Atrium Institutional Repository

The Atrium is the University of Guelph’s open access institutional repository for scholarly and creative works. It provides long-term stewardship of scholarly and creative works created by the U of G community through the collection, curation, long-term storage, and dissemination of these works.

Please read our Digital Repositories Policy.

Some of the benefits of depositing your work in the Atrium include:

• Compliance with open access funding requirements.
• Your research publications will be free to read and easily discoverable.
• Most subscription journals allow authors to deposit their accepted manuscript in a repository after an embargo period (usually 12 months) - this is a cost-free alternative for making your work open access and meeting funding agency requirements. You can deposit your accepted manuscript as soon as the paper is published – it will automatically be made available after the embargo is lifted (if there is one).
• Content in the Atrium is easily discoverable via major search engines including Google and Google Scholar. Content is described using metadata to enhance the ability of users to search for and discover materials.
• Deposited items receive permanent URLs ensuring long-lasting reliable links to your work.
• Content is safely and securely stored for long-term access.

The Atrium accepts submissions of scholarly or creative works created at or in collaboration with the University of Guelph. All University of Guelph community members including faculty, staff, students, and research collaborators are welcome to deposit in the Atrium.

Undergraduate student authors who wish to deposit non-thesis materials must have the approval of a departmental faculty member.

To deposit content in the Atrium you must be either the creator of the submission, a researcher collaborating with the creator(s), or an individual given permission by the creator to submit on their behalf.

If you are depositing content on behalf of your co-authors, you must seek permission from the other authors before submitting the work.

The Atrium primarily hosts research publications and open access versions of scholarly and creative work such as:

• Graduate theses and dissertations
• Journal articles and preprints
• Books / Book Chapters
• Conference Presentations / Papers
• Grey literature (including protocols, reports, policy briefings, plain language summaries, trade publications, community outreach materials)
• Openly licensed source files for OER created by, or in partnership with, McLaughlin Library.

The Atrium primarily hosts research publications and creative works. Research data should be deposited in the University of Guelph Research Data Repositories. Visit How to deposit research data in the University of Guelph Research Data Repositories for more details.

Copyright

You are responsible for ensuring that the content you deposit in the Atrium does not infringe on the rights of publishers or any other entity or party. If your content has been commercially published, you must check your author agreement to see what rights you may have signed away during the publishing process and what rights you have retained. This will always be specific to each individual piece of work.

For more information, please refer to Copyright at the University of Guelph or book a Publishing and Author Support Appointment.

Funder and publisher requirements

Depositing your work in the Atrium complies with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy requirements for publications. However, if your work has been commercially published, you are responsible for ensuring that your publishing agreement and/or your publisher’s open access policies allow you to deposit the work in an institutional repository. Additionally, your publisher may have specific requirements such as which version of your work can be deposited (e.g., preprint, accepted manuscript, publisher’s version of record) and under what conditions such as a temporary access embargo. For more information, please make a Publishing and Author Support Request.

Distribution rights

The University of Guelph will have the non-exclusive right to distribute your work freely and provide long-term access to it via the Atrium. You (or your publisher) will retain copyright to the work. Please see the Digital Repositories Policy (IV. Representations, Warranties, License) for more details.

End-user licensing

If you are the current copyright owner of the work, you can determine what others can do with it. During the deposit process, you will be able to apply a Creative Commons end-user license to your work to clearly indicate to others how they may use it. Please refer to Creative Commons' About CC Licenses guide for more information.

You are responsible for ensuring the content you deposit in the Atrium aligns with preferred file formats, file naming conventions, and is accessible.

You will also be required to provide descriptive information (metadata) about each item you deposit using the Atrium’s online submission form whether you are entering the metadata into the form manually or using the ORCID integration to auto-populate the form. If you are using the Share Your Paper (SYP) tool, you do not need to complete the Atrium online submission form, as the SYP tool will do this work for you, including populating the required item metadata.

File format requirements

To promote reuse, interoperability, and long-term access, files should be deposited in open, non-proprietary file formats. Files should also be saved and stored in an uncompressed and unencrypted format.

For example, it is preferable that text documents, such as Word (DOCX) or PowerPoint (PPTX), are saved as a tagged PDF format prior to upload.

If you are unsure about the long-term accessibility and readability of your file format(s), please make a Publishing and Author Support Request for assistance.

File naming requirements

When naming your files, please:

• Keep the length of the file name short but descriptive (less than 25 characters).
• Use date format ISO 8601: YYYYMMDD.
• Use alphanumeric characters. Avoid special characters and accented characters.
• Include a version number if applicable.
• Use capitals and underscores instead of periods, hyphens, spaces, or slashes.

For example:

• grizzlyStomachContent20201215.pdf
• SmithJones_Sean_202012_MSc.pdf

File size limitations

Individual files must be equal to or less than five hundred megabytes (500 MB) in size for successful upload. There is no specific upper limit to the number of files or total overall storage size that can be added to a record or collection in the Atrium.

If individual files are larger than 500 MB or if you have a very large number of files to deposit, make a Publishing and Author Support Request for assistance.

Accessibility

Depositors are responsible for ensuring that all materials they deposit in the Atrium meet accessibility standards according to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). Guidance and resources in support of creating accessible digital materials can be accessed through the Digital Accessibility Resource Centre.

You may also refer to the WebAim tutorials (Word, PowerPoint, PDF, Multimedia) or library tutorials (Create an Accessible Word Document and Make your Digital Projects Accessible) for guidance on how to make your work accessible. Note that for textual documents, it is easier to modify the original format (e.g., Word or PowerPoint) than the PDF version.

Please note that not all content housed in Atrium is fully accessible. If you would like to request an alternate version of any content in the Atrium, please use the Library Resource Alternate-Format Request Form.

Deposit your scholarly or creative works (faculty/staff/students)

• All users with a University of Guelph email account have immediate deposit access to the Atrium. Simply log in to the Atrium using your U of G central ID and password and follow the instructions outlined in the Submitting items to the Atrium guide to submit your work for review and inclusion in the Atrium.

Deposit your thesis or dissertation (graduate students)

• Review the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies’ (OGPS) Thesis Completion Guide which provides information on the requirements, schedule of dates, and process for preparing and submitting a thesis/dissertation for approval by OGPS. Questions related to formatting requirements, deadlines, fees, and submission status should be directed to the OGPS.
• All users with a University of Guelph email account have immediate deposit access to the Atrium. Simply log in to the Atrium using your U of G central ID and password and follow the instructions outlined in the Thesis & Dissertation Submission guide to submit your thesis/dissertation for review and inclusion in the Atrium.

Content deposited in the Atrium is, by default, openly accessible to the world and is discoverable through major search engines such as Google and Google Scholar.

In certain cases, a temporary delay to public access (i.e., embargo) may be placed on an item. The item will automatically become publicly available upon the expiry of the embargo period.

The Atrium is available for depositing, browsing, and accessing content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. User support is available during normal business hours.

The Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies is responsible for reviewing and approving submissions of theses and dissertations to the Atrium. For questions concerning the requirements, preparation, and approval process for theses and dissertations, please contact the Office of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies.

For all other inquires, including technical support, please make a Publishing and Author Support Request.