OpenDocs policy

Content Policy

OpenDocs contains:

  • research authored or co-authored by staff at the Institute of Development Studies
  • research produced by centres, consortia and projects based at or led by the Institute of Development Studies
  • digitised material from partner organisations under the BLDS Digital Library community

Where possible a full-text download is provided. In a very few cases a metadata-only entry will be included to provide a record of the research. Full-text material in OpenDocs includes but is not limited to: journal articles, book chapters, working papers, reports, presentations, conference papers, blog posts and unpublished work in progress.


Terms of use

Except where otherwise stated, items in OpenDocs have been licensed by the copyright holder for distribution in electronic format via any medium for the lifetime of the OpenDocs repository for the purpose of free access without charge.


Deposit policy

Items are deposited by the author or their delegate, and are subject to final checking and amendment by OpenDocs staff before being made publicly available. In some cases items may be directly deposited by OpenDocs staff, with the agreement of the copyright holder where applicable.


Preservation policy

Full-text materials uploaded to OpenDocs will be retained indefinitely. OpenDocs will aim to ensure continued readability and accessibility; items will be migrated to new file formats where necessary. Items may not normally be removed from OpenDocs. See the take-down policy for exceptions.


Take-down policy

Material included in the OpenDocs repository must be cleared for inclusion by the copyright holder and comply with any existing licence terms. The depositing author or their delegate confirms this clearance with their acceptance of the Distribution Licence, and repository staff will perform additional checks before an item is made publicly available. The depositing author is responsible for ensuring that their material is otherwise legally suitable for dissemination. Valid reasons for withdrawal of an item include:

Valid reasons for withdrawal of an item include:

  • Proven copyright violation
  • Breach of publishing contract/licence terms
  • Plagiarism
  • Libel
  • National security
  • Falsified research

Complaints about the inclusion of an item in OpenDocs should be sent in writing to opendocs@ids.ac.uk. Please include your full contact details, the bibliographic details of the item, the OpenDocs identifier (URL), and the reason for the complaint.

On receipt of a complaint the following actions will be taken:

  • The OpenDocs team will return an acknowledgement in writing that the complaint has been received and make an initial judgement as to the validity of the complaint
  • If the complaint is judged to warrant further investigation, the item in question will be withdrawn from public view within 24 hours of receiving the complaint. Complaints sent on a non-working day (weekends, public holidays and other closure days) will be treated as being received on the next working day.
  • The complaint will then be reviewed by the OpenDocs team (together with IDS management where necessary). If the grounds for the complaint are found to be plausible, the full text of the item in question will be removed from OpenDocs. In most cases the metadata will NOT be removed, and a note will be supplied giving reasons for withdrawal of the content. If the complaint concerns the breaking of an embargo, the content will be suppressed for the specified embargo period.
  • The complainant and the author will be informed of the outcome.