• Browsing
• Searching
• Registering
• User Services Area
• Your User Record
• Your Workspace
• Submitting Documents
• Document Type
• Bibliographic Information
• Document Storage Formats
• Verifying Your Submission

Browsing

You can browse the Digital Library of the Commons by Author, Sector, Region, Conference, or Recent Submissions.

To browse the archive select "Browse" from the navigation bar at the top of the screen, then select your browsing method (eg. Author).

Searching

The archive offers two levels of searching, simple and advanced. To perform a simple search select "Search" from the navigation bar at the top of the screen. To perform an advanced search, use the advanced search link on the simple search page.

You can choose your search method by selecting one of the following options from the popup menu just below the input box:

Match all, in any order.

Selecting this option will result in records where ALL the search terms appear in any of the fields.

Match any.

Selecting this option will result in records where ANY of the search terms appear in any of the fields.

Full-Text searching

In order to search within the papers in the archive and not simply their records, you must employ the full-text searching functionality of the DLC. To do this on the simple search page, simply select the box labeled "fulltext search" just below the input box. On the advanced search page, enter your query in the input box labeled "Full Text".

Searching by Date

To restrict your search by date, use the Advanced Search. When you're searching a year field, you can specify a single year or range of years:

1999

retrieves only records where the year is `1999';

1987-1990

retrieves records with years between 1987 and 1990 inclusive;

1995-

retrieves records with years of 1995 or later;

-1998

retrieves records with years up to and including 1998.

Registering

If you would like to submit documents to the DLC or receive email alerts to notify you when new documents are added to the DLC, you will need to register as a user. There is no charge for registration or for using any of the DLC services.

To register with the DLC, click on the "User Services" tab at the top of the page and select "Register: Get a user ID and password." Enter your email address, password, and requested username. The system will then email you a confirmation URL to visit to enable the password.

Before you can start submitting documents, you will need to provide some personal details on the User Record page. The registration e-mail will contain instruction on how to do this.

User Services Area

Your User Record

Enter the relevant information in the form. Note that this information is publicly available. Those boxes where the field name (on the left of the box) has an asterisk are required fields that you must fill out before you can deposit papers in to the archive.

Note that you cannot change your e-mail address in the User Record area. This is deliberate; if you inadvertently enter an incorrect e-mail address, the site will have no way of contacting you. To enter a new e-mail address, select "Change Your Email Address" from the User Services page.

Once you've filled out your User Record, the User Services Area will show any documