Submit your OER Material

Why submit to the Open Educaional Resources (OER) Collection?

The OER Collection hosted by MCC shares resources developed educators at Middlesex County College and other affiliated institutions and organizations including the Virtual Academic Library Environment and Open Textbook Network. This collection provides long-term digital preservation and access in a permanent archive to those materials.

These publications may already be housed on my website, or my lab, department, or institution website. Why should I deposit them in this OER Collection?

The OER Collection hosted by MCC is a central, visible location and is optimized for traditional library searches and for general search engines to ensure materials can be found. Materials are supported for long-term digital preservation and promotion. Permanent URLs are provided for each item.

How do I submit materials and what is the process for review?

Before you can submit materials please review the Submit your OER Material link above (coming soon). The process will be clearly outlined, but essentially, you need to create an account to be added to our system. You will provide general information about yourself and your work to prompt the review process of your material. An editorial board reviews those materials for approval. Note that since you are submitting the materials yourself, you will have value added benefits, such as monthly usage report emails as well as an ability to modify parts of your item record.

What happens when I submit my materials?

Once approved by the review board, a record for your work will be augmented to include the date of acceptance, and other relevant metadata for searching. A permanent URL will be provided for your item that you can share openly. You will begin to receive monthly usage report emails.

What will the usage statistics include?

Monthly usage reports include the total number of views since they were added, number of views for all of your items in the past month, details for your top 10 items, and a link to view usage statistics for all of your submitted items. To see the usage statistics for all of your items, at any time, login to your MyMCC and select "View usage for my items" from the main menu.

Who can see the publications in this collection?

Items are visible to all users around the world, regardless of affiliation. Your material can be found via a search within this system, Google, and other search engines. Our consistent stable links to your materials are ideal for your website, CV, tenure packet, or other promotional materials.

What types of files can I upload?

Adobe PDF Text files (.xml, .txt, .html) MS PowerPoint files (.ppt) Audio (.wav, .mp3, .wma) Video (.avi, .mpg, .wmv) plus many others! Most platform independent, vendor independent, nonproprietary, stable, open and well supported formats can be readily accepted and preserved.

Why do only some items have thumbnail images?

Thumbnail images are not required and are there, when possible, to support user ease when searching and browsing. The system automatically creates thumbnail images from self-submitted files whenever possible; the automatic conversion is done for image files, PDF files, and items that can be automatically converted to PDF. The automatic conversion is done as an ongoing scheduled task and it may take a few minutes for the thumbnail to appear for a newly submitted item. For items with files where the automatic conversion to a thumbnail image is not possible (as with audio and video files), the items will appear without a thumbnail.

Is there a limit on file size?

There is not an overall limit on file size or on the number of items you can deposit. Through the web interface, you can deposit individual files of up to 2GB. Files this size may still fail to load because of issues loading through a web interface. For larger files, please contact us at Library@middlesexcc.edu.

File Naming Conventions

Files names should not include spaces, punctuation marks, or special characters.

What rights can I grant to others?

You're agreeing to a grant of permissions to display and archive your materials. Since you are proposing to add materials to this Open Educational Resources collection, you're indicating that you approve of use with the limits of the Creative Commons license you apply and to fair use.  You may also assign Copyleft, the MIT License, or others licenses to your work.

Can I make changes to my material after submitting them?

It depends. You submit the information about your publication, and once it is uploaded, you can immediately change the information in the citation or change it any time you are logged in. The material itself is not to be changed unless you accidentally uploaded the wrong file; please contact us at Library@middlesexcc.edu to fix the problem. Later editions may be added as separate, new items, but the system is intended for final products, not works in progress.

Can I remove my submission?

It is possible to remove material, but this must be done by the MCC administrators to ensure that no valid data is lost in the process and that permanent links are correctly redirected for users. If you would like to have your material removed, please contact us at Library@middlesexcc.edu

Can someone submit materials on my behalf?

The submission process includes granting permissions, creating metadata, and loading files. While the rights holder may designate another to create metadata and load files, the rights holder must first complete a printed grant of permissions for those materials.

How can I find out more information?

Contact us with questions at Library@middlesexcc.edu.

 

Copyright: Digital files submitted should be free of copyright restrictions. Submission indicates that the creator grants non-exclusive internet distribution rights and the right to archive and preserve the files submitted. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving, and authors retain full copyright of their submissions.

Preservation: Items submitted will be retained indefinitely, archived according to current best practice, and digitally archived. MCC will try to ensure continued usability and accessibility and will migrate items to new formats as necessary.

Administrative Withdrawal of Submitted Materials: Acceptable reasons for administrative removal of materials include: proven copyright violation or plagiarism, legal requirements and proven violations, National Security, or falsified research. Any instances of these will be reviewed according to the University of Florida policies and procedures