculty and keeps faculty at the heart of everything they do. More information about bepress can be found HERE.

What is Open Access (OA)? See our page to learn more about open access!

What about articles already submitted to journals, can those articles be submitted to Cornerstone?
YES! Most of the time, this is possible. We want you to publish in prestigious scholarly publications of your choosing, and we understand if you would want to present the materials elsewhere first. BUT, we would ask that you consider submitting the work to Cornerstone even if the work is published by a third party. Why? Cornerstone is a permanent record of the intellectual output of the University, so we want to gather together all the examples of the scholarly work of our faculty, staff and students. Submitting your work to Cornerstone not only raises your visibility, it also raises the institutional prestige of this campus. Before submitting an article to a third party publisher, here are a few things that you should keep in mind:

• When you signed a publisher's agreement for a publication, did you read it carefully? Did you sign away your rights to a third party and so you cannot submit an article to Cornerstone?
  
• Does your agreement prohibit you to post a copy in an institutional repository like Cornerstone or another open access repository? This is sometimes referred to "self-archiving" or "green open access."
  
• If you can post a copy to the repository, what version can you post? The publishers PDF? Your own word version?
  
• Is there an embargo period from when the article is published to the time that you can post a version in the repository?

To give some clarification first on copyright and versions - here are the 2 basic options in Cornerstone:

1. The publisher allows us to have immediate access from Cornerstone to the full text of your article. Here is how it works: a user of Cornerstone sees your name and clicks on a title that they are interested in. They are taken to a page with descriptive elements (title, author's name, abstract, keywords, disciplines, etc.) and in the upper right hand corner, there is a button that reads “Download." When the person clicks on the Download button, they will see a full text copy of your article. Here is an example: http://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/lib_services_fac_pubs/2/
   
2. The publisher does not allow us to have access from Cornerstone to the full text of your article. Instead, we can link out to the publishers’ site, usually though a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). So with these types of materials, a user will see the text "Link to Full Text." Here is an example: http://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/lib_services_fac_pubs/6/
   If the MSU, Mankato library subscribes to the journal, MSU, Mankato affiliated users can see the full text on campus and/or log in with Star ID to see the full text off campus. If the library does not subscribe to the journal OR if the person is a non-MSU user, a person has the option to purchase the journal from the publisher or they can request a copy through Interlibrary loan at their local library. So a user in Cornerstone can see all your works, but they may not have complete, 100% full text access to all of your articles.
   
   With option 2, there is the possibility of putting in a full text VERSION of your article. In most cases, this VERSION must be pre-print (ex. a working copy) or a post-print (a pre-copyedited version of the article accepted for publication). In both cases, this version is considered your Author version (like a word document) and can contain NOTHING done by the publisher (no editing, no formatting, nothing) – otherwise, it would be the publisher’s version and posting it in Cornerstone would find us in violation of a publisher's agreement.

To check for examples of various publisher's agreements, visit the Sherpa/RoMEO site and search by title. The Sherpa/RoMEO site allows one to find out if your publishers’ copyright rules allow you to deposit in your institutional repository. Sherpa/RoMEO summarizes publishers’ conditions and categorizes publishers by colors, indicating level of author rights. To be completely sure, it is recommended to talk to your publisher ahead of submitting to Cornerstone to ensure that all requirements are met. Not enough time or uncertain what to do? Please contact Heidi Southworth at heidi.southworth@mnsu.edu and she can assist you!

What about copyright?
Intellectual property rights in scholarly works belong to faculty, staff and students as defined by the MinnState policy 3.26 on Intellectual Property found at: https://www.minnstate.edu/board/policy/326.html.

Therefore faculty, staff and students are considered copyright owners and will retain exclusive rights to their works as defined by MinnState policy 3.27 found at: https://www.minnstate.edu/board/policy/327.html.

When submitting a work to Cornerstone, copyright owners will grant certain non-exclusive rights to Minnesota State University, Mankato to copy, display, perform, distribute, and publish their submitted work within copyright law or any applicable license agreement as part of Cornerstone.

Non-exclusive rights are defined as not limiting a person’s copyright. The copyright owner retains all rights to share and publish the work. Please be aware that some publishers require exclusive rights to research they publish. If you plan to submit the work to a journal or book publisher at a later date or if you have already submitted a work to a publisher, it is important to be aware if the publisher’s policy requires exclusivity before submitting an item to Cornerstone. Ask Heidi Southworth, Digital Initiatives Librarian for assistance in working with publishers’ agreements.

