Policy Information
Jerry Falwell Library
4/6/2021
Liberty University Students and Faculty
The Scholars Crossing (SC) is the open-access online platform that hosts the scholarly works and profiles of the Liberty University community. It consists of the Institutional Repository (IR) and the Expert Gallery (EG). Authors will retain the copyright of their works, and it is their responsibility to ensure that they hold appropriate copyright privileges to previously published works prior to submitting them to the SC. The Scholarly Communications team of the Jerry Falwell Library has final approval and full discretion over all content in the SC.
The IR contains scholarly works created by Liberty University students, faculty, and staff. All full-time faculty may submit works to the IR. Students, adjunct faculty, and staff must receive approval from the head of their academic unit in order to submit works other than electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) created at Liberty. Submissions will be kept for the perpetuity of the repository, and only removal requests related to the personal safety of the author (e.g., missions work) will be considered. Students submitting ETDs may request a one year embargo of the publication. Any changes to accepted ETDs beyond corrections for scribal, citation, or reference errors must be approved by the committee chair. A pseudonym cannot be used for works submitted to the Scholars Crossing. Requests for new collections in the IR can be made by any faculty member and must be approved by the head of the requestor’s academic unit as well as by the Scholarly Communications team.
The EG consists of collections of SelectedWorks (SW) profiles of University faculty organized by academic units. All full-time faculty are eligible to affiliate a SW profile with Liberty University. Adjunct faculty may affiliate a SW profile with the approval of the head of their academic unit. Students may not affiliate a SW profile with the University.
The mission of the Scholars Crossing is to capture, preserve, and freely distribute the educational and scholarly works of the Liberty University community through an open access institutional repository.
Embargo: An embargoed work is one that is retained in the institutional repository but is not publicly accessible.
Expert Gallery: The Expert Gallery is a collection of SelectedWorks profiles organized by academic units and other areas of expertise.
Scholars Crossing: The Scholars Crossing is Liberty University’s open-access, online institutional repository of scholarly works created by Liberty University students, faculty, and staff including, but not limited to, journal articles, citations, abstracts, syllabi, presentations, theses, dissertations, projects, and videos.
SelectedWorks: SelectedWorks are individual professional faculty portfolios.
Procedural Information
Only members of the Scholarly Communications team or approved administrators or designees are able to upload works to the IR. All works submitted to the IR must be sent to the Scholarly Communications team in a digital format. No physical copies of works are accepted. Publisher copyright permissions, ETD signature pages, and other relevant information related to the SC submissions will be added to the work as an unpublished file that is not publicly viewable. The works of former faculty and deceased faculty will remain in the repository unless the author or his/her family requests removal or at the discretion of the Scholarly Communications team or the University.
Student requests to remove materials from SC will only be considered if public accessibility of the work poses a threat to the student’s safety (e.g., missions work). Students are responsible for seeking approval to have the work removed from SC granted on a case-by-case basis by the Presiding Department or Provost for graduate theses and dissertations or the Honors Director for undergraduate honors theses. If approval is granted, documentation of the approval must be submitted to the Scholarly Communications team which will then embargo the work for the period of time approved.
Academic units and other organizations of the University can host online journals in the SC if the group has a faculty mentor or advisor who will be responsible for the content and the maintenance of the journal.
Individuals submitting works to the SC are responsible for ensuring that they have the appropriate copyright permissions, and copies of any such supporting documents should be submitted with the works. If the full text of the work included in a SW profile is unavailable due to copyright restrictions, the citation may be included with a permalink to the full-text content in the original publication when available.
Individuals may upload works to their SW profiles, but faculty are encouraged to send works to the Scholarly Communications team for inclusion in the IR before adding works to their SW profiles. At a faculty member’s request, the Scholarly Communications team will create and/or update a faculty member’s SW profile on his/her behalf. The Scholarly Communications team reserves the right to remove, update, or edit SW profiles. SW profiles of former faculty will be disaffiliated with the University. SW profiles of retired and deceased faculty will be removed from the EG but be retained in SW unless the author or his/her family requests removal or at the discretion of the Scholarly Communications team or the University. In such cases, the deceased faculty member’s email address will be removed and the designation of “In memoriam” will be added in front of his/her title. Family members of the deceased may request that the profile be deleted or disaffiliated with the University.
Students, staff, and adjunct faculty attempting to affiliate their SW profiles with the University will be disaffiliated with the exception of adjunct faculty who have received prior approval from the head of their academic unit.
If Scholarly Communications team discovers that an item was submitted to the SC in violation of copyright, it will be removed immediately, and the submitter will be notified via email.
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