04 For authors and institutions
Bring the object. We describe it with you.
For researchers and research groups, universities and institutes, conference organisers, AI teams, museums and archives — anyone with a research object that deserves to be published properly and found again.
A The approach
From first message to a published record, in five steps.
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Ask for a quote
Tell us what the object is, how big it is and when you need it. We reply with the review it needs, the record it will carry, a timeline and a price. Request a quote.
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Agree the plan
Scope, review, licence and timeline are agreed in writing before any work starts.
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Hand it over
Send the files and the details only you know. We prepare the metadata from your files and ask only for what is missing — ORCID iDs, affiliations, funders and award numbers, approvals.
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Review
Your object goes through the checks for its kind (see what we publish). You see every report and answer it. Nothing is published until the review is complete and you have approved the final files and the record.
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Publication
We register the identifier with the agency that serves your object, publish its landing page, deposit the full record and send you a copy of it.
B Review
What review means for your kind of object.
| Room | Object | Review | Registered with |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Books and chapters | Peer review of the full manuscript by at least two independent experts | Crossref |
| 02 | Conference proceedings, posters and slides | Check of the conference and its review; independent review where that is missing | Crossref and DataCite |
| 03 | Reports, theses and working papers | Independent expert review for reports; confirmation of the award for theses | Crossref |
| 04 | Preprints and peer reviews | Screening for preprints; consent of reviewer and author for published reviews | Crossref |
| 05 | Datasets and data papers | Data quality review; data papers peer reviewed like articles | DataCite |
| 06 | AI models and model cards | Review of the model card, training-data rights and a repeatable evaluation | DataCite |
| 07 | Software, notebooks and protocols | The code runs, tests pass, the release is archived and licensed | DataCite |
| 08 | Learning and audiovisual works | Subject-expert review, accessibility, consent and permissions | DataCite |
| 09 | New kinds of objects | Agreed object by object, and published alongside it | Crossref or DataCite |
C Open licences
You keep the copyright. Readers get clear terms.
Authors and creators keep their copyright and give us the right to publish. Every object is published under an open licence chosen with you, and the licence URL goes into its record so that people and machines can read it.
| Object | Default licence | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Texts | CC BY 4.0 | Books, chapters, reports, theses, proceedings, preprints and reviews. |
| Data | CC0 1.0 or CC BY 4.0 | Chosen with you; personal data never published. |
| Software | An OSI-approved licence | For example MIT, Apache-2.0 or GPL-3.0, as the project already uses. |
| AI models | An open licence named in the model card | It must agree with the licences of the training data. |
| Media | CC BY 4.0 | Courses, lectures, films, sound and images; third-party material cleared. |
| Records | CC0 1.0 | The metadata itself, so anyone may reuse it. |
D Before you send
What to have ready.
- The files, in the form you want them published.
- Every creator’s name and ORCID iD. Registering an iD is free; we can show creators how.
- Affiliations — we look up their ROR IDs.
- Funders and award numbers.
- Your choice of licence, or the questions you have about it.
- Ethics approvals and consent, where people or animals are involved.
- Any identifier the object already has. If it already has a DOI we link to it rather than register a second one.
E For institutions
Series and collections, under one agreement.
Thesis collections, report and working-paper series, conference programmes and course catalogues can be published together, with one consistent set of affiliation and funder identifiers across all of them.
- One agreement and one quote for the whole collection.
- Records that use the same identifiers for your departments and funders every time.
- A copy of every record, in the agency’s own format, for your repository or research information system.
- Embargoes respected: where you require one, we can publish the record first and the files when it ends.