Looking for help?

How to deposit records in E-LIS

The first thing you'll need to do, after registering, is fill out your user record. When you click on Deposit Papers you'll see an option saying View/change your user record: Select this option. The user record form is described below.

User Record

Your user record is used to hold contact information about you. Some of this information will be associated with eprints you upload; some of it is purely for internal archive use. General information like your name, URL,address and e-mail address are public, so it's inadvisable to put down a home address. (Usually a postal address isn't required.) Information aboutyour operating system is purely to help the archive administrators help you if you encouter problems. Enter the relevant information in the form. Those boxes where the field name (on the left of the box) has an asterisk are required fields that you must fill out before you can deposit papers in to the archive.

Note that you cannot change your e-mail address here. This is deliberate; if you inadvertently enter an incorrect e-mail address, the site will have no way of contacting you. Instructions for changing your e-mail address can be found on the ''Registered Users Area''.Rather than clicking in each box before you enter something into it, you may find that your browser will let you use the tab key to move the cursor between the boxes. In this way you can enter the information much more quickly.

When you've entered the relevant information, click on the ''Update Record'' button at the bottom of the form. If the form is filled out correctly, you'll be taken back to the ''Deposit Papers'' page. If there's a problem with the form, the form will be presented to you again with a description of what's wrong. Correct the error and click on ''Update Record'' again.

How to register in E-LIS

If you wish to deposit papers in the archive, you will first need to register as an archive user. No charge is made for registering with the archive or for use of any of the services it offers.

Registration is a two-stage process. Firstly, you need to complete an initial registration form. This means choosing a username and password to use when you want to deposit or manage your papers. Submit that initial form. Archive staff will then email you with a code to use to confirm your details. When you return to the archive to complete the registration process,you will need to supply further information about yourself.

Your user record holds this contact information about you. Some of this information will be associated with ePrints you deposit. General information like your name, Web address, address and e-mail address are public. Information about your operating system is sought to enable the archive administrators to help you if you encounter problems.

Enter the relevant information in the form. Boxes marked with an asterisk (*) are required fields.

When you have entered the relevant information, use the Update Record button at the bottom of the form to submit your details. If the form is filled out correctly, you will be taken to your new user area page. If there is a problem with the form, the form will be presented to you again with a description of the problem. Correct the error and try Update Record again.

That should complete the registration process, so that you can begin depositing papers.

To reset your password use the forgotten password tool.

Online submission

Activate your account

  1. Go to the Register and select "Registration Form."
  2. Enter your username, password and e-mail, and click the "Register" button.

Request authorization to submit documents

  1. E-LIS requires specific authorization for your account before you can submit documents. This registration will not be activated until you visit the confirmation URL which will be emailed to you.
  2. See more information about User Record at "How to deposit".

Determine if the document is eligible for deposit

For a document to be eligible for deposit to E-LIS, it should meet a few requirements:

  1. It should be an acceptable document type. See "Submission guidelines".
  2. It should conform to publisher's copyright policy. Verify that the document you wish to add to E-LIS is copyright-cleared. See "Copyright policy".
  3. Please make sure that you are depositing a document that can be licensed with a Creative Common license. This is particularly important when depositing official documents (e.g. guidelines, recommendations, standards, and so on), that might have specific licensing requirements different from the CC ones.

