Apollo governance and policies

Open Research Systems team

The ORS team is part of the Digital Iniatives Directorate (Digital Initiatives) within Cambridge University Library. The ORS team is responsible for managing Apollo (Repository service and technical aspects of the underpinning software platform), and its integrations with other University systems.

In addition to service ownership, the ORS team is responsible for technical & software development, maintenance and platform upgrades of Apollo and associated integrations, together with user support.

While ownership of the Repository service lies within ORS, other units are involved in managing the technical infrastructure and operational aspects of Apollo. The technical infrastructure and storage are owned by Digital Initiatives and managed by the Digital Services team.

Digital Initiatives

The Digital Initiatives Directorate brings together all the teams responsible for delivering the digital services provided by Cambridge University Library. The DevOps team are directly responsible for managing the technical infrastructure that underpins Apollo, including the primary and multicopy/redundancy storage servers based in the University's two data centres.

The data centres are the responsibility of University Information Services (UIS).

Content

Teams within the Office of Scholarly Communication manage and curate the repository's content. Open access submissions, research datasets and doctoral theses are primarily deposited into Apollo via the University's CRIS (Current Research Information System), which is owned by the Research Information Office.

Responsibility

The ORS team report directly to the Head of Digital Initiatives, who is themselves a Deputy Director of Cambridge University Library and part of the Senior Leadership Team. The Senior Leadership Team form part of the governance structure of the Library.

Chart showing the organisational structure of the Cambridge University teams responsible for the Apollo repository

Policies

The Repository's main policies concern: the preservation processes for research outputs deposited, managed, and stored in the repository; the service level definition for the repository; the use of Apollo by members of the University and end-users; the assignment of persistent identifiers (DOIs); and guidelines by which the presence of material that potentially infringes rights may be addressed.

Repository Terms of Use

The Repository Terms of Use (Terms of Use) forms the framework that determines how members of the University and the community of end-users interact with Apollo. The Terms of Use covers:

  • The types of Research Outputs that qualify for deposit into Apollo and the means by which they are assessed.
  • The terms under which end-users may access material on Apollo.
  • Responsibilities of depositors, including ensuring that Research Outputs were generated in accordance with the University's research, integrity and ethics policies.
  • Apollo's commitment to the responsible and sustainable management of Research Outputs deposited in the Repository to ensure long-term access to those works.

Notice and takedown policy

Outlines the process by which parties who feel that material deposited in Apollo infringes their rights may act.

DOI policy

Qualifying material deposited in Apollo may be assigned a persistent identifier in the form of a DOI. This policy outlines the criteria by which material is assessed - both in terms of the full text content and the associated metadata - and how requests to update material once a DOI has been granted are handled.

Apollo repository preservation policy

An overview of Apollo's digital preservation policy outlining how research outputs deposited in the repository are managed and preserved is publicly available.

This policy is part of a wider digital preservation policy for Cambridge University Libraries introduced below.

CUL Digital Preservation Policy

Cambridge University Libraries (CUL) Digital Preservation Policy outlines the approaches to preserving digital collection materials held by Cambridge University Libraries.

These policies sit within a broad policy landscape determined by Cambridge University Library, the University of Cambridge, the higher education sector, research funders, UK Government etc.

Repository service level

The service level definition for Apollo can be viewed at the service level page.