Submitting Documents to ASPIRE

Faculty, staff, and students at Austin Peay State University may submit their work for inclusion in ASPIRE by uploading their publication to the ASPIRE website. Students submitting theses or dissertations should follow the submission guidelines of the College of Graduate Studies.

Submission Guidelines

1. Documents are submitted via the ASPIRE website.
   1. First-time submitters must contact aspire@apsu.edu or 931-221-6288 to establish an ASPIRE account. This will provide you with the appropriate access to ASPIRE in order to upload your documents.
   2. For subsequent submissions, submitters simply login to ASPIRE with their APSU network login credentials.
2. File formats and collections
   1. PDF is the preferred file format.
   2. A number of collections have been established in ASPIRE. New collections may be created upon request.
   3. Email aspire@apsu.edu if PDF is not feasible, if you have questions about the format, are unsure about which collection to use, or wish to request the creation of a new collection.
3. When submitting materials, you will be prompted for the following information:
   1. Author/creator’s full name (first name, middle name or initial, last name)
   2. Co-authors or co-creators full names
   3. Current email address for author and co-authors
   4. Unit affiliation (college, department, etc.)
   5. Title of work
   6. Creation date (YYYY-MM-DD if available or YYYY-MM or YYYY)
   7. Complete citation (if previously published)
   8. Keywords/subject headings for the work
   9. Abstract and/or artist’s statement
   10. Other descriptive information about the work (e.g., if a poster was displayed at a poster session at a conference)
4. During the submission process, a submitter can choose whether to make their publication available to anyone or only to the university community (i.e., faculty, staff, and currently enrolled students).
5. Faculty and staff may submit works that have been approved through individual departments’ processes. Individual departments will be responsible for selection and review (if applicable) of works.
6. Research, scholarly, and academic materials include:
   1. Articles from scholarly, professional journals or trade publications
   2. Articles published in a professional society’s newsletter
   3. Departmental newsletters
   4. Department, college, or university produced journals and magazines
   5. Grant proposals
   6. Data and datasets (e.g., those required by NSF grants)
   7. Creative works such as artistic works or musical compositions (audio and scores)
   8. Conference posters or presentations (as long as permission has been granted by the conference organization)
   9. Master’s theses, field study reports, and doctoral dissertations
7. Materials related to university administration and governance, for example:
   1. Enrollment data and reports
   2. Budget reports
   3. Building plans
   4. Faculty Senate meeting minutes
   5. University committees meeting minutes
8. Examples of works not accepted include:
   1. Personal blogs or websites
   2. Twitter feeds
   3. Personal items posted to social media sites
   4. Unsubstantiated or faulty research, data, or claims
9. Library Services reserves the right to reject works from inclusion that do not meet these criteria.
10. All works submitted must be clear of copyright violations and plagiarism, must not violate any laws of the United States, the State of Tennessee, or international laws, break any University Policies, breach proprietary contracts, invade a person’s privacy, or include materials used solely for commercial or financial gain.
11. Works must contain full citations if published previously or if the work has been accepted for publication via a third party (i.e., journal publisher or conference organization). The person submitting the work must ensure that no third party’s rights have been violated by submitting the work to ASPIRE.
12. Many publishers have clauses in a publisher’s agreement that do not allow the author to post a copy of their article either before it is published (pre-print) or after (post-print) on the web or in an institutional repository. For example, many publishers state that you cannot post the publisher’s version (the actual PDF of the final article as it is published in a journal) in an institutional repository such as ASPIRE. Relevant definitions you should be familiar with:
    1. Pre-print means a work before it has been peer reviewed, edited or prepared for publication by a publisher.
    2. Post-print means a work in the form accepted for publication in which the author has incorporated into the text the outcome of the peer review.
    3. The definitive version is the publisher's version which includes further editorial refinement and preparations made by the publisher for producing a version for publication.
    4. It is recommended that you talk with your publisher to ensure that no agreements are violated. Many publishers’ policies on posting pre or post-prints in an institutional repository such as ASPIRE can be found in the SHERPA/RoMEO website at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/.
13. Some publishers permit authors to use an author addendum to add articles to the institutional repository. An author addendum 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 website, or creating derivative works. Contact your publisher for more information. SPARC provides a copy of an author addendum on their website: https://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Access-Reuse_Addendum.pdf.
14. Permission to include documents in ASPIRE must be granted by all parties involved in the creation of a work. For example, if a work was created by a faculty member and a student, the student as well as the faculty member must give permission to deposit the work. Additionally, for works created by an APSU faculty or staff member and an author from outside the university, the other party must grant permission for submission.
15. Questions or requests for additional information may be directed to aspire@apsu.edu or 931-221-6288.