Information for depositors

Why deposit your material in White Rose Research Online

By making your work available in an institutional repository you can:

  • Reach a wider audience, including researchers who do not have subscription access to your work
  • Increase the impact of your work
  • Meet funder requirements (several research funders require that published research is made openly available)
  • Be found easily via Google and other search engines, as well as specialised scholarly search engines such as OAIster and Intute Repository Search
  • Provide persistent URLs for your work
  • Link to your publications from your own web pages
  • Take advantage of a managed library-based service - we will look after your work
  • Make your work available to the general public

Depositing your research is easy and there is no charge to you or to the end users.

What you can deposit

You can deposit your research in White Rose Research Online if you are a current member of staff or a research postgraduate student at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield or York.

You can deposit scholarly materials that you have authored or co-authored, including journal articles, conference papers, monographs, monograph chapters, working papers, and discussion papers.

Theses undertaken at a non White Rose institution may also be deposited if an alternative repository is not available, however theses undertaken at the universities of Leeds, Sheffield or York should be deposited in White Rose Etheses Online.

White Rose Research Online does not contain teaching-only materials, or datasets. Your library can advise on where to deposit these items.

You should submit your accepted manuscript, rather than a publisher’s formatted version.

How to deposit

To add your research to White Rose Research Online follow the appropriate link:

What happens next

When you have submitted your research, it will not go live immediately: White Rose Research Online administrators will vet the item for eligibility of authors/depositors, relevance to our collection scope, valid format, and compliance with publishers’ deposit policies, including checking any publisher copyright restrictions on your behalf, and checking and applying any embargo requirements.

Once these checks have been completed your research will be made available on White Rose Research Online.

A note on publisher permissions

The majority of publishers support the right of authors to make their own work available online in an institutional repository, though generally you are required to deposit your accepted version, rather than the publisher’s formatted PDF. If you want to check a publisher’s open access policies in advance you can find a lot of information on the RoMEO database. However your library will check copyright status as part of processing your submission - we will contact you if there are copyright concerns about a particular item.

Preserved for a global audience

When a deposit has been accepted White Rose Research Online will preserve a copy of your research for a minimum of 10 years, and will use best endeavours to ensure continued readability and accessibility. This means that items may be migrated to new file formats where necessary. Our longer-term intention is to integrate White Rose Research Online with digital preservation solutions to ensure permanent access to all hosted papers in perpetuity.

Your material will be available for a global audience to view. White Rose Research Online will track views and downloads, so you can see how your research is being used.