Frequently asked questions
MACAU is the Open Access Repository of Kiel University. Here you can search for online publications (co-)authored by current or former
members of Kiel University. Types of publications include PhD and habilitation theses, conference proceedings, journal articles and
working papers.
As a member of Kiel University, you may also submit your PhD thesis or any other scholarly publication which will then be available
world-wide as an open-access publication.
MACAU is a joint service of the Computer Centre and the University Libary.
Policies for MACAU
The availability on the internet free of charge ensures that your publications will be disseminated as broadly as possible. The
University Library exchanges metadata with other servers so that the publications are found by all major search engines. It also takes
responsibility of the long-term preservation of the deposited documents; each document will be assigned a permanent internet address
allowing reliable citation. All publications in MACAU are recorded in the University Library's online catalogue as well as in various
national and international library catalogues and can be searched e.g. by title, author and subject.
Due to financial constraints, libraries need to cancel an increasing number of journal subscriptions. Therefore it is particularly
important to publish research results via alternative channels to enhance their accessibility and visibility. Furthermore, publishing on
MACAU is free of charge for you and every submitted publication strengthens the open-access movement.
You are welcome to deposit the following types of publications:
- books (including those that are not published commercially - so called "grey literature")
- scholarly articles from other archive servers or journals
- book chapters published in compilations (i. e. books with chapters each written by different authors)
- conference proceedings.
Only PDF-files (Adobe Portable Document Format) are accepted for publication. This format virtually has become standard in the field of
electronic publishing because it is plat-form independent and allows the author to maintain control over the document's layout and
appearance.
Simply put, a PDF-file is like an electronic facsimile of the print version so that the page breaks are exactly the same for the
electronic and the print version. This is essential for citation.
Please do not lock your document or use any other encryption or digital rights management mechanisms, as in these cases full-text
indexing is not possible.
One option is to use a program such as the PDF-Creator (download: http://de.pdf24.org). Just open the document with Microsoft Word (or any other word-processing software), select "Print" and choose "PDF-Creator" instead of your printer. Then follow the on-screen instructions. In doing so, you will not actually print the document but create a PDF-file locally. In case of any difficulties or questions, please contact MACAU staff via epublikationen@ub.uni-kiel.de.
MACAU staff check if the submission meets the formal requirements for publication (with regard to publication type, completion of mandatory fields, spelling errors, file conformity etc.). For copyright reasons, the Library needs your consent in form of a deposit contract to release the document.
A document can only be released and made publicly available if a deposit contract between the author(s) and the University Library has been signed. The contract creates legal certainty for both parties and specifies which conditions need to be fulfilled for publication.
The period of time depends on how many documents are currently "waiting" to be checked by the library staff. If no rights of third parties are infringed, the document will usually be uploaded within a week. In case of any questions or problems regarding your publication, the Library will contact you immediately.
Documents published on MACAU are intended to be available perpetually. The Library is responsible for the long-term preservation of the deposited publications.
Once published, documents may only be withdrawn from MACAU by the Library in exceptional cases (such as proven copyright violations). Only the Library is entitled to remove publications. To initiate this step, a well-grounded complaint has to be addressed to the Library (epublikationen@ub.uni-kiel.de).
This depends on the rights you have transferred to your publisher and on the open-access strategy this company pursues. For an overview of individual publishers' policies please consult SHERPA-RoMEO (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/). However, it is the individual publishing contract that is legally binding. In case you were not required to sign a contract, journal articles and book chapters may be republished after a one-year embargo period (§ 38 Abs. 1 UrhG).
The ORCID-ID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a code to uniquely identify scientific and
other academic authors and contributors.
If it is your intention to publish more, you should have one.
You may register on
https://orcid.org
and get your personal ORCID-identifier.
For more informations look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCID
or
at
https://orcid.org
.
If you need support, you may contact the University Library. (see Contact)
Creative Commons licences are standardised licence agreements that are freely accessible on the internet (see https://creativecommons.org/licenses or at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons ). Choosing such a licence allows you as an author to specify on which conditions others may share, use and build upon your publication. There are six licence agreements that differ in the granted rights of use. All of these licences allow users to reproduce and distribute works available under Creative Commons terms. To be able to select a licence, you need to hold the necessary rights on your work (i.e. you may not have transferred them to a publisher or a third party).
Yes, that is possible. In order to ensure the document's authenticity and citability we recommend that you link to the permanent version on MACAU using the persistent identifier (so-called PURL – Persistent Uniform Resource Locator). Authors grant Kiel University only non-exclusive right of use for online publication on MACAU – therefore they may also grant right of use to other persons or institutions. In this case, the rights already granted to Kiel University remain unaffected.
Obviously free access to documents on the internet enables users to store the files on local computers and to copy and re-use the contents. However, the copyright provisions for online publications are the same as for print publications. Therefore the documents may only be used and cited in compliance with the academic code of conduct. Any other usage would constitute a copyright violation subject to prosecution.
There is no limit on the number of documents you can upload to MACAU.
Yes, that is possible. A guide is in preparation.
Please send any questions you may have to epublikationen@ub.uni-kiel.de. Your question will then be passed on to the person in charge.
Kiel University Library has set up an internet page http://www.ub.uni-kiel.de/service/open-access-publizieren with information on open-access publishing (in German only). There you will also find many links to other interesting websites such as http://www.open-access.net .
Every night the log file of the server is scanned for accesses to full text objects. Every access is store in a database with id and
date.
We try to eleminate acesses by robots, crawlers, harvesters (and name them) as well as double accesses. But there is a great possibility
that we do not succeed in any case.
Counting started on July 23rd, 2013.
To display the numbers all relevant accesses are read from the database, counted and aggregated to values of the monthes in the current
and in the previous year, resp. to values of the years in the column named 'all years'.