PRISM is a freely available digital archive of academic and professional works produced by members of the Bow Valley College community.
PRISM is hosted by the University of Calgary Libraries. It is managed by the RGO Library & Learning Commons in collaboration with Research & Innovation at Bow Valley College.
The purpose of PRISM is twofold:
• PRISM provides a centralized platform to collect, manage, preserve, and disseminate the college’s intellectual outputs, such as research reports, conference presentations, and learning objects. Publishing work in PRISM ensures it is more readily discoverable in search engines like Google Scholar, which enhances the visibility of the research activities of both individuals and the institution.
• Items deposited into PRISM meet open access policy requirements of grants, including SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR. As an open platform, it increases access so that the academic community, professional organizations, and the general public can learn about and apply the findings of research outputs.
Items may only be deposited by members of the Bow Valley College community through a mediated submission process managed by the RGO Library & Learning Commons
Bow Valley College community members include individuals or groups affiliated with a Bow Valley College department, program, research team, working group, collaborative project, or conference, such as:
• Current and former faculty, researchers, and employees
• Bow Valley College schools, departments, and centres
• Students with nomination by a faculty member
Other college-affiliated individuals or entities will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
PRISM collects academic and professional materials, as well as important documents related to the college's history, in digital format.
Full-text items are only added to PRISM with the permission of the author/creator, and where permitted under Canadian copyright law.
The repository includes all types of digital formats.
Eligible types of work include:
• Journal articles
• Books or chapters
• Popular media articles
• Conference and workshop papers and presentations
• Lectures and speeches
• Research reports, technical reports, and working papers
• Multimedia and audiovisual materials
• Outstanding student projects as selected by faculty members
• Selected course-related materials and learning objects produced by faculty members and staff
• Selected digitized College records and other materials which document the history of the institution
Other types of materials will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Previously-published journal articles may include different versions, including:
• working draft.
• pre-print: the author's manuscript as submitted to publisher for peer-review.
• post-print: the final peer-reviewed draft, also called the accepted version.
• published version: also called the final or official version which has been copy-edited, typeset, and/or enhanced by the publisher in other ways.
Works published or created prior to an author's affiliation with Bow Valley College may be retroactively deposited as long as the authors are currently affiliated with Bow Valley College and meet all submission requirements.
Works published or created by authors who are no longer affiliated with Bow Valley College may be retroactively deposited as long as the work was published or created by authors while affiliated with Bow Valley College and meets all other submission requirements.
The repository will also accept materials produced by non-college researchers that are produced in conjunction with a Bow Valley College-sponsored event, such as a conference or lecture series.
The RGO Library & Learning Commons reserves the right to deny materials not within the scope of the PRISM guidelines.
The RGO Library & Learning Commons reserves the right to remove a work from PRISM without prior notice for administrative or legal reasons. Upon such an occurrence, the metadata record indicating prior storage of the work in the Repository may remain visible in perpetuity.
• Full-text items will only be added to PRISM with the permission of the Author/Creator.
• Authors/Creators may only submit their own work for archiving.
• Depositors must accept the terms of the PRISM Submission & License Agreement by which they:
• warrant that they own the copyright or have permission from the copyright holder to include their work in PRISM. Any restrictions on this copyright must be specified when the work is submitted.
• attest that the work does not contain any libelous or unlawful matter or violate anyone's right to privacy
• grant the RGO Library & Learning Commons a license to make the work publicly and freely available on the internet in perpetuity for anyone to view and copy for non-commercial use, as long as the work is not altered and appropriate acknowledgement is given. This is the equivalent of a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license.
• allow the Library to migrate the work to different formats, as needed, in order to ensure that it remains publicly accessible
• Depositors who hold the copyright in their own work may choose to assign a broader Creative Commons license which permits additional types of re-use.
• Depositors will provide a digital copy of the version of the work that may be legally included in PRISM.
• Student works must be approved by a nominating faculty member.
Material is deposited in PRISM through Mediated Submission:
• Authors/Creators upload works to the RGO Library & Learning Commons through an online Mediated Submission form.
• The RGO Library & Learning Commons then uploads the work to PRISM on the author/creator’s behalf.
Content must be scholarly, educational, or research-oriented, or of cultural or historical value to the Bow Valley College community. Works must be written in accordance with the standards appropriate to the discipline, including review and editorial intervention.
Works must not contain libelous or other unlawful matter or violate anyone's right to privacy.
The validity and authenticity of the content of submissions is the sole responsibility of the depositor.
In the case of student works, the sponsoring faculty member is responsible for verifying the quality of submissions.
The RGO Library & Learning Commons does not evaluate the content of submissions. Items are reviewed only for:
• the eligibility of authors/depositors,
• relevance to the scope of the repository,
• valid layout, format, and scholarly writing principles as prescribed by APA
• the exclusion of spam.
