Author Guidelines


Participating in the BC Digital Commons

Any faculty, faculty emeriti, staff member, or student affiliated with Bridgewater College or an alumna/us may submit their materials for deposit, including items that are co-authored with non-Bridgewater College authors under the following guidelines:

  • The work must be originally produced and submitted by a faculty or staff. Student and college organization submissions require sponsorship by current faculty or staff.
  • The work must be creative, scholarly in nature, research-oriented, or of institutional significance.
  • The author must own the copyright to all components and content within the work, or have received and be able to show permission to have the material available in the BC Digital Commons.
  • Student work needs official faculty or departmental approval before being added to the BC Digital Commons.
  • Contributors should notify all co-authors of intent to deposit work in the BC Digital Commons.
  • Some material may be available only to current college faculty, staff and students.
  • Various file formats are accepted; refer to Digitization Standards for more information.
  • Author Rights

    An author retains any copyright they have for works posted in the BC Digital Commons. The author is free to reuse the content of their work, but it is his/her responsibility to check the terms of the publication if a document published in BC Digital Commons is published elsewhere.

    Submission Guidelines

  • Create a Digital Commons Account and Log in. Choose this option for a more hands-on approach that allows you to independently edit and upload your work to BC Digital Commons. You will need to sign up for an account and receive training from the BC Digital Commons management team before adding content to the repository. You will still need to acquire copyright permissions as described below and file copies with the BC Digital Commons systems administrator. You will also be required to add Metadata to your uploads.
  • For use as a pedagogical tool with classes or for undertaking other digital publishing projects, consult with the BC Digital Commons management team.
  • Document Description / Metadata

    Metadata is information that is used to describe the content so it can be identified and discovered by users similar to a library’s catalog record. Certain types of metadata, such as author and title, are required for all submitted publications. Other types of metadata, such as keyword search terms, are optional and must be supplied by the author. By assigning metadata to submissions, authors ensure that their works will be easily accessed through tools such as Internet search engines.