The Hesburgh Libraries are committed to academic excellence, and in doing so we seek to enhance scholarly research and creative endeavors at the University of Notre Dame. CurateND, the institutional repository for the University of Notre Dame, illuminates the University’s research mission.
Along with other digital systems, CurateND provides a strong digital infrastructure for presenting the University’s research and associated outputs, including data, scholarly papers, presentations, and other works so they can be shared and discovered through an interconnected digital community. CurateND is a space for faculty and university departments to personalize and curate their online portfolios.
This elevates the creative output of faculty, students, departments, centers, and institutes, and strengthens Notre Dame’s impact in the global scholarly community.
Furthermore, the purpose of the CurateND Institutional Repository is to share and make visible materials for continued research and creative collaborations, not to serve as a storage space for the creator. As such, certain items would be out of scope for Curate, such as private documents and files not intended for distribution.
Deposited content must be affiliated with the University of Notre Dame (hereafter ND), and depositors must have an active NetID to log in to CurateND and submit work to the repository.
Current ND affiliates may deposit materials published or created before the authors joined ND, as long as the authors are currently affiliated with ND.
Previous ND affiliates, including alumni, may also contribute content as long as the materials to be deposited were published or created by the authors while affiliated with ND.
Contributors or owners who have left Notre Dame should contact the CurateND Team for any changes or updates to previously contributed content or to deposit appropriate additional contributions.
For those who choose to self-deposit, please know that we may review your deposit and contact you with questions about your content or recommendations to improve the record, such as including additional project files or enhancing the description. If your project is especially complex or you are unsure of any aspect of the process, a member of the CurateND team can help you prepare and deposit your work(s).
By depositing works in CurateND, you do not surrender any of the rights to your work (such as ownership, usage, etc.). Depositors must have the rights to submit the work; CurateND accepts no responsibility for work deposited without the appropriate rights. It is also the expectation that depositors will assign access permissions that allow the widest use possible. If you believe your materials were deposited without appropriate permissions, please contact the CurateND Team. For more information, view the Submission Agreement.
There are no fees associated with depositing content in CurateND. Content that is deposited in CurateND is available without charge. However, some records in CurateND link to externally hosted or enhanced quality resources that may require access fees.
Content submitted to the repository can be scholarly, creative, pedagogical, or research-related materials that advance research for the greater scholarly community, regardless of digital format.
This includes but is not limited to:
publications (including preprints)
dissertations
master’s and doctoral theses
working papers and technical reports
white papers
datasets (datasets must be complete and must include a readme file. At this time, no classified/restricted/confidential data can be accepted.)
conference presentations
conference posters
campus-based publications
course-based publications
audio and video recordings
exhibition documentation
artistic research outputs
All deposited items should be in completed form; descriptive information can be updated after deposit, and additional files can be uploaded as necessary. Depositors are responsible for submitting appropriate descriptive metadata at the time of deposit of their content.
Materials do not need to be in English; when possible, an English translation of the description is recommended to support discoverability. CurateND supports non-Roman alphabets, including Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic characters. If you need assistance uploading this content or creating a description, please contact the CurateND Team.
Cross-institutional projects with multiple authors can be deposited into CurateND so long as one author or contributor meets the depositor requirements and is willing to steward the content.
CurateND cannot accept works containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or sensitive data as defined by the Office of Information Technology (OIT).
CurateND does not accept official University Records, as defined in the University’s Records Management and Archives Policy. Please contact the University Archives if you need further assistance.
The CurateND Team will apply this policy to ongoing and future contributions; it does not apply retroactively.
CurateND is format-agnostic, meaning all file formats may be deposited. However, it is recommended that contributors deposit their works in formats that are open, sustainable, and well-used in their fields. The following formats are preferred.
Text: pdf-a
Images: jpeg 2000 and tiff
Video: .mov, .avi
Audio: .wav
Databases: .csv
Additional Formats recommended by the Library of Congress: Open Document Type files
For more information, see the National Archives’ Transfer Guidance Tables.
If an item needs to be in a format specific to your discipline, consider contacting the CurateND Support Team.
Every user is granted an initial 25 GB of space. For more space, please contact the CurateND Team. More space may be granted at the discretion of the CurateND Service Manager.
These size limitations do not apply to departmental batch uploads required by University of Notre Dame mandates.
Contributors can set specific access permissions for both the content's record and the content itself. Content submitted can be:
Public: This content is visible to all users and may be indexed by search engines.
