Student Work in KU ScholarWorks

KU ScholarWorks (KUSW) is the institutional repository of the University of Kansas. It contains scholarly work produced by KU students, faculty and staff, as well as departmental research publications.

KU students who add their scholarly work to ScholarWorks increase their visibility and impact by making their scholarship available to a worldwide audience, as well as providing for long-term preservation of the materials.

If you have questions about KU ScholarWorks, adding student work to KU ScholarWorks please contact Marianne Reed, Digital Publishing & Repository Manager at mreed@ku.edu.

What student work can be deposited in ScholarWorks?

Undergraduate work in ScholarWorks is made available in the Undergraduate Research at KU community only with the permission of the student author(s), and often at the urging of a faculty member, the chair of undergraduate research for the department, or the student's faculty advisor. 

  • Videos of student presentations
  • Senior projects approved by the department or academic unit
  • Honors theses approved by the department or academic unit
  • Senior these approved by the department or academic unit

Graduate student work can take many forms. In addition to dissertations and theses, graduate research projects are shared in ScholarWorks.  These are frequently a requirement of graduation for that course of study. The student authors must give permission to share their work in ScholarWorks.  Here are some examples of ScholarWorks collections containing these kinds of graduate research:

If you want to learn more about sharing the scholarly work of students in ScholarWorks, please contact Marianne Reed, Digital Publishing& Repository Manager at mreed@ku.edu.

Adding Student Work to ScholarWorks

We have services to help KU students and departments deposit student work in KU ScholarWorks. 

  1. The student, advisor or department should notify Marianne Reed, Digital Publishing& Repository Manager at mreed@ku.edu that they wish to share student work in ScholarWorks.
  2. We send the student the KUSW Student Release Form to fill out and return to us.  The work cannot be deposited in ScholarWorks unless we have the signed form.
  3. We ask the student to send us the following information about the work:
    - Title
    - Author
    - ORCID, optional, but recommended
    - Abstract
    - 3-5 keywords
  4. We communicate with the advisor and/or the department's director of undergraduate research to confirm that the department approves of the student sharing the work in ScholarWorks and ask the department to email us the version of the work accepted by the department.  This is usually a Microsoft Word or PDF document. 
  5. Once the work and the release form are received the work is deposited in ScholarWorks and the permanent URL is sent to the student, advisor, and department.

    Visibility

    • Google and Google Scholar: The developers of DSpace--the software package behind KU ScholarWorks--have worked closely with Google to ensure that the works in those systems are easily found by Google and Google Scholar.
    • Permanent Links:  All items in KU ScholarWorks are assigned URLs that will never change and can be used whenever the work is cited.
    • ORCIDs:  KU ScholarWorks supports the use of Open Researcher and Contributor IDs (ORCIDs). An ORCID gives each researcher a unique identifier that supports connections between the author and their work.  Researcher identifiers like ORCIDs are used by many systems in the research ecosystem, including many granting agencies, where ORCIDs are used by applicants to automatically populate lists of publications.  
    • Article Metrics:  Articles in KU ScholarWorks display Altmetric scores that show visibility and impact of the research from online forums, including news outlets, policy documents, blogs, Twitter, readers on Mendelay, etc.
    • Open Access:  KU ScholarWorks strives to provide open and public access to all content in the repository.  For exceptions, see Delayed Access (Embargoes), below.
    • OAI-PMH:  KU ScholarWorks makes article metadata available to other systems for harvesting, including web crawlers such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Bing, by adhering to standards that meet the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

    Delayed Access (Embargoes)

    Upon the request of the author, student research in KUSW may be embargoed for a specified period of time after which they will become openly available. 

    Authors of theses and dissertations can find information about  embargoes, including how to request or renew an embargo, on the Graduate Studies Embargo page and in the Graduate Studies Embargo Policy for Theses and Dissertations.

    Withdrawal of Content

    Items may be withdrawn from KUSW at the request of the author, at the direction of the Provost or General Counsel, or by legal order. Withdrawn items will be removed from all public access, but will be retained in the repository. Withdrawal requests should be directed to Marianne Reed, Digital Publishing& Repository Manager at mreed@ku.edu.

    Copyright

    Copyright and Non-Exclusive License:  Items in KU ScholarWorks remain the property of the copyright holder(s) and any rights held by the copyright holder (whether the author or publisher) before depositing the work in KU ScholarWorks remain unchanged by the non-exclusive license granted to KU ScholarWorks to distribute the works. 

    Using materials in KU ScholarWorks:  Linking to materials in ScholarWorks is strongly encouraged.  For uses beyond Fair Use, permission from the copyright holder, as well as full attribution, will be required.  Where indicated, some works may have Creative Commons Licenses that specify permissions.

    Resources from KU Libraries

    Find out more about KU ScholarWorks, its policies, and the types of materials you can deposit:

    Related Resources