|
OPUS W Elektronische Hochschulschriften der |
|
||||||
|
Service of |
|
|
OPUS W Elektronische Hochschulschriften der |
|
||||||
|
Service of |
General Interest
What is OPUS W?OPUS W stands for Online Publications of University of applied sciences. It enables University members to publish their electronic documents on the Web and provides different search and retrieval options. Is there a way of changing or deleting documents?Normally there is no way of altering or deleting documents published in OPUS W. Thus - in analogy to printed publications - authenticity and stability of the published documents are ensured as far as possible. There might be exceptions however, e.g. if there are conflicts with commercial publishers for publishing a document twice. In those cases the author or holder of copyright can apply for deletion of the document at the University Library or the Computing Centre. If the author wishes to revise the document it has to be submitted to OPUS W anew, similar to a new edition in conventional publishing. For how long will OPUS W documents stay online?At the moment there is no temporal limit for online access to the documents published in OPUS W. There might be some agreement on the availability of electronic documents depending on formal or subject-specific reasons in the future. Part of the documents might then be stored offline (e.g. on CD-ROM) or might be deleted. Is it possible to cite OPUS W documents?Basically electronic documents can be cited as well as printed documents. Objections against citing e-documents lie in the fact that they are regarded as "virtual, moving targets". Electronic collections like OPUS W are trying to give electronic documents a more stable presence on the net. If you want to cite electronic documents you should use for instance the MLA (Modern Language Association) Style of Citation or the Internationalen Standard ISO 690-2. How can I view documents?Most Documents in OPUS W are presented in PDF (Portable Document Format). To view them you want to have the Acrobat Reader, which can be installed as a plug-in to your web-browser . If you do not want to have Acrobat Reader installed as a plug-in (e.g. because there is no copy and paste option then) you can configure your browser in such a way that the Reader will show up in a seperate window. How can I print out documents?You can print out documents from the Acrobat Reader. What about illegal copying and usage of OPUS W documents?Documents on the Web are there to be distributed and copied. To use them without making reference to them or to use them for commercial purposes without paying royalties is illegal and will be punished. However PDF allows you to stop certain functions like copy and paste or printing (cf. the next faq). This means that basically there is no more danger of copyright violations with electronic documents than with any other form of publication. Can I stop "copy and paste" or printing out of PDF documents?You can do this if you have e.g. the licensed software Adobe Acrobat or with the free tool pdftk. Who is allowed to publish documents?Basically every member of the University of Stuttgart (staff and students). There will however be certain restrictions depending on the institute or chair you work or study at. What kind of documents can be published?All documents, which are of written by members of the University. The most important reservation is that those documents should be of certain 'temporal validity' and not just ephemeral information. Bsp. mit URN:
Bsp. mit URL: Do I have to prepare my document before publication?Documents should be presented in a plattform-independet user-friendly format. At the moment we consider PDF to be that format. However the development of formats like SGML or XML, which offer far better options for long term storage or structured search will be observed. For the time being you have to convert your document to PostScript or PDF before you can submitt it to OPUS W. How do I publish a document?A document can be published from every computer with access to the WWW on campus. You should have your document converted to PDF then you can use a file-upload-form. You have to give some descriptive data about your document and then send it to the OPUS W-server together with your document. Just press the buttons on the file-upload-form. It will be made publicly available on the net after it has been examined by members of the library respectively after contacting your institute or chair. This is intended to prevent improper use of OPUS W.
|