Submit your OER Material (OpenPublishing Tool)

Why submit to the Open Educational Resources (OER) Collection?

The OpenNJ Open Educational Resources Collection is currently hosted by MCC, under the auspices of the Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey. It seeks to share resources adopted or developed by educators across the state along with other affiliated institutions and organizations including the Open Textbook Network. This collection provides long-term digital preservation and access in a permanent archive to those materials. If your NJ higher education institution has an individual collection that feeds into the overarching OpenNJ repository/referatorium, your item will be included at both the top level OpenNJ and the individual collection level. If your institution does not have a collection yet, we will work with your institution's Library leadership to develop one.

 

These publications may already be housed on my website, or my lab, department, or institution website. Why should I deposit them in this OER Collection?

The OpenNJ Open Educational Resources Collection is currently hosted by MCC. OpenNJ serves as a central, visible location and is optimized for traditional library searches and for general search engines to ensure materials can be found. Materials are supported for long-term digital preservation and promotion. Permanent URLs are provided for each item.

 

May I submit materials to this collection?

How do I submit materials and what is the process for review?

Once you are approved, you may submit materials using the OpenPublishing tool accessible from the Submit your OER Material  link above. You will provide general information about yourself and your work to prompt the review process of your material. An editorial board reviews those materials for approval. Note that since you are submitting the materials yourself, you will have value added benefits, such as monthly usage report emails as well as an ability to modify parts of your item record.

 

I am a library director and want to add content to our collection. How do I do this?

Typically, we ask that submissions be made via the form link above. If you are a library director who wants to manage submissions yourself, you will first need to receive appropriate training on OpenNJ. Moving forward, it is our hope that directors and their designees have access and control over their institutional page. AIternatively,  the OpenNJ advisory committee is willing to add items on behalf of an institution. If your institution does not have a collection yet, we will work with your institution's Library leadership to develop one. To request training on OpenNJ or to create a collection, please email Marilyn N. Ochoa at MOchoa@middlesexcc.edu.

 

What happens when I submit my materials?

When you upload OER through the OpenPublishing tool, the record and content will be stored within OpenNJ.  All submitted materials are  then reviewed by the OpenNJ Advisory Committee, which is comprised of representatives from all higher education institutional types, one K12 educator, and subject experts.  They will review your item to identify the appropriate open license. They will augment the record for your work to include the date of acceptance, and other relevant metadata for searching, and the record will be placed in an institutional collection that can be searched through the overarching OpenNJ repository/referatorium.  A permanent URL will be provided for your item that you can share openly.  You will receive an email from the system when your submitted material is publicly available.

 

Can I determine usage statistics of my item?

Monthly usage reports can be found at the item level. This usage information includes the total number of views since they were added and the number of views for all of your items in the past month. 

 

Who can see the publications in this collection?

Items are visible to all users around the world, regardless of affiliation. Your material can be found via a search within this system, Google, and other search engines. Our consistent stable links to your materials are ideal for your website, CV, tenure packet, or other promotional materials.

 

What types of files can be uploaded?

Original, editable formats are preferred. Adobe PDF Text files (.xml, .txt, .html) MS PowerPoint files (.ppt) Audio (.wav, .mp3, .wma) Video (.avi, .mpg, .wmv) plus many others! Most platform independent, vendor independent, nonproprietary, stable, open and well supported formats can be readily accepted and preserved.

 

Why do only some items have thumbnail images?

Thumbnail images are not required and are there, when possible, to support user ease when searching and browsing. The system automatically creates thumbnail images from self-submitted files whenever possible; the automatic conversion is done for image files, PDF files, and items that can be automatically converted to PDF. The automatic conversion is done as an ongoing scheduled task and it may take a few minutes for the thumbnail to appear for a newly submitted item. For items with files where the automatic conversion to a thumbnail image is not possible (as with audio and video files), the items will appear without a thumbnail.

 

Is there a limit on file size?

There is not an overall limit on file size or on the number of items you can deposit. Through the web interface, you can deposit individual files of up to 2GB. Files this size may still fail to load because of issues loading through a web interface. For larger files, please contact us at MOchoa@middlesexcc.edu.

 

File Naming Conventions

Files names should not include spaces, punctuation marks, or special characters.

 

What rights can I grant to others?

You're agreeing to a grant of permissions to display and archive your materials. Since you are proposing to add materials to this Open Educational Resources collection, you're indicating that you approve of use with the limits of the Creative Commons license you apply and to fair use.  You may also assign Copyleft, the MIT License, or other licenses to your work.

 

Can I make changes to my material after submitting them? 

It depends. You submit the information about your publication, and once it is uploaded, you can immediately change the information in the citation or change it any time you are logged in. The material itself is not to be changed unless you accidentally uploaded the wrong file; please contact us at MOchoa@middlesexcc.edu to fix the problem. Later editions may be added as separate, new items, but the system is intended for final products, not works in progress.

 

Can I remove my submission? 

It is possible to remove material, but this must be done by the OpenNJ administrators to ensure that no valid data is lost in the process and that permanent links are correctly redirected for users. If you would like to have your material removed, please contact us at MOchoa@middlesexcc.edu.

 

Can someone submit materials on my behalf?

The submission process includes granting permissions, creating metadata, and loading files. While the rights holder may designate another to create metadata and load files, the rights holder must first complete a printed grant of permissions for those materials.

 

How can I find out more information?

Contact us with questions at MOchoa@middlesexcc.edu.

Copyright: Digital files submitted should be free of copyright restrictions. Submission indicates that the creator grants non-exclusive internet distribution rights and the right to archive and preserve the files submitted. Authors may only submit their own work for archiving, and authors retain full copyright of their submissions.

Preservation: Items submitted will be retained indefinitely, archived according to current best practice, and digitally archived. VALE-MCC will try to ensure continued usability and accessibility and will migrate items to new formats as necessary.

Administrative Withdrawal of Submitted Materials: Acceptable reasons for administrative removal of materials include proven copyright violation or plagiarism, legal requirements and proven violations, National Security, or falsified research.