Institutional Repository Policies

ARCHES is a repository maintained by Schaffer Library, Union College. It showcases works by the Union College community, including scholarly materials by the faculty, students, and staff at the College. Whenever possible, it provides open access to the materials and their descriptions (metadata). Materials related to the history of the College as well as creative works are also available.

Permissions & Access

When a student submits their thesis to the ARCHES Union College Senior Honors Thesis repository, they must complete a permission form that is signed by their thesis advisor. This form specifies the maximum level of access permitted for their thesis. Should students choose a level of access that is not Open Access, they have the ability to grant permission to the library to fulfill future external research or education-based requests for their work. Permission selections should be determined by the mutual needs and desires of both the student and the student’s advisor.

Levels of Access:

The following levels of access are available to students and advisors:

* ”Thesis work” is the entirety of the student submission. This is usually a PDF of textual material, but could be a video, audio file, image, or other representation of work submitted in fulfillment of requirements.

** “Research requests” are requests for usage of an educational nature, i.e. non-commercial use of materials.

The “Metadata only” or “Archive only” choices should be selected if any of the following circumstances apply:

1. There are co-authors, whose permission to publish the thesis has not yet been secured.
2. The work and/or ideas of Union College Faculty are disclosed in the thesis and written consent to its publication has not yet been secured.
3. Third party copyrighted matter is included in the thesis, and written permission for release has not been obtained and attached hereto from the owner(s) of the copyright.

Access for Thesis without Permissions Selected

If a submitted thesis lacks a permission selection, the permission will be defaulted to the least level of access available, pending communication with the student.

Embargo Periods

In addition to the Open Access or Union Only options, authors may also select an embargo period. Please see “For All Authors” below for more information.

DOI (Document Object Identifier)

Minting DOIs are created automatically for some options and upon request for others. Please see “For All Authors” below for more information.

Research Requests for Restricted Items

When a student submits their honors thesis to the Library, they will be asked about permissions to allow access upon external researcher requests.

• If a student selects Open Access, material is already available online.
• If a student selects Union Only, the Library will provide access to Union students and faculty via login, and will provide access for external research requests only if the student provides this permission in advance.
• If a student selects Metadata Only, the Library will provide access to Union students and faculty, as well as external research requests, only if the student provides this permission in advance.
• If a student selects Archive Only, no access will be granted.

In all cases, embargo periods will be honored.

In all cases but Open Access, permission will not be granted for commercial use without written permission from the author and advisor.

Note on thesis permissions prior to 2026:
Prior to 2026, thesis permissions were submitted without the ability for authors to select whether external research requests could be granted. Schaffer Library thus assumes these works are NOT available until written permission is obtained from the author. Whenever possible, library staff will attempt to contact the author of a work that has been requested, however we will deny access to the work unless given explicit permission to grant. Beginning in 2026, students had the option to grant access to external researchers in advance when permissions were submitted.

Access Levels for Individual Thesis Submitted to Multiple Departments / Programs

When a student submits a thesis to multiple departments or programs, only one record will be created, but it will be discoverable in each collection representing the departments/programs to which the thesis was submitted. The most restrictive permission selection will determine access.

Digital Preservation of Honors Theses

All senior honors theses are managed via long-term digital archiving workflows, regardless of the permission and access levels selected.

Intellectual property and author copyright

Authors retain copyright for all content contributed to the ARCHES institutional repository. Submitting materials to ARCHES does not transfer copyright; it only grants Schaffer Library a non-exclusive license to distribute, and in some cases preserve, a submitted work.

We encourage authors to apply Creative Commons licenses to their work. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/.

Multiple Authors

When work is created by more than one author (including student work), it is the responsibility of the primary author to notify all other authors of their intent to deposit material in the ARCHES institutional repository. Additional authors are encouraged to sign the institutional repository agreement and permissions document for that work at that time.

Embargo Periods

Authors may also select an embargo period if they a.) believe there to be subject matter for which they wish to seek patent protection or b.) if they plan to publish the thesis in a journal or some other medium at a later date. Authors may choose the length of time for the embargo, and a one-year extension of the initial embargo period requested is available upon request.

Permissions and Consent from Third Parties

Schaffer Library supports the fair use of copyrighted materials in scholarship and created works. If a submission contains materials for which the author does not hold copyright and exceed Fair Use determination, the author is required to obtain any necessary permissions for the copyright owner(s) before submitting their work to ARCHES. This includes any work that contains material subject to Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols and approval.

DOI (Document Object Identifier) Minting

A Document Object Identifier (DOI) may be “minted,” or created as part of the deposit of materials in ARCHES. For open-access items, DOIs are created automatically. For Honors Thesis work, DOIs are also automatically created for Union-only materials. This is the equivalent of assigning a call number or other unique identifier to the work, and is persistent regardless of platform or access point.

Metadata

Schaffer Library may enhance author’s metadata records in order to increase findability. This is included, but not limited to, such activities as adding ORCID information, standardizing entries to match Library of Congress name or subject headings, or adding keywords.

Changing or Updating Works in ARCHES

The institutional repository area of ARCHES is intended to be a permanent repository of scholarly material from Union College. It may be necessary, however, to remove, restrict, or change an item or its access levels. Examples of needed changes include: copyright violations and takedown notices, future publication of work in a journal for which IR deposit is not allowed, or updating works to reflect name changes. Authors interested in changing the restriction status or metadata records of their work should contact digitalservices@union.edu.

Author Name Change Policy

Authors or contributors may request that their name be changed on items contributed to ARCHES. Metadata and documents may need to be adjusted to reflect changes. Authors must work with Schaffer Library to request and review changes needed. Co-authors of works for which an author has requested a name change will not be contacted. To request a name change, contact digitalsevices@union.edu.

Persistent Access and Migration

The institutional repository area of ARCHES is intended to be a permanent repository of scholarly material from Union College, and thus Schaffer Library will take steps to ensure the integrity of files deposited in ARCHES. To provide secure, durable, and feature-rich access, it may be necessary for Schaffer Library to migrate materials from one platform to another. This may result in URL changes to materials. Wherever possible, Schaffer Library will work to ensure that broken links do not occur, and old URLs will result at least in a landing page that helps requesters find author work.

Any DOIs minted by Schaffer Library will be actively managed and will continue to work as intended through platform migrations.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine-Based Access to ARCHES

Generally, open access materials are available for use in artificial intelligence and other machine-based usage. Schaffer Library works with technologies that help prevent large-scale harvesting of data, mainly to ensure that the ARCHES site is responsive and working well for human users. Schaffer Library is committed to supporting open access as part of a robust information ecosystem, and is also committed to supporting ways in which that content can be used to mitigate bias and other harms surfaced in artificial intelligence.

• Authors Alliance. “Institutional Repositories and AI Scraping.” 2025-10-08. Accessed 2026-03-03.
  
  
• Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), “Dealing with Bots: Advice for Managers of Open Access Repositories”.
  Accessed 2026-03-03.
  
  
• Haverford College, “Senior Thesis Archive Access Policies.”
  Accessed 2026-03-03.
  
  
• Whitman College, “Policies.” Accessed 2026-03-03.