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University Library | OPUS |
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OPUS-FAQ: frequently asked questions |
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What kind of documents can be published in OPUS? And by whom?
I've already published my document in OPUS. What about publishing my document elsewhere?
What about publishing my document both in OPUS and by a publishing company?
What about electronic publishing in addition to a printed version?
OPUS stands for Online PUblication Server. OPUS provides an opportunity for all members of the
University of Würzburg to publish their academic work electronically. Electronic publishing provides a lot of advantages:
All documents are available worldwide and findable in search engines like google
The University Library offers you availability and longterm archiving of your documents as a free service
All members of the University of Würzburg University (academics, students and researchers) can publish their doctoral theses and their postdoctoral lecture qualifications as well as their other academic publications (books, articles, papers, series, final assignments) in OPUS. On the recommandation of your supervisor you can publish your final assignments in OPUS as well.
Normally there is no way of altering or deleting documents published in OPUS. Therefore - in analogy to printed publications - authenticity and stability of the published documents are ensured as far as possible. If the document has to be revised nevertheless, it has to be submitted to OPUS again, similar to a new edition in conventional publishing.
At the moment there is no temporal limit for online access to the documents published in OPUS. If you wish so, your document can only be displayed temporarily, at least five years. Dissertations must be displayed permanently.
Basically, electronic documents can be cited as well as printed documents. You can follow the same citation rules as for printed publications.
A helpful source of information for citing electronic documents is the International Standard
ISO 690-2; basically citation rules for paper based resources can be extended to electronic resources. However you should add the type of media to which your citation refers
(~online) and the URL/URN.
While URLs refer to specific physical locations of resources and may change if the resource moves from one host to another, URNs are intended to serve as persistent, location-independent, resource identifiers. As URNs still can't be retrieved with currently available web-browsers, please use the resolving-service of the German National Library (=> nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-xxxx) or install a special browser plug-in(für Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, IE =>
http://www.persistent-identifier.de).
example 1 (Dissertation):
Public, John Q.: Sample thesis. - Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2007. - [online].
URL: http://www.opus-bayern.de/uni-wuerzburg/volltexte/2007/2196/
URN: urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-21968.
example 2 (other publications):
Public, John Q.: Sample text. - Würzburg : University of Würzburg , 2007. - [online].
URL: http://www.opus-bayern.de/uni-wuerzburg/volltexte/2007/2196/
URN: urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-21968.
URNs (Uniform Resource Name, z.B. urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-21968) are standardized references to digital sources comparable to the ISBN for printed works. While URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) refer to specific physical locations of resources and may change if the resource moves from one host to another, URNs are intended to serve as persistent, location-independent, resource identifiers and guarantee persistance in access and citation.
Authors retain their copyrights. When a document is published in OPUS for the first time, authors grant a permanent basic right to the University of Würzburg. This means that the author is free to publish his document elsewhere, as a book or in a journal. In a consecutive copyright transfer agreement the author is however not entitled to sign away the university's basic right to publish. A good overview of publisher's standard policies on self-archiving and open access can be found on the sites of SherpaRomeo.
Authors retain their copyrights. So don't give an exclusive right to the publisher, but keep the right of self-archiving on an institutional non-profit server like OPUS. On Dissonline.de, an information platform for digital dissertations, you can find a model contract and further information. A good overview of publisher's standard policies on self-archiving and open access can be found on the sites of SherpaRomeo.
Of course we do appreciate your decision to publish your work in OPUS. See Dissertations / Doctoral theses for detailed information about how to publish your document in OPUS. The diagram work steps offers information at-a-glance. After your work has been uploaded, please send or fax the declaration form (completed and signed), that gives us the permission to publish your document. A note referring to your printed publication would be very helpful for us.
Please use the free software Acrobat Reader to display all documents in PDF format.
Use the print button on the Acrobat toolbar to print and respectively the save button to save OPUS-documents, unless print and save options are disabled by the author.
You can expand search to all german OPUS-servers:
=> OPUS => Searching => Meta-Search at several universities => OPUS-Metasearch (german only).
Aditionally use BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
to find more full text documents.
The most convenient way to search for german theses and postdoctoral lecture qualifications is to use the information system
Dissonline.de
, its search button leads you directly into the catalogue of the
German National Library, which contains more than 64.000 online-theses and online-postdoctoral lecture qualifications.
The copyright law also applies to electronic publications.
Documents should be presented in a platform-independent user-friendly format. At the moment we consider PDF to be that format.
So you have to convert your document to PDF before you can submit it to OPUS.
Central Library provides one user workstation to convert your document into a PDF by the help of
Adobe Acrobat software.
As an alternative use the free software PDFCreator and
PDF Blender.
Find detailed information about conversion to PDF in
Create a pdf.
If you have questions or problems, we
are pleased to help you.
For technical reasons i. e. for the permanent digital preservation and availability we also need your original file(s), which won't be published though. You may pack several files into a compressed archive file (with WinZip, for example).
To get a general idea, take a look at Picture to electronic publishing. You find further information on the pages to OPUS, under the category Publishing.
Basically, the copyright law also applies to electronic publications. To avoid difficulties with copyright owners, it is advisable to seek permission to reproduce. This is facilitated by the fact, that the Verwertungsgesellschaft Bild-Kunst grants copyrights for many images in case of theses. See further information on the pages of Dissonline.de, which is an information portal for digital dissertations.
Please use only characters of ISO-Standard 8859-1 in the OPUS-application form. Images, schedules and formulas can't be used in the application form. Please enter special characters unicode-coded or write the word in full, for example replace the greek α with "alpha".
Use the paid software Adobe, which is available on one workstation in the Central Library, as
well as the free software PDF Blender to merge PDF files into one.
If you have questions or problems, we are pleased to help you.
Please, don't set any security limits in your PDF-file. This might lead to problems with longterm archiving and data migration in the future. Of course your work is protected against illegal access on our server and on the server of the German National Library.
Your PDF should not exceed 50 MB, please keep in mind, that not all of your prospective readers have a fast internet connection. In case of doubt it's better to split your PDF in smaller blocks than to produce one huge document.
The completed and signed form is the legal basis for publishing your work on our publication server and in the Internet. That means: No form, no publicationi.
As a general rule: The PhD-regulation of your faculty dictates, whether you have to include an (academic) curriculum vitae or not. If you have to include one in the printed version of your work, you have to do so either in the electronic version. Don't sign the electronic version of your curriculum vitae though. As your PhD-thesis will be available worldwide - your signature will be so as well. If you don't want to have your CV included in the electronic version of your PhD-thesis, please provide a letter of agreement signed by your faculty.
Contact opus@bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de