Prepare your material

  1. Have a list of metadata that describe the document you wish to submit. See "Submission guidelines: metadata".
  2. Review your material and make any corrections. Once your document has been submitted to E-LIS, any corrections must be done by the E-LIS Staff.
  3. In order to support long-term access to documents in E-LIS, it is strongly suggested that documents be submitted in .pdf or .html format. Check with E-LIS Staff for more information on other acceptable file formats. It is not usually acceptable to deposit the publisher-produced PDF, unless the publisher gives permission to do so.
  1. After your account has been authorized for submitting documents, go to the "E-LIS homepage". Click on "My DSpace (authorized users)." Login with your E-LIS username and password.
  2. Click on "Start a new submission." You will be led through a three-step process: these include some basic questions about the document type, versions or commentaries and bibliographic description where you can describe your documents, then file uploads, a verification screen. You will be asked to choose a CC license and to grant the terms of the deposit license. Follow the directions on each screen. For an illustrated description of these screens, see the How to deposit.
    • Be sure to review the entries very carefully for accuracy and completeness. What is entered will be what others use to find the document record in the future.
    • Save your work, review previous steps, and/or cancel the process at any point until the final submission command is given. All information entered is automatically saved.
    • If any changes need to be made, contact the E-LIS Staff.
  3. Submit another document or close the window, it isn't necessary to logout.
  4. Once the submission process is completed, an editor will check the submission to ensure its suitability for inclusion in the open archive. Additional metadata may be supplied as well. In other words, your documents may need futher approval before being publicly available.
  5. If the document is not approved, the E-LIS Staff will state the reason by email. Once you have corrected the problem, the document will be re-entered into the workflow process and posted into the E-LIS.

Deposit by e-mail

You need to send the electronic document along with minimal bibliographic information to E-LIS. We will deposit the document on your behalf after verifying the eligibility. Just follow these steps:

Determine if the document is eligible for deposit

For a document to be eligible for deposit to E-LIS, it should meet a few requirements

  1. It should be an acceptable document type. See Submission guidelines
  2. It should conform to publisher's copyright policy. Verify that the document you wish to add to E-LIS is copyright-cleared. See Copyright policy.

Make a list of metadata

Have a list of metadata that describe the document you wish to submit.

Convert document to acceptable electronic format

In order to support long-term access to documents in E-LIS, it is strongly suggested that documents be submitted in .pdf or .html format. Check with E-LIS Staff for more information on other acceptable file formats. It is not usually acceptable to deposit the publisher-produced PDF, unless the publisher gives permission to do so. If you need to convert a copy of your document to .pdf see How to Convert a file into PDF.

Send the document by E-Mail

Send it by e-mail to us and we will deposit by you. You will have an opportunity to comment on the finished document before it is added to the archive.

Frequently asked questions


What is E-LIS and why an open archive for LIS?

E-prints for Library and Information Science (E-LIS) is an international open access archive for e-prints related to Librarianship, Information Science and Technology, and related application disciplines, in keeping with the objectives of the EPrints movement and the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) movement.The purpose of E-LIS archive is to make full text LIS documents visible, accessible, harvestable, searchable, and useable by any potential user with access to the Internet. Furthermore, this service aims to support individuals who wish to publish or otherwise make their papers available worldwide. Open access to LIS papers and their dissemination can also support the building of international LIS networks.

Currently, the library and information world is strongly integrated with the areas of computing science and technology. Moreover, institutional metadata creation proves costly, while a more effective means is provided via the growing trend of authors' self archiving in the framework of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). A flexible architecture of data and service providers based on metadata harvesting allows authors to store a copy of their documents in a personal or institutional archive thereby enabling the documents to become quickly available worldwide.

Who maintains E-LIS?

An international team of librarians maintains E-LIS. E-LIS is different from similar initiatives because it is based on voluntary work. For more information see E-LIS Staff.

What is the Open Archives Initiative (OAI)?

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) has designed a shared code for metadata tags (e.g., "date," "author," "title," "journal" etc.). See more information on OAI FAQ. The full-text documents may be in different formats and locations, but if they use the same metadata tags they become "interoperable." Their metadata can be "harvested" and all the documents can then be jointly searched and retrieved as if they were all in one global collection, accessible to everyone.

What is an open archive?

An Open Archive is a collection of digital documents. OAI-compliant Eprint Archives share the same metadata, making their contents interoperable with one another. Their metadata can then be harvested into global "virtual" archives that are seamlessly navigable by any user (just as a commercial index or abstract database is navigable, but with full-text access). See more information on Open Access Overview by Peter Suber.

