CODA  Tags: coda copyright caltech_collection repositories repository research_publications  

"CODA" is an acronym for the Caltech Online Digital Archives, which contain the institutional collections for faculty research publications and other content supporting the mission of the Institute.

On March 16, 2009, the Faculty Board unanimously approved a motion that Caltech Faculty support the creation of the Caltech Collection, and that the library be charged to create and maintain this collection.

The Ad hoc Committee on Scholarly Output And Distribution recommended the following:

1. The Institute should create a Caltech Collection of the published scholarship and research of the Caltech community.
2. With the support and cooperation of the Caltech faculty, the library will collect into the Archive a record of all papers originating from Caltech.
3. The library will aim to acquire the final version of each paper and make it as freely available on the global [web] as the law allows.

Studies show that the increased visibility of openly accessible papers leads to greater uptake in a broad range of human activities. The committee believes that the establishment of a Caltech Collection is valuable because:

1. It fosters recognition for both authors and the institution;
2. It eases access to Caltech science and engineering;
3. It encourages barrier-free cross-disciplinary sharing and use.

In addition, implementation will be seamless: the necessary resources are already in place, and papers will be added to the collection using library procedures that are already being used.

(-- from the Caltech Faculty Board minutes of March 19, 2009)

CODA is a collection of archives. The differentiation of the collections reflects some of the differing origins of the material. For instance:

1. CaltechAuthors: Research publications by Caltech authors. Mainly articles, but also books, book chapters, conference papers and more – the largest single component of the various archives are journal articles published by Caltech authors over the course of the last century or so. Over 13,000 at last count.
2. CaltechBooks: Books by Caltech authors that are freely available. (Note: some books can also be found in CaltechAUTHORS. All books will eventually move there).
3. Technical Reports: these include archives of digitized technical report series from Caltech's Computer Science department and from the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory, among others.
4. Caltech-hosted Conferences: proceedings of conferences hosted by Caltech -- a professor hosting an international cavitation conference approached the library in the spring of 2001. He was hoping to have the conference papers submitted by their authors and accessible globally before, during, and after the conference, preferably in perpetuity.
5. CaltechTheses: Caltech's dissertations – an electronic dissertation became a PhD requirement at the Institute beginning in 2003. Digitization of the older dissertations is more than 60% completed.
6. Other Collections: the library also hosts archives for other groups at Caltech, such as the Engineering and Science magazine, and the Caltech Archives' Oral Histories.

Some items have access restrictions. The largest class of material with access restricted to the Caltech campus are dissertations written since 1977, in cases where the author has not yet been contacted to secure permission for global distribution.The library responds to all requests for access by contacting the author or the author's heirs in pursuit of that permission.

In the future, the library plans to consolidate some of the collections, under CaltechAuthors. Information will be forthcoming as we prepare these moves.

The library makes every effort to remain in compliance with copyright law and publisher agreements by reviewing every item prior to release from an input buffer.

Many publishers allow authors' "Accepted Versions" to be deposited into insitutional repositories.  We encourage Caltech authors to submit these to CODA, either personally or with the help of library staff.

More copyright information for authors is available via our website.  Library staff may assist authors wishing to reclaim copyrights or secure other necessary permissions from publishers.

Although we encourage authors to allow open access to the resources in these collections as a way to share their research, there are sometimes reasons to restrict access to them.  Generally, these involve licensing agreements with publishers or pending patents.  Each file in CODA can have its access level independently set.  These can be changed at any time by contacting library staff responsible for CODA. 

The following access level settings apply to the visibility of each individual file:

• Anyone:  the file is visible to anyone worldwide.
• Caltech Users Only: the file's visibility is restricted to those whose computers have a Caltech-registered IP.
• Repository Administrators Only: the file is NOT visible to the public.  This setting can be set either permanently or until a defined date.  If the latter is chosen, the file remains hidden from public view  until the date is reached, at which point the file's access level changes automatically and allows it to becomes visible to anyone worldwide.  This date can also be changed by contacting library staff responsible for CODA.

The record containing information about the resource and its items or files, also known as the metadata record, remains visible worldwide, even though the files themselves may be restricted from view. Whenever possible, we also provide links to the publisher's version on its website.  This provides the viewer with an alternative access point, although licensing agreements may or may not allow the viewer to actually access the full-text of the document.

The archives are compliant with the Open Access Initiative-Metadata Harvesting Protocol (OAI-MHP), which makes them visible in “deep web” search engines (e.g. OAIster, D9). In addition to accessing the archives directly from the Caltech CODA website, the major general web search engines (Google Scholar, Scopus, and MSN Search, among others) routinely index the site.