The Hamilton Commons
Rights and Permissions
Bibliographic information is available for all works included in The Hamilton Commons.
In some cases, access to the works themselves is restricted.
- The most recent three years of the American Communal Societies Quarterly are embargoed.
- The majority of senior theses are restricted to Hamilton students, faculty, and staff.
- Many research papers are also restricted to the Hamilton community.
Please contact Reid Larson, Senior Research Librarian of Academic Engagement and Special Projects, at rslarson@hamilton.edu with any questions you may have about accessing full text content.
- Authors retain their copyright for all works submitted.
- Authors may update and add to existing works.
- Authors may request the removal of an individual work for any reason. Requests for the removal of works by multiple authors require the agreement of all Hamilton-affiliated authors.
- Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for any third-party content included in their submitted work that does not fall within fair use.
- Authors are responsible for compliance with publisher agreements governing previously published or forthcoming works.
- Authors must consent to the terms governing submissions outlined in the Hamilton Digital Commons Contributor Agreement.
Individuals who contribute work to The Hamilton Commons agree to the following:
I, as a creator of this work, grant Hamilton College permission to share the work in an open-access digital environment intended for educational purposes. I give Hamilton College permission to make this work available to all users and to migrate it to accessible formats as necessary. I have ensured that the necessary copyright permissions have been cleared.
I and any co-authors retain all intellectual property rights to the work that are under our control at the time of its submission. Requests for use of this work for purposes other than education will be referred back to me as copyright holder.
Works in The Hamilton Commons are protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use works in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). (More information)
Submission Guidelines
To be included in The Hamilton Digital Commons:
- The work’s credited authors must:
- include a current Hamilton College faculty member, student, or staff member;
- or, have been requested to submit work for a Hamilton-sponsored event or publication.
- The work must be creative, scholarly in nature, research oriented, or of institutional significance.
- Student work must be recommended for inclusion by a faculty member, an academic department, or a Hamilton office for whom the work was produced.
- The work must be stored in a widely adopted file format.
Student contributions to The Hamilton Commons must be recommended for inclusion by a faculty member, an academic department, or a Hamilton office for whom the work was produced. These may include:
- theses and senior capstone projects
- prize-winning submissions for college awards
- grant-funded research
- course projects
We welcome faculty and staff contributions of the following types of scholarly and creative work:
- journal articles
- conference proceedings, papers, presentations, and posters
- white papers, essays, technical reports, and campus publications
- artwork, music, theatre, or dance performance
- books, book chapters, or manuscripts
- teaching and learning resources
- research reports from grant-funded projects with Open Access or data management requirements
Works should be scholarly and substantive in nature. Contributions are intended to be permanent additions to The Hamilton Commons, so works that are still in progress or ephemeral in nature are not recommended.
This depends on what the publisher allows, which is usually specified in your author agreement. If you don’t know what is allowed in your author agreement, permissions information for many publishers can be found at Jisc's Open Policy Finder.
Consult your author agreement or Jisc's Open Policy Finder for what is allowed. Publishers often make distinctions between three primary versions of a manuscript—the pre-print, the post-print and the published version. In most cases, you will be submitting a post-print of the article that has undergone peer review and incorporates reviewer comments, but has not been formatted for publication.
For a full explanation of pre-print, post-print, and publisher versions of articles, consult:
Only one author has to assent to the contributor agreement. The U.S. Copyright Office considers joint copyright owners to have an equal right to register and enforce the copyright. Unless the joint owners make a written agreement to the contrary, each copyright owner has the right to commercially exploit the copyright, provided that the other copyright owners get an equal share of the proceeds.
The Hamilton Digital Commons can archive and make available most digital formats, including text (e.g., .pdf, .txt), audio (e.g., .wav, .mp3), video (e.g., .avi, .mp4, .mov) and other file formats (e.g., .cad, .png, .xpt, .por). For text documents, OCR-enabled PDF files are recommended to assure long-term operability and improved search engine results.
To ensure the preservation and long-term access of your work, we encourage you to consult the list of preferred and acceptable file formats listed in the Library of Congress’ Recommended Formats Statement.
Questions & Assistance
For more information about accessing works or contributing content to The Hamilton Commons, contact Reid Larson, Senior Research Librarian of Academic Engagement and Special Projects, at rslarson@hamilton.edu.