University of Notre Dame: This content is only visible to patrons with an active Notre Dame NetID.
Embargoed: This content is private until the date set by an editor, at which time the content either becomes publicly available or available to Notre Dame.
Private: This content is only visible to the editors.
Access level does not correspond to particular licenses or copyright permissions. Authors are responsible for assigning an appropriate access level for their content.
Contributions will be reviewed to ensure all materials are described appropriately and conform to descriptive standards. This is to facilitate the discovery and preservation of materials. Depositors may be contacted with questions or requests for additional information.
In cases where deposit integrity is in question — copyright violations, institutional review board violations, or other legal and ethical violations — deposits will be reviewed, and the depositor will be contacted. During this time, the content will be removed from public access. If the depositor is no longer at the University, items will be reviewed by the CurateND team and then deleted from the system within 90 days. If the depositor is available, they will be notified and have 90 days to reclaim access to the deposits. After this review, items will be deleted.
In cases where the depositor is no longer at the University, and items are private, the CurateND team will review the deposit. A documented reasonable effort will be made to contact the individual prior to deletion.
CurateND is intended to provide permanent access to and preservation of deposited content. As a member of a global family of institutional repositories, CurateND aspires to provide open and persistent access to its content. Deposits should be considered permanent.
However, there are instances when content may need to be removed from the repository. Content may be removed for any number of reasons, such as copyright violations and sensitive data concerns. We will make reasonable efforts to contact the original depositor in the event content needs to be removed.
After removal, the records of removed content will remain active, with the addition of the language:
“This content has been removed by the Hesburgh Libraries.”
CurateND collects various information on users who interact with the site in different ways:
Depositors: Are required to log in with their NetID, and this information is retained while you are active at the institution and at least six months after you leave.
Browsing Content: When you access CurateND, our servers record information provided by your browser, such as IP address, time of visit(s), and type of request(s) (e.g., View or Download). This information is not distributed or shared. When content owners view the usage information of their items, all that is provided is the time of visit and type of request.
Help Requests: When you submit a request to the CurateND team, your email address is collected, along with any other information you provide. We use this information to follow up on your request and this information is available in your ServiceNow ticket.
For more information about the Hesburgh Libraries and our commitment to privacy, please visit the Privacy Statement and Patron Privacy Q&A.pdf.
CurateND is committed to preserving deposits according to preservation best practices. An access copy will be maintained within the CurateND repository, and a preservation copy will be maintained in a separate system, ensuring that all materials have at least two copies stored in different locations.
A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is the preferred way to cite materials in CurateND. A DOI can be created free of charge.
If an item in CurateND has a CurateND-assigned DOI (i.e., a DOI that points to a CurateND web page as opposed to a publisher’s web page), then that DOI is guaranteed to always point to the item’s page in CurateND.
CurateND DOIs will always point to an item’s information page in CurateND and not to any associated files to ensure compliance with the FAIR Guiding Principles for data management.
DOIs can also be generated for grant applications as necessary.
In the event of a complete or partial digital object loss or corruption, the affected item(s) will be marked “lost,” and any data file(s) will be marked “unavailable for download.” Partially lost or corrupted file(s) will be retained, and we will attempt to notify the content owner(s). If the affected digital object is a metadata record, the record will be marked “lost,” and the CurateND team will try to reconstruct the record as much as possible.
In the event of significant changes to the repository’s level of funding, staffing, or other resources, or in the event that the repository itself ceases to exist, the Hesburgh Libraries will make a reasonable effort to continue providing access to deposited content.
As part of its commitment to providing long-term access to deposited content, CurateND has existing relationships with other trusted digital repositories, such as Academic Preservation (AP) Trust. The Hesburgh Libraries and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) continually monitor the digital preservation landscape for other possible solutions that could be used on a contingency basis.
1 See the University of Notre Dame’s Intellectual Property Policy for more information: https://policy.nd.edu/assets/203061/intellectualpropertypolicy.pdf ↩ return to text
2 See Knowledge Base article: https://nd.service-now.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0013665 ↩ return to text
3 See University Archives Records Management Policy: https://policy.nd.edu/assets/185265/records_management_archives_2015.pdf ↩ return to text
4 Wilkinson, Mark D.; Dumontier, Michel; Aalbersberg, IJsbrand Jan; Appleton, Gabrielle; et al. (15 March 2016). "The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship". Scientific Data. 3: 160018. doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.18
