ARAN Repository FAQs

We accept the final accepted peer-reviewed drafts (or final drafts where not peer-reviewed) of the following forms of scholarly communication from academic staff and researchers:

• Peer-reviewed articles
• Working papers
• Conference papers
• Conference proceedings
• Book chapters
• Technical reports
• Datasets
• Books (monographs)
• PhD Theses

Items that are not accepted include:

• Learning objects (e.g. power point presentations for lectures)
• Metadata (citations) without a full text item 

In order to comply with the copyright policies of the publishers ARAN accepts the final draft version of your manuscript i.e. the author final version after peer review and editing has occurred, but before publication. This is usually a text file without the publisher’s typesetting, formatting, logos, and pagination. Authors should keep a suitable version of all articles for self-archiving in ARAN. This can take the form of a Word file or a pdf file. Articles received as Word files will be converted to pdf by repository staff.

Most publishers will not permit authors to make the published pdf version of their articles available in repositories.

Many articles have multiple authors. In order to avoid different versions of the same article being made available in different repositories we advise that you collaborate with co-authors on the version of the article to be used for this purpose.

The ARAN record for your publication contains a link to the publishers’ version. Access to the publisher’s version may be restricted by password or payment controls set by the publisher.

On receipt of your file, the Library will:

• Convert it to PDF to facilitate display and preservation
• Verify that the final manuscript version has been deposited
• Establish the open access publication rights specified by the publisher of the item
• Apply appropriate embargoes, copyright and licence statements
• Make metadata publicly available immediately
• Publish the final manuscript version on open access at the earliest date possible, taking account of any restrictions placed by the publisher or authors
• Explicitly promote citation of the official, published version
• Link from your IRIS publications profile to the open access version in ARAN
• Facilitate harvesting by other repositories 

Each item you submit to ARAN will be checked by Library staff to ensure that your journal or publisher's policy has been met. The copyright and self-archiving policies of  publishers are checked using SHERPA RoMEO, the publisher's website or if necessary by contacting the publisher. 

 The vast majority of journals and publisher's now permit the archiving (often referred to as self-archiving) of your final, peer-reviewed drafts in institutional repositories such as ARAN. This is the final version of your journal article after peer review and editing has occurred, but before publication. This is also known as a post-print and is usually a text file without the publisher's typesetting, formatting, pagination and logos.  Publishers usually stipulate a delay of between 6 and 18 months following publication in their journal and that pre-prints or post-print versions are the only permissible versions to be used for this purpose.

Yes, you can deposit such publications in the ARAN repository if you are a member of staff at NUI Galway. 

Where a paper has multiple authors some collaboration and agreement regarding adding articles (also known as self-archiving) to ARAN will be necessary e.g. who should supply the final manuscript version for ARAN. Only one author needs to supply the publication to ARAN.

It is worth noting that the benefits of open access publishing on ARAN include: increased exposure/impact, preservation of research output, compliance with funder requirements, a permanent link to your research, usage statistics, explicit promotion of citation to the published version.

Also NUI Galway’s policy on Open Access to Research Outputs‌, adopted by the Academic Council in October 2015, requires that “Authors of peer-reviewed articles and peer-reviewed conference papers resulting from research carried out at NUI Galway must deposit a copy in the ARAN (Access to Research at NUI Galway) repository.”