About

The BCIT Institutional Repository

Welcome to the BCIT Institutional Repository! Proudly publishing Open Access since April of 2013. The BCIT Library continues to serve the BCIT Scholarly Community by being the place to publish BCIT scholarly content. 

How to submit works to the BCIT Institutional Repository

BCIT faculty, graduate students, and staff are encouraged to submit their scholarly work for publication in BCIT’s Institutional Repository. 

To submit simply: 

  1. Complete the LIB-73 form ensuring that all authors have signed. * 
  2. Save your work as a PDF/a. ** 
  3. Send the form and your work to the Institutional Repository Librarian Cindy McLellan. 

*If you are submitting a Thesis or Capstone Project, please also complete and sign the Theses Canada form so your work can be published as part of the Thesis Canada collection for wider circulation.  

**If your work is in a special format and cannot be saved as a PDF/a please contact Cindy McLellan. The Institutional Repository can accommodate many formats (audio, video, images). 

BCIT Institutional Repository Library Instruction 

Faculty, if your students will be publishing in the BCIT Institutional Repository, please contact Cindy McLellan to visit your class. A class visit session may cover: 

  • How to submit for publication in the BCIT Institutional Repository
  • Copyright and plagiarism
  • Using reference management services/apps
  • Searching BCIT Library resources 
  • Open Access 

Requests from Departments for presentations aimed at Faculty and Staff who use or publish in the BCIT Institutional Repository are welcome. Please contact Cindy McLellan. 

Types of work that can be submitted  

  • Theses and Capstone projects 
  • Exemplar student works (as chosen by faculty) 
  • Open Access articles 
  • Article preprints 
  • Research reports 
  • Book chapters 
  • Conference presentations 
  • Posters 
  • Open Educational Resources (OER) 

What about Copyright and Intellectual Property?  

Canadian Copyright law applies to all submissions to the BCIT Institutional Repository. Any copyright violations are the responsibility of the author. 

Completing and signing the LIB-73 form enables BCIT to license (obtain permission) from authors to upload submitted materials and publish these electronically on the Internet via BCIT’s IR and to also convert submitted material to alternate formats for purposes of security, back-up, and preservation.  

For BCIT students submitting materials to the Graduate Theses and Capstone Projects collection, the Theses Canada form, allows your work to be mirrored on the Theses Canada site, increasing the reach of your research. 

Deposit of previously published works is only allowed in accordance with publisher policy. 

Authorship is maintained for 70 years after the death of the author. If there are multiple authors, it is 70 years after the last author of the work has passed. 

What is Open Access? 

Open Access is the practice of providing free and unrestricted online access to research publications and data. This greater access accelerates the progress of research, democratizes access to knowledge worldwide, and ensures that publicly funded research is available to the public. Open Access makes it possible for research results to have a greater impact and enables researchers, scholars, clinicians, policymakers, private sectors and not-for-profit organizations and the public to use and build upon this knowledge.  

The decision to publish BCIT’s Institutional Repository (IR) as Open Access opens our scholarship to the world. It aligns with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications. The BCIT Institutional Repository holds the promise of extending BCIT reach and increasing the visibility, prestige, and public value of our applied research. 

What about Access and Re-Use? 

  • Anyone may access the items held in the BCIT IR free of charge. BCIT is proud that our Institutional Repository is an Open Access repository. 
  • Generally, users may view, download and copy any work for non-commercial use, as long as the work is not altered, and appropriate acknowledgement is given. This is the equivalent of a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND licence. 
  • Some items may have differing conditions of use: 
  • If the contributor owns the copyright in the work being deposited, they will be given the option to assign a Creative Commons licence permitting additional uses of the work. 
  • If the copyright is held by a third-party (e.g. a journal publisher), the permitted re-use terms will be specified in the item description in the BCIT IR. 
  • Items must not be harvested by robots except transiently for full-text indexing or citation analysis. 
  • Re-use of BCIT IR metadata: 
    • The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for non-for-profit purposes, provided that proper attribution and a link to the original metadata is given. 
    • The metadata must not be re-used in any medium for commercial purposes without formal permission. 
  • Mention of the BCIT Institutional Repository is appreciated but not mandatory. 
  • BCIT is not responsible for any use or misuse by third parties who access works through the BCIT IR.

How long are documents retained? 

By default, we keep all material submitted to the BCIT IR indefinitely. If there is an item that should be removed, please email the Institutional Repository Librarian Cindy McLellan. 

Do you have more questions about the IR?

Please email the BCIT Institutional Repository Librarian Cindy McLellan if you have any other questions or concerns.