Contributors must accept the terms of the PRISM Submission & License Agreement which requires that:
• the work is the original creation of the contributor.
• the contributor owns the copyright in the work, or has the explicit, written permission of the copyright holder to post the work in PRISM.
• if a work that has been sponsored or supported by an agency or organization, the contributor attests that he/she has the right to grant the rights contained in this license and that he/she has fulfilled any right of review or other obligations required by the agreement with such sponsor.
• work that contains copyright-protected material created by someone else must have explicit, written permission from that third-party to include the work in PRISM.
Deposit of previously published work is only allowed in accordance with publisher policy.
Items can be deposited at any time, but they will not be made publicly visible until any publisher's or funder's embargo period has expired.
Depositing in PRISM does not affect the copyright of the work, whether it is held by the author(s) or publisher.
Any copyright violations are entirely the responsibility of the authors/depositors.
If the repository receives proof of copyright violation, the relevant item will be removed immediately.
Non-exclusive License with PRISM
By signing and submitting this license, you (the author(s) or copyright owner) grants to Bow Valley College the non-exclusive right to reproduce, translate (as defined below), and/or distribute your submission (including the abstract) worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video.
• You agree that Bow Valley College may, without changing the content, translate the submission to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation.
• You agree that Bow Valley College may, without changing the content, format your publication to comply with APA publication standards.
• You also agree that Bow Valley College may keep more than one copy of this submission for purposes of security, backup, and preservation.
• You represent that the submission is your original work and that you have the right to grant the rights contained in this license.
• You also represent that your submission does not, to the best of your knowledge, infringe upon anyone's copyright.
• If the submission contains material for which you do not hold copyright, you represent that you have obtained the unrestricted permission of the copyright owner to grant Bow Valley College the rights required by this license and that such third-party owned material is clearly identified and acknowledged within the text or content of the submission.
• If the submission contains indigenous material, you represent it has been authenticated by a local Elder or Knowledge Keeper who represents the territory or region being included.
• If the submission is based upon work that has been sponsored or supported by an agency or organization other than Bow Valley College, I represent that I have fulfilled any right or review or other obligations required by such contract or agreement.
Bow Valley College will clearly identify your name(s) as the author(s) or owner(s) of the submission, and will not make any alteration, other than as allowed by this license, to your submission.
Anyone may access the items held in PRISM free of charge.
Users may view, download and copy any work for non-commercial use, as long as the work is not altered and appropriate acknowledgement is given. (This is the equivalent of a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license.)
Some items may have differing conditions of use:
• If the contributor owns the copyright in the work being deposited, s/he will be given the option to assign a Creative Commons license permitting additional uses of the work.
• If the copyright is held by a third-party (e.g. a journal publisher), the permitted reuse terms will be specified in the item description in PRISM.
Items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or citation analysis.
Reuse of PRISM metadata:
• Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
• The metadata may be reused in any medium without prior permission for non-for-profit purposes, provided the OAI identifier or a link to the original metadata is given.
• The metadata must not be reused in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission.
Mention of the PRISM repository is appreciated but not mandatory.
The College is not responsible for any use or misuse by third parties who access works through PRISM.
Information and data obtained by PRISM in support of assessment of services, collections, resources, etc., or in support of research related to repository services, are considered confidential and will not be shared except in aggregates or with the express permission of participants, to protect privacy.
PRISM is meant to be a permanent scholarly record. Items will be stored indefinitely. Once an item is deposited in the repository a persistent URL will be generated.
Items may not normally be withdrawn from the repository. Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include, but are not limited to:
• proven copyright violation or plagiarism.
• legal requirements and proven violations.
• falsified research.
• Withdrawn items are not deleted but are removed from public view.
• Withdrawn items' identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely.
• Original URLs will continue to point to ‘tombstone' citations, to avoid broken links and retain item histories.
• The metadata of withdrawn items will not be searchable.
• Changes to deposited items are not permitted.
• If necessary, an updated version may be deposited. There will be links between the earlier and later versions, with the most recent version clearly identified.
The RGO Library & Learning Commons is committed to preserving and providing access to the works in PRISM.
PRISM is hosted by the University of Calgary Libraries. As such, the RGO Library & Learning Commons will comply with the following preservation policies established by the University of Calgary Libraries:
• Items will be retained indefinitely.
• The RGO Library & Learning Commons will ensure continued readability and accessibility. It may not be possible to guarantee the readability of some unusual file formats.
• PRISM administrators are working with external partners to record preservation metadata and backup items in external archives.
• PRISM administrators regularly back up PRISM files according to current best practice.
• Items are not normally removed from PRISM.
• Items are allocated a checksum to facilitate the detection of alterations.
• In the event of PRISM being closed down, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.