What are e-prints?

E-prints are the digital texts of peer-reviewed research articles, before and after the referee process. E-prints include pre-prints and postprints. A pre-print is a draft copy preceding refereeing and publication. A postprint is the refereed and published final document.

Is E-LIS an OAI-compliant Eprint archive?

Yes, E-LIS is compliant with the Open Archive Initiative (OAI), which enables your preprint to be found by any search engine using this protocol to index distributed preprint archives. OAI-compliance means using the OAI metadata tags. A document can be OAI-compliant and an Eprint archive can be OAI-compliant. All OAI-compliant documents in OAI-compliant archives are interoperable. This means distributed documents can be treated as if they were all in one place and in one format.

What is self-archiving?

To self-archive is to deposit a digital document in a publicly accessible website, preferably an OAI-compliant Eprint Archive. Depositing involves a simple web interface where the depositer copy/pastes in the "metadata" (date, author-name, title, journal-name, etc.) and then attaches the full-text document. Software is also being developed to allow documents to be self-archived in bulk, rather than one by one.

How are E-LIS contents accessibile?

The service is accessible in two complementary ways. First, a search engine is provided to seek the bibliographic descriptions. Second, browsable views are available by Country, Subject, Submission Date, Title, Journal, Book, Conference and Year. Browsing and searching are anonymous. If you wish to submit a work, you must first register. To use the subscription service you will also need to register. There is no charge to register or to use any service on this archive.

Why would I want to deposit my work in the E-print Archive?

The archive is built around the standards of The Open Archives Initiative, ensuring that research submitted is shared with and contributes to a growing global network of distributed, interoperable, institutional archives. Authors who contribute to an e-print archive are participating in a global effort by universities, researchers, libraries, publishers, editors, and readers to redefine the mechanisms of scholarly research. This e-print archive will make LIS research more visible, available, and relevant, which in turn increases its visibility, status, and public value. See Copyright issues for more information.

Must I register on E-LIS to view or download materials there?

No, you only need to register if you want to deposit materials or if you want to receive regularly scheduled e-mail notification of new submissions to the archive. More information on how to register in E-LIS.

What about the software for E-LIS?

E-LIS site is running on open source software. The archive is based on DSpace. DSpace is the software of choice for academic, non-profit, and commercial organizations building open digital repositories. It is free and easy to install "out of the box" and completely customizable to fit the needs of any organization. DSpace preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, mpegs and data sets. And with an ever-growing community of developers, committed to continuously expanding and improving the software, each DSpace installation benefits from the next.

Who is hosting the server?

The server is hosted on machines of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UNINA) in Naples, Italy.

How often is a Back-up run?

A full back-up is run every week (usually Tuesday night) and an incremental back-up is run everyday.

Who can submit e-prints to E-LIS?

E-LIS is an international repository, so anyone in LIS can submit materials. There are no formal restrictions. However, all persons submitting materials must register.

Can I submit an e-print of another author to E-LIS?

The depositor should be the author/one of the authors of the e-print. E-LIS Staff, in certain cases, can be available for the deposit of documents of others who agree to permit the deposit by the E-LIS Staff and if there is agreement with the possible publisher of the work. For work being deposited by someone other than its author see submission policy in E-LIS.

What types of submissions are accepted?

E-LIS archive accepts any scientific or technical document, published or unpublished, in Librarianship, Information Science and Technology, and related application disciplines. The criteria for acceptance are that the eprints are relevant to research in LIS fields and that they have the form of a finished document that is ready to be entered into a process of communication. Publications may include: preprints, postprints, conference papers, conference posters, presentations, books, book chapters, technical reports/departmental working papers, theses, and newspaper and magazine articles.

Can I submit my preprint to the server?

E-LIS accepts preprints, and other non-refereed materials, which often are in preliminary stages. The purpose of this archive service is to facilitate communication between librarians and researchers in LIS and related fields. The work will be widely read and highly visible. Depositing a preprint in E-LIS can contribute to the revision of that paper for later publication by attracting critical comments. Comments can be made directly to the depositing author, who's contact details are in the archive.

