Digital Document Repository
The DDD (UAB Digital Document Repository) is the platform through which the university’s research, teaching, and institutional output is collected, managed, disseminated, and preserved. It also includes digital documents that are part of the UAB libraries' collections or that complement them. It offers an organised, open-access, and interoperable collection.
Objectives:
- To provide the university community with a platform for publishing their work in full text with open access.
- To increase the visibility of both the authors and the institution.
On the Open Access page, you will find information about the benefits of open publishing, as well as details on the legal framework, guides and best practices, research data, copyright, and the dissemination of research through:
Authorship: The publication of documents in the DDD implies granting the UAB a non-exclusive right to public communication, meaning that the authors retain their copyright.
Copyright: DDD documents are protected by copyright, and their use is governed by the current Intellectual Property Law. Each record includes a rights notice outlining the terms of use for the document. Creative Commons, Public Domain, or All Rights Reserved licences are applied. Please refer to the Creative Commons Licences recommended by the UAB.
Use of Personal Data: In compliance with the Personal Data Protection Law 15/1999, the DDD does not disclose user information concerning submissions, individual visits to the repository, or email addresses required for registration (unless the user is part of the university community). We adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect personal data and privacy. The DDD only collects email addresses from users not affiliated with the university community. Under no circumstances can library staff access personal passwords. Users who have not logged into their personal accounts or created baskets within 5 years will be deregistered.
Language: The interface is available in Catalan, Spanish, and English. Documents are accepted in any language and alphabet.
Cost: Free of charge.
Permanent URL: Each DDD document is assigned a permanent URL, which is indicated in the record.
Versions: The repository allows you to maintain different versions of a document.
File Format: The repository accepts all types of file formats, but open formats are preferred to facilitate reuse (e.g., PDF for text documents).
File Naming: Proper file naming is essential for the management and accessibility of electronic resources. The following recommendations should be followed when naming files:
- Choose names that clearly describe the content, e.g., by incorporating part of the bibliographic reference of the work.
- Avoid exceeding 25 characters.
- Do not use numbers alone, as they do not provide sufficient context for the record.
- Avoid using special characters like: , . : ; / () $ & | [ ] * < > “ ¿
- Use underscores (_) instead of spaces between words.
- For records with different versions, differentiate them by adding v01, v02, etc., rather than terms like "update" or "new". An exception would be the final version, which can be labelled "FINAL". It is important to maintain consistency in naming different files to ensure internal coherence.
File Size and Volume Limitations: It is recommended that documents do not exceed 200 pages and/or 200 MB.
Consultation and downloading of DDD Documents
Consultation and downloading of DDD documents are free for everyone. You can access the personalised features of the platform either as an identified user from the university community or as a guest.
Authentication
To authenticate, please complete the following form. If you are a member of the UAB community, always use your NIU and password. If you are not affiliated with the UAB, please identify yourself using your email address. This request is processed immediately, granting access to various features.
- Customise the interface, save search results, and create alerts.
- Retrieve all your searches from the last 30 days.
- Create collections by grouping records you wish to access later or share with others.
- Add comments and ratings to DDD documents.
- Upload documents you have authored using the self-archiving forms (available only to UAB Academic Staff and PTGAS members).
Comment Policy
You must have a DDD account to post comments and reviews in the Discussion section of each record. We welcome all constructive comments and ratings that contribute to improving the repository. However, any comments deemed offensive, promotional, or spam-like will not be tolerated. In such cases, we reserve the right to remove them. Repeated violations of these conditions may result in a user being banned.
Help guide
For assistance with consulting and personalising the UAB's Digital Document Repository, please refer to our guide.
Although the DDD contains scientific, institutional, and heritage production created by the UAB community and other groups, its publication in the repository is reserved for UAB academic and administrative staff (PDI and PTGAS). Content management is handled by the Library Service.
Ways to Deposit Documents in the DDD:
- Academic and Administrative staff: Please consult the guide on How to Submit Documents.
- Doctoral Students: Your doctoral thesis will be published in the TDX and DDD in compliance with Royal Decree 99/2011, of 28 January, which regulates official doctoral education. To publish other documents produced during your doctoral studies in the DDD, please contact your reference library.
Authorisation Documents:
Authorisation documents are only required if you are submitting your scientific production directly to the library (instead of through the self-archiving submission forms).
Submitting digitised documents should be an exceptional practice. We recommend using a professional reprography service. The digitisation must meet minimum guidelines: 300 dpi, colour (never black and white), and, whenever possible, include OCR so the full text can be retrieved. Submission of textual documents in image format (jpg, gif, etc.) will not be accepted.
The DDD is an open-access repository, and all records include the full text of the document. Files can be deposited under the following conditions:
- Immediate open access: available for public consultation and open to everyone.
- Temporary embargo: determined by the rights holder. The Library Service temporarily holds the document and releases it on the date specified by the copyright holder.
- Restricted access to the UAB: full text is only accessible from computers within the UAB network. If you are a member of the university community and wish to access these documents off-campus, you must use the Virtual Private Network (VPN) Service.
The metadata of records and their reuse are subject to a CC0 licence, meaning they are in the public domain.
Anyone who holds the copyright of a document in the DDD and wishes to exercise their moral right to withdraw it can contact the UAB Libraries through the Pregunt@ service, providing reasons for the request.
The request will be assessed to ensure that it does not undermine freedom of expression or scientific research. If deemed appropriate, compensation for the management tasks may also be considered.
The staff of the Library Service carry out numerous quality actions to improve the descriptions of the documents and facilitate access. Many quality tasks have been programmed to be done automatically while uploading records, for example linking to the Portal de la Recerca, Scopus or PubMed identifiers or entry of controlled vocabularies from COAR.
These are the tasks that are performed periodically, some daily, to monitor the integrity of our records:
- Establish an authority control for proper names
- Review of ORCID to avoid errors and add new ones
- Normalize names of authors' affiliations
- Standardize financing entities
- Correct or remove incorrect DOIs
- Review possible duplicate documents
- Correct and unify ISSN
- Check internal links that give error
- Check external links that give error
- Check that all records have the minimum required metadata
- Carry out periodic evaluations with the Recollecta and OpenAIRE validators
Services and Commitments of the DDD for Publicly Funded Research Projects
National policies (such as the State Plan) and European initiatives (H2020 and Horizon Europe) mandate that all peer-reviewed scientific publications must be made openly accessible. The DDD is the UAB platform that supports researchers in meeting these requirements.
The DDD is powered by Invenio software, an open-source system licensed under the MIT licence, originally developed at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN).
The hardware infrastructure provides comprehensive guarantees of redundancy and reliability and adheres to the standard renewal and security protocols of the University’s IT Service. Backup copies, including those stored off-campus, are managed using the same processes as the rest of the UAB’s digital information.
The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) model ensures interoperability through the standard metadata transmission protocol OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). This protocol enhances document visibility across multiple platforms and aggregators such as Google Scholar, BASE, and CORE. Specifically, to align with European mandates, the DDD is certified as OpenAIRE-compliant, meeting all metadata requirements stipulated by the European Union for project reviews. Persistent identifiers are assigned to each document, and author identifiers (ORCID) are included in the metadata.
The Library Service verifies editorial permissions to ensure compliance with copyright policies when depositing documents.
The UAB Governing Council has approved a preservation policy of documents stored in the DDD, highlighting the institutional sustainability of the infrastructure and clarifying the distribution of responsibilities across the University’s services and governing bodies.
Regulation of the Digital Document Repository
Institutional Open Access Policy of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Recommended Creative Commons Licences at the UAB
Preservation Policy of the UAB Digital Document Repository (DDD)
Additional information