Copyright owners will grant Minnesota State University, Mankato the non-exclusive right to migrate their work to various formats as needed in perpetuity for preservation and usability.

The Minnesota State University, Mankato Library Services’ department will manage these non-exclusive rights granted.

When submitting a work to Cornerstone, a submitter will be asked to affirm that:

1. They are the copyright owner of the work.
   
2. Copyrighted works (such as photographs, artwork or any other image) included in this work are used under fair use or with permission of the copyright holder. For assistance with determining fair use or with using copyrighted images, see the following:
   
   MnSCU Fair Use Analysis = http://www.copyright.mnscu.edu/forms/FAIR%20USE%20ANALYSIS.pdf
   Library Services’ excellent guide to copyright and fair use = http://libguides.mnsu.edu/copyright
   University of Minnesota Copyright page = https://www.lib.umn.edu/copyright/basics
   
3. The work does not infringe any copyright, patent, or trade secrets of any third party, and does not contain any libelous matter, nor invade the privacy of any person or third party.
   
4. The work is free from all exclusive claims, EXCEPT for in the case with pending exclusive publishing agreement or pending patent(s). If a work has an exclusive publication contract or patent pending, the author has the option to request an embargo on display and distribution rights through Cornerstone.

A Creative Commons license is automatically added to all works in Cornerstone. This Creative Commons license only allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change the works in any way or use them commercially ( Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ). Creative Commons licenses may be amended to any work added to Cornerstone to direct users to an author’s/creator’s copyright wishes. Creative Commons licenses are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/.

What is an author addendum?
According to SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), an author addendum "is a legal instrument that you can use to modify your copyright transfer agreements with non-open access journal publishers. It allows you to select which individual rights out of the bundle of copyrights you want to keep, such as distributing copies in the course of teaching and research, posting the article on a personal or institutional Web site or creating derivative works." Click HERE for more information on author addendums and to see the SPARC author addendum. Science Commons Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine is also beneficial when it comes to creating an addendum to a publisher's agreement.

What about grant requirements and data management plans?
The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. Since Cornerstone is accessible to a worldwide audience, submitting a work to Cornerstone can help fulfill this requirement.

Additionally, starting in January 2011, all grant applications to the National Science Foundation must include a two-page-maximum “data management plan” for data arising from the research process. What is a data management plan? Basically, a data management plan is a document that describes how data used in a study or project is organized, preserved and shared with a wider audience. For more information about data plans, the University of Minnesota has an excellent page on data management.

Unsure of whether or not your grant has an open access requirement? Search SHERPA-JULIET to see or ask us. We can help with that! Cornerstone can provide a place for publications submitted as part of grant requirements, for data sets, and for publications arising out of grant funded research! Just speak with us to begin the process!

Can a work be withdrawn from Cornerstone or embargoed for a period time?
Once a work has been added into Cornerstone, it will not be withdrawn unless removal is required by law, by written request of the copyright holder for a specific reason, or due to a violation of University or MInnState policies. In the event of a removal of a work, the corresponding descriptive information (metadata) will be retained for historical/record keeping purposes along with a statement describing the reason for removal. Works will not be removed due to spelling or grammatical errors.

Cornerstone is a permanent archive. Before adding works, a submitter should ensure that the works are complete and factually accurate and that they have the right to make them publicly available. If the status of a work is uncertain, it should not be submitted. Library Services will not correct works for spelling or grammatical errors.

In cases where the content of a work has been substantially revised and the author/creator wants to make a newer version available, they may submit the new or revised version as a new item. Library Services will provide assistance in linking the earlier version with the later and will, if requested, provide information to users indicating which version is preferred. However, it is the policy of Library Services to retain the original version and any subsequent versions in Cornerstone.

If a work includes proprietary or confidential information or the work has been submitted for publication by a third party, the work can be excluded from Cornerstone or embargoed for a specified period of time. Works can be embargoed for 6 months up to 5 years after the date of creation or can be outright excluded. Works that have been excluded or embargoed can have descriptive metadata added to Cornerstone for historical/record keeping purposes.