Will the E-LIS staff revise or edit submitted materials?

Submitted documents will be placed into our "submission buffer", where they may be approved by the E-LIS Staff, rejected, or returned to the author for modifications in the metadata or if there are problems with the electronic file. Documents in the submission buffer are manually reviewed to confirm they fit our policy before adding them to E-LIS. E-LIS staff controls the metadata quality of the document and are allowed to make changes if the metadata are incorrect.

What about copyright?

The author holds the copyright for the pre-refereeing preprint, so that can be self-archived without seeking anyone else's permission. For the refereed postprint, the author can try to modify the copyright transfer agreement to allow self-archiving, or, failing that, can append or link a corrigenda file to the already self-archived preprint. See " Is self-archiving legal? ,"What if the publisher forbids self-archiving the preprint? " and the Rights Metadata for Open archiving Project and Directory of Journals' Policies on Author Self-Archiving . See more information on copyright policy in E-LIS.

If I post a preprint or a preliminary item on E-LIS and then publish it, or a revised edition is published in a journal or volume, can the item remain on E-LIS?

Individual journal policies vary on this question. Whatever the policy, the authoritative document is the copyright agreement you sign with the publisher. If that agreement requires you to remove the posted preprint, you should. However, many publishers are adapting to the changing environment of electronic publishing. For example, Elsevier, the publisher of such journals as International Information and Library Review or Library and Information Science Research, states that contributors to its journals have

"...the right to retain a preprint version of the article on a public electronic server such as the World Wide Web. Elsevier Science does not require that authors remove from publicly accessible servers versions of their paper that differ from the version as published by Elsevier Science."

See more information on Publisher copyright policies and self-archiving of the RoMEO Project where you can find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement

Which languages are supported by E-LIS?

All languages are supported. But if the document is in a language other than English, an English abstract and keywords in English must be included.

After an e-print is deposited on E-LIS, how soon will it become available to the public?

As soon as it is approved by the E-LIS Staff it will become available. When a document is deposited, it immediately gets sent to our "submission buffer" where a staff member decides whether the document meets E-LIS quality standards. The paper is then publicly accessible via a search, though it may not appear immediately in the "browse tree".

Which file formats can I use for submitting an e-print?

The following document formats are allowed: PDF, HTML, XML, PowerPoint, MS Word DOC and RTF. HTML and PDF formats are strongly recommended. Do not submit publisher produced PDF or other published format versions.

Can I remove my e-print from the archive?

Yes, although the intent of the Archive is to preserve and globally share peer-reviewed research material created by LIS researchers. Removal of material disrupts this intent. The software does not allow authors to remove papers automatically. However, a request for removal will be considered. .

Can I modify the metadata of my e-prints?

No, the software does not allow authors to modify the metadata automatically. The repository guarantees a validation of registered data of the e-prints. If you need to change any information in the metadata you need to contact E-LIS Staff.

Which classification schema is used?

The Subject Tree adopted is JITA Classification Schema. It has been built for E-LIS on the basis of NewsAgentTopic Classification Scheme and RIS Classification Schema.

What if I have more questions?

If you cannot find the information you require, or if you have any comments or suggestions as to how we may improve E-LIS service, please Contact us.

Do you want to be a new e-LIS editor?

Everyone can contact us for being part of our nice team. Depending on > your country of origin, you will be added to an existing group. get in touch with us by writing to elis.repository[AT]gmail.com.

e-LIS Admin Board will assign you the authorization level as an editor with these two main roles:
  • review the papers uploaded in the repository. Here is a brief tutorial about what you would be asked to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1JEB7H54w
  • act as e-LIS ambassador in their respective regions. The role of promoting repository is key in the e-LIS project success. You are encouraged to tell about it in your LIS community!
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