Policies


The Institutional Repository of the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid is an open digital space whose purpose is to collect, preserve and disseminate the scientific production of all its professionals as a result of the assistance, teaching and research activity.

The Virtual Library of the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid is responsible for administering the Institutional Repository, conceived as a service within it.

It is part of the Open Access field, an international movement that promotes open access to scientific literature, promoting dissemination and increasing the visibility of the work developed by researchers, contributing to free access to scientific knowledge.

The following are the policies of the Repository that may be subject to review and update whenever necessary.

Content Policy

The Institutional Repository collects the scientific production in digital format and in open access of the professionals dependent on the Regional Health System. Documents uploaded to the Repository must meet the following conditions:

  • at least one of the authors must belong to a center of the Regional Health System
  • the author must own the copyright of the work or have authorization to make his deposit
  • must have been generated as a result of the assistance, teaching or research activity, or belong to the institutional environment
  • must belong to the field of Health Sciences
  • must be in digital format
The content hosted in the Repository is structured as follows:

  • Four main communities, which refer to the four areas of activity that are developed in the Regional Health System:
    • Hospitals
    • Biomedical Research Foundations and Institutes of Health Research
    • Primary Care Centers
    • Other centers dependent on the Regional Health System
  • These communities are divided into sub-communities, which refer to the centers within each area of ​​activity
  • Eight collections depend on each sub-community, referring to the eight types of documents in which all the material is classified. The collections, which are identical in all sub-communities, are as follows:
    • Articles
    • Communications tcongresses
    • Research data
    • Disclosure documents
    • Training and teaching material
    • Reports and technical documents
    • Books and book chapters
    • Multimedia material
The same publication may be included in more than one sub-community if it belongs to co-authors with different affiliations, so that it can be retrieved by searching for each of the centers.

The deposit of closed documents is only allowed in the case of work that is subject to periods of attachment. During this period, the work uploaded to the Repository will show a warning indicating this circumstance. Once the embargo is over, it will become available in open automatically.

New versions of the same work must be collected in different registers, establishing relationships between them and clearly identifying the most updated version.

The deposited publications can be in any language, the most relevant being Spanish and English.

The preferred format of the files is the PDF, but the deposit of works in any of the following formats is supported:

The deposit of documents that express personal, religious, political or sports opinions, or those that do not have as their purpose the communication of results or the scientific and / or technical dissemination derived from professional and institutional activity is not allowed.

Data and metadata access policy

Data access

The documents included in the Repository are available in open and free of charge to be viewed and downloaded by all users without prior registration or authorization. The reuse of the data must be done respecting the conditions established in the user licenses. In all cases, authorship must be recognized through the bibliographic reference and the link to the full text.

The works housed in the Repository can be collected in a timely manner by search engines, and express authorization is required by the Regional Health System to be collected systematically.

Access to metadataThe documents included in the Repository are described according to the Dublin Core (DC) metadata scheme. Metadata is the set of data that describes and identifies a digital document in a standardized way, facilitating its recovery, preservation and interoperability.

The metadata of the Repository is accessible in open and free of charge for all users, and can be reused without the need to request authorization whenever it is done without commercial purposes and is linked to the original metadata record.

Deposit Policy

The Institutional Repository allows the deposit of documents through three ways:

  • Self-archiving: it is the author himself who makes the deposit using a form in which he describes the work, uploads the full text file and accepts the non-exclusive distribution license of the Repository. After the process is completed, verification and approval of a validator is required before the document is publicly visible
  • Delegated deposit: it is made by a third party, at the request of the author, who has the appropriate permissions granted by the administrator of the Repository. The author who wishes to make use of this service should contact the authorized person at his center and provide the work data, the file containing the text of the document and the signed non-exclusive distribution license.
  • Bulk load: exceptionally, the Repository administrator may deposit documents in bulk, provided that they are subject to open licenses such as Creative Commons or similar that allow their online dissemination and distribution without restrictions, without being necessary the express consent of the authors.
To deposit a document it is necessary to have access codes. Since the Institutional Repository is a service of the Virtual Library of the Regional Health System, the user authentication system is the same as for accessing scientific resources and library services. Therefore, those who already have these credentials may not request a new registration in the Institutional Repository.



Each author or researcher has permissions to deposit exclusively within the collections of their center (sub-community). Only the administrator can deposit documents in all the communities / sub-communities and collections of the Repository.

The deposit of documents helps to promote dissemination and increase their visibility, being mandatory when publications are the result of publicly funded projects. The deposited version must be the one authorized by the editor. Most publishers allow archiving in open repositories of some of the versions of the works (pre-print, post-print of the author or version of the editor), as stated in their policies, which can be consulted in tools such as Sherpa / Romeo, Dulcinea or Héloïse. The periods of embargo imposed by publishers must be respected, if this is the case.

Authors are recommended to publish in open access journals that allow archiving in repositories, as well as keep the final version of the work reviewed by peers and accepted for publication (post-print of the author) and not sign exclusive use licenses with the editors

The non-exclusive distribution license of the Institutional Repository that the author must accept at the end of the deposit process is compatible with other uses and means of dissemination that he deems appropriate without contravening the editorial licenses that have been signed.

The non-exclusive distribution license of the Institutional Repository of the Regional Health System is as follows:

NON-EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTION LICENSE

In order for the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid to store, distribute and publicly communicate the material deposited in this Institutional Repository, it is necessary that you accept the terms of this LICENSE.

By accepting this license, you, AUTHOR of the deposited material, assign to the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid, free of charge and NOT EXCLUSIVELY, for the maximum legal term and with universal scope, the rights of reproduction, distribution, public communication and transformation on said material, allowing third-party users of the Institutional Repository to be made available with the permitted uses and conditions established in the Creative Commons license associated with this deposit.

You ACCEPT that the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid can, without altering the content, transform and / or adapt the deposited material to any other format, to the extent necessary, for the purpose of preservation and accessibility. Likewise, I ACCEPT that the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid may keep more than one copy of the material deposited in order to make backup copies and preserve the material for the future.

You DECLARE that the deposited material is an original work of its creation and holds the copyright ownership necessary to grant the assignment contained in this License. In case of joint ownership You declare that you have the consent of the other owners to grant it, who must be identified and recognized as such in the content of the deposited material. And in the case of prior transfer of rights to third parties You declare that you have your authorization, or that you retain the right to make use of these rights in the manner provided in this License. Consequently, you ASSURE and GUARANTEE that the material you deposit in the Institutional Repository of the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid DOES NOT INFRINGE any copyright.

As guarantor of the authorship of the work and in relation to it, you DECLARE that the Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid is free of all types of responsibility, whether civil, administrative or criminal (including plagiarism) and you assume the responsibility against any claim or demand by third parties exclusively.

The Regional Health System of the Community of Madrid acquires the commitment to identify you as the author or copyright holder of the deposited material, and will not make more alterations in said material than those expressly permitted in this License. You may request the withdrawal of the work from the Institutional Repository for justified cause and accredited in writing to the administrator. In the same way, this Institutional Repository may withdraw the material in sufficiently justified cases, or in the case of third party claims. You will be conveniently notified of any claims that third parties may make in relation to the work and, in particular, of claims related to intellectual property rights over it.

The author claims to be the owner of the copyright or have the appropriate permits, assuming all responsibility for copyright infringement.

Policy for editing and deleting records

The records included in the Repository cannot be edited by the authors. They should contact the validator when it is necessary to introduce any modification, provided that it is motivated by any of the following causes:

  • correction of errors in the bibliographic description
  • extension of the information initially introduced
  • inclusion of errata or amendments to the archived document
  • addition of files that contain tables, figures or any other material associated with the registry and that can be stored differently
The elimination of records by the authors is not contemplated. Only on request and for just cause, the Repository administrator may delete records, and must clearly indicate at the time of the request the identification data of the applicant, those of the work and the reason for the withdrawal request.

Authors' authorization will not be required to delete records when any of the following circumstances occur:

  • does not fit the nature and content policy
  • contain viruses or technical problems that prevent their display
  • infringe the copyright (if the deposited document does not have the appropriate permissions for its open file, it will be withdrawn and the author who made the deposit will be contacted; if it had any of the authorized versions, may be replaced by the first)
  • be shown to be plagiarism
  • contain falsified or erroneous information
  • are duplicates
The removed records are not deleted from the Repository, but will be hidden from public view and their metadata will not be searchable.

Digital preservation policy

The Institutional Repository aims to become a digital archive of the scientific production of the Regional Health System. Therefore, it will adopt the following measures to guarantee its accessibility and long-term preservation:

  • backups
  • periodic checks of data integrity and metadata
  • checks on the accessibility of documents and verification of embargoes
  • monitoring of the technological environment to anticipate possible obsolescence
  • inclusion of digital preservation metadata (persistent handles that guarantee the identification and location of documents)