Texas ScholarWorks Services

Texas ScholarWorks (TSW) was established to provide open, online access to the products of the University's research and scholarship, to preserve these works for future generations, to promote new models of scholarly communication, and to help deepen community understanding of the value of higher education.

TSW will adhere to UT's Web Privacy Policy, and to the security standards for published data. TSW does not accept confidential or controlled information.

Users of TSW will adhere to UT's Acceptable Use Policy, and to the UT Libraries' Material Usage Statement.

We aim to provide access to collection materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, steward, and are represented in our holdings.

TSW uses DSpace software which supports a simple hierarchy structure of Communities/Collections. Communities hold Sub-Communties, Sub-Communities hold Collections, and Collections hold digital works.

As outlined below, the University of Texas Libraries offers submission services, community creation services, access services, and preservation services to support the users of TSW.

If you are interested in publishing data, please see our sister repository, Texas Data Repository.

Submission Services to Established Collections

TSW offers an easy-to-use web based process for submitting digital works one by one to an established Collection. Faculty, staff and students must request authorization from the Repository Curator before submitting work to the Repository. Individuals or groups on campus can also request mediated deposit. See the Submission and Withdrawal Policy for submission guidelines and the Help section for step-by-step instructions.

A batch processing service is available for submissions of at least 100 items to a single Collection. This service will be scheduled according to staff workload. Please contact TSW staff for additional information on the batch submission service.

Community Creation Services

For colleges, departments, research centers, administrative units, and other campus groups interested in creating their own Community, UT Libraries staff will work with your staff to help create a new Community, as well as provide advice on metadata specific to your Community's needs, and information on copyright issues.

When setting up a Community, the department or research center must identify a Community Administrator to be responsible for either communicating with the library staff who manage their community or managing all aspects of the Community. For more information on Collection requirements, see the Collections Policy.

Access Services

TSW is built with technology that assures the online stability of a work submitted to a Collection; making the citation to the work as reliable as a scholarly journal, while the work is as accessible as any website. Each work and the information about it (the metadata) will have a digital object identifier (DOI) so it can be easily cited by other researchers. Works in TSW are indexed by Google, other search engines, and OAI-PMH harvesters like OAIster making them more findable.

Preservation Services

TSW will provide long-term access to submitted works, as well as associated descriptive and administrative metadata, by employing a strategy combining the following:

• Secure backups
• Storage media refreshment
• File format migration (including possible migration to preferred formats during submission)

At this time, TSW is committed to preserving the bitstream (the binary form of the data). Further practical measures to preserve as much functionality (look and feel) of the original as possible will be employed as resources permit. See the Preservation Policy for more information.

Providing Feedback

Texas ScholarWorks staff would love to get your feedback on using our service. Please complete our short feedback form to provide your input. We are particularly interested in knowing how Texas ScholarWorks has helped you - educationally, professionally, or just for fun. You can also let us know if something isn't working as expected or if you’ve found descriptive information (title, subject keywords, etc) that you think is problematic. Feedback can be anonymous or you can provide your contact information so we can respond to your inquiry.