Runner Research Press Policies

Runner Research Press Collection Policy

Runner Research Press is an online repository of scholarly and creative work produced at the university that stimulates research, discovery and learning with the goal of engaging and transforming our diverse communities through open, inclusive access.

By collecting and providing open online access to UTSA’s works, RRP provides the following benefits to researchers and the university:

  • Demonstrate UTSA’s Research Quality and Community Impact
    By choosing to provide open access to their work, UTSA’s researchers will make a meaningful contribution to the advancement of science and scholarship worldwide. RRP is indexed by Google Scholar and other search engines and is easily findable online. Showcasing the scholarly and creative output of the university not only demonstrates the impact UTSA has on the San Antonio community, but also enhances the reputation of both individual researchers and UTSA as we strive to become a premier public research university
  • Open Access Citation Advantage
    RRP is an open access repository, which means that works are freely available to a global audience without paywalls or copyright restrictions. More people will be able to lay eyes on work deposited in RRP than through subscription-based journals and other publishing methods. This includes members of the community as well as researchers from resource-scarce institution all over the world. There is some evidence that publishing open access leads to higher citation counts and increased downloads.
  • Compliance with Funder Mandates
    Many major funders such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) require publications that result from their grants to be publicly available through an open access repository. RRP provides UTSA researchers with a professionally managed OA repository that will keep the university in compliance with grant requirements.
  • Permanent Access and Archiving
    Works in Runner Research Press receive a stable URL that will never change. As members of the Texas Digital Library, RRP is securely stored and regularly backed up to multiple cloud storage servers, so authors will never lose access to their work.

RRP is committed to recruiting content that reflects the diversity of the UTSA community and upholds the values of the institution and its commitment to inclusive excellence:

The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to ending generations of discrimination and inequity. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.

Examples of types of materials that can be submitted to RRP include but are not limited to:

  • Pre- and post-published scholarly research and articles
  • Presentations
  • Images
  • Video and audio recordings
  • Working papers or technical reports
  • E-Journals and newsletters
  • Podcasts
  • Conference papers and posters
  • Student scholarly works sponsored by a faculty member*

The author or copyright holder of the work grants RRP non-exclusive permission to make their work available online. By default, RRP will not impose access restrictions on submissions, and all works are freely available to a global audience. In rare instances where access restrictions are requested by the submitter for an item or collection, RRP administrators will make determinations about inclusion and the level of access on a case-by-case basis.
 
RRP uses DSpace software, which supports a simple hierarchy structure of communities and collections. Communities hold collections and collections hold digital items. Collections may contain items affiliated with a specific academic unit or department or grouped together by other factors such as publication or conference title.

UTSA-affiliated users may submit items to existing collections pending approval by repository administrators or contact the library to request mediated deposit. If you do not see an existing collection for the item(s) you wish to submit, contact rrpress@utsa.edu.

*UTSA students are welcome to submit items to the repository that represent professional or scholarly work. This could include, but is not limited to:

  • Conference materials, such as posters or presentations
  • Published items, such as journal articles
  • Oral histories

We will accept general student work from class assignments on a case-by-case basis, in consultation with the instructor and repository administrators.

Runner Research Press Copyright Policy

  • The creator or copyright holder of the work grants RRP non-exclusive permission to make their work available online.
  • By default, RRP will not impose access restrictions on submissions, and all works are freely available to a global audience. Creators may assign Creative Commons licenses to their works.
  • In rare instances where access restrictions are requested by the submitter/creator for an item or collection, RRP administrators will make determinations about inclusion and the level of access on a case-by-case basis.
  • RRP reserves the right to withdraw a work that is libelous, an invasion of privacy, infringes upon copyright, or that does not reflect the nature of the Collection to which the work was submitted.
  • If withdrawal is requested due to a copyright violation, RRP Administrators will temporarily restrict access to the work and will notify the submitter/creator. If it is found that copyright was violated, the work will be withdrawn.
  • Requests for withdrawal must be directed to RRP Administrators at rrpress@utsa.edu. After review of the request, the Administrators will notify the submitter/creator that a work has been withdrawn, or, if withdrawal is not appropriate, to let the submitter/creator know the reason(s) withdrawal was not complete.
  • The non-exclusive submission agreement preserves the submitter/creator's right to submit additional copies elsewhere. Works will not be withdrawn solely because a submitter/creator leaves The University of Texas at San Antonio.
  • Pursuant to the Handbook of Operating Procedures (HOP) 9.21 Records and Information Management and Retention, University work identified in the UTSA Records Retention Schedule meeting requirements for permanent retention will additionally be transferred to the University Archives for long-term preservation.