Authorship/Creation
Included works/creations will usually be authored/created, in part or whole, by a CSU academic staff member, student, or entity. Content does not have to be authored by a CSU affiliate. For example, a campus unit may use the repository to post papers from a conference it sponsors, which includes authors from CSU and other institutions or organizations.
All student theses and dissertations will be accepted for deposit, as the University Libraries is the official archive for these documents. Other student works must be award-winners or sponsored by a CSU academic staff member who deems the work suitable for long term preservation and access through the digital repository.
Author/Creator Rights
The author(s)/creator(s) should be prepared to grant to CSU the non-exclusive right to preserve and disseminate the work according to the terms of the CSU Submission Agreement.
The author(s)/creator(s) should be prepared to confirm that any existing agreements related to the work, such as publication agreements previously completed with journal publishers, are not in conflict with preservation and dissemination of the work through Mountain Scholar. For assistance with rights determinations see Copyright – FAQ.
Nature of the Work
The work should be scholarly, educational, and/or research-based and merit long term preservation and dissemination.
The work must be submitted in an approved digital file format (see below).
If the work is part of a series, other works in that series should also be submitted. Alternately, information identifying the series should be submitted in order that the larger context of the work is not lost.
Mountain Scholar does not accept materials which cannot be made openly available due to privacy, copyright, national security, or other concerns. Routine embargoes for current theses and dissertations are permitted by the Graduate School. For more information please see the CSU Libraries Faculty Open Access Statement of Commitment, the University Archive Collection Development Policy, and the Graduate School’s Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) Resources.
File Support and Preservation Best Practices
The following tables detail the Mountain Scholar preservation support levels for commonly used file formats and preservation best practices.
Text and Microsoft Office File Formats
Best Practice Guidelines:
- PDF/A is the preferred version of PDF for archival preservation.
- Consider converting Microsoft formats with “Limited” support to PDF, PDF/A or CSV for full support.
- Submissions of HTML files must also include all other referenced files such as CSS files.
- .txt files should be saved in the UTF-8 (Unicode) character set.
- Full support of XML and SGML files requires the depositor to include the DTD along with the well-formed XML or SGML file.
| Format | Extension | Support Level |
|---|---|---|
| Full | ||
| HTML | .html, .htm | Limited |
| Microsoft Word | .doc, .docx | Limited |
| Microsoft PowerPoint | .ppt, .pptx | Limited |
| Microsoft Excel | .xls, .xlsx | Limited |
| CSV | .csv | Full |
| Rich Text | .rtf | Limited |
| Plain Text | .txt | Full |
| SGML | .sgm, .sgml | Full |
| XML | .xml | Full |
Image File Formats
Best Practice Guidelines: For long-term preservation, images saved without compression are best. If compression status is not known, preserve the highest quality version (usually the version with the largest file size).
| Format | Extension | Support Level |
|---|---|---|
| BMP | .bmp | Limited |
| GIF | .gif | Limited |
| JPEG | .jpg | Full |
| JPEG 2000 | .jp2 | Limited |
| PNG | .png | Limited |
| Photoshop | .psd | Limited |
| TIFF | .tif | Full |
Audio File Formats
Best Practice Guidelines: For long-term preservation, save audio files in non-proprietary formats. Wave files (.wav) are currently the recommended standard.
| Format | Extension | Support Level |
|---|---|---|
| MPEG audio | .mp3 | Limited |
| Real Audio | .ra, .rm, .ram | Limited |
| Wave | .wav | Full |
| Windows Media Audio | .wma | Limited |
Video File Formats
There are currently no well-defined standards for preserving video files. Mountain Scholar staff will closely monitor developments in this area and update policies accordingly. In general avoid proprietary and compressed file formats.
| Format | Extension | Support Level |
|---|---|---|
| AVI | .avi | Limited |
| MPEG-1 | .mp1 | Limited |
| MPEG-2 | .mp2 | Limited |
| MPEG-4 | .mp4 | Limited |
| QuickTime | .mov | Limited |
| Windows Media Video | .wmv | Limited |
(Revised May 2019)
