Skip to Main Content

OHSU Digital Collections

Everything you need to know about submitting works to OHSU's institutional repository
The first step in preparing to submit your work to the OHSU Digital Collections is to confirm your rights to share the work and to consider the rights you want to grant others to use the work.

Do you need advisor approval to submit?

Students in the MD Program who wish to submit any outputs of their Scholarly Projects must first get approval from their mentor before they submit any materials. More information on OHSU Scholarly Projects:

Do you have permission from any co-authors to submit the work?

If you are not the sole author of the work you are submitting, you jointly own copyright with your co-authors and you all have equal right to exercise and enforce it.

You must have permission from all your co-authors before submitting your work to the OHSU Digital Collections and before licensing your work for reuse by others.

You can learn more about your rights as a copyright owner under U.S. Copyright Law in the Copyright Fundamentals section of our Copyright Guide.

Is the work considered a work-for-hire?

If you are an OHSU employee and you wish to submit a work that was created as part of your regular work duties, it is considered a work made for hire and OHSU owns the copyright. In a university setting, peer-reviewed articles and other scholarly works are typically not considered works for hire, but any other, non-scholarly works created within the normal scope of your employment would be considered OHSU intellectual property.

Permission must be obtained from OHSU Technology Transfer to both submit OHSU intellectual property to the OHSU Digital Collections and license it for reuse by others.


Please contact the Library Copyright Team if you have any questions about submitting OHSU intellectual property works to the OHSU Digital Collections.

Do you have the right to share a work that has been previously published?

If you are submitting a work that has been previously published, you need to confirm that you have the right to submit your work.

Publisher contracts often transfer all copyrights to the publisher in their entirety and specify how and when authors can share their work, including self-archiving in institutional repositories such as the OHSU Digital Collections. Authors should refer to their publishing contract or publisher’s self-archiving policy to confirm their rights.

The following tools can help you determine whether you have the right to submit your work:

Does the work need to be embargoed for delayed release?

An embargo is a time period in which public access to the full text of a work is restricted. Records for embargoed works in the OHSU Digital Collections will only display the work's title, description, and authors. Embargo periods vary; they can be as short as six months and as long as five years.

Reasons authors choose to embargo their work include:

  • The author is waiting to publish the work (in whole or part) in the future
  • The work has already been published (in whole or part) and the publisher's contract restricts the public release of the work
  • The work contains data covered by a nondisclosure agreement for a specified period, such as personal information, intellectual property, and/or company secrets
  • The author is waiting for patent applications to process

The process for selecting an embargo depends on your document. For example, setting an embargo on a Faculty Article requires only that the submitter selects the embargo they wish to use while setting an embargo on a Graduate Thesis requires approval of the Graduate School.

If your work does not need to be embargoed, its full text will be made available for public access immediately.

Does the work reuse the work of others?

If the work you are submitting to the OHSU Digital Collections reuses the work of others, you will need to indicate the means by which your reuse is permitted under U.S. Copyright Law when you fill out the submission form.

  • Creative Commons: Copyright owners may apply a Creative Commons license to their work that permits others to reuse their work without contacting them to obtain permission.
  • Fair Use: Your reuse of a third-party copyrighted work might be permitted under the Fair Use exemption in copyright law. If you wish to claim fair use for any of the copyrighted works you're reusing, we recommend conducting a fair use assessment for each one. Consider completing a fair use checklist for each such work. The checklist helps demonstrate a good faith effort on your part to comply with copyright law
  • Public Domain: Works in the public domain are no longer in copyright and may be used freely by anyone without obtaining permission.
  • By Permission: If a third-party copyrighted work you're reusing has not been released under a Creative Commons license and you do not wish to claim fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

For more information about Creative Commons, Fair Use, Public Domain, and how to obtain permission from copyright owners, see the Copyright Exemptions section of our Copyright Guide.

If you have questions about permissions to reuse the work of others, please contact the Library Copyright Team.

Do you want to license the work for reuse?

During the submission process, you will be asked to choose a license that specifies how others may use your work. This is separate from the license granted to OHSU.

  • The Library recommends choosing a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) license.
  • Authors may select other standard licenses or copyright statements, including other Creative Commons licenses or an In Copyright statement.


    The Creative Commons License Chooser can help you select a license. 


    • Creative Commons has guidance on what you need to consider before you license your work listed below.
    • Public use of works submitted to OHSU Digital Collections are governed by the license terms chosen by the author. Authors will need to explicitly grant permission for any use beyond those terms.
    • Licensing your work does not change ownership of the work's copyright.

    If you have questions about licensing your work, please contact the Library Copyright Team.

    Rights Statement for Electronic Documents

    The right to download or print any of the pages of these theses (Material) is granted by the copyright owner only for personal or classroom use. The author retains all proprietary rights, including copyright ownership. Any reproduction or editing or other use of this Material by any means requires the express written permission of the copyright owner.

    Except as provided above, or any use beyond what is allowed by fair use (Title 17 Section 107 U.S.C.), you may not reproduce, republish, post, transmit or distribute any Material from this web site in any physical or digital form without the permission of the copyright owner of the Material.

    Inquiries regarding any further use of these materials should be addressed to:ethesis@ohsu.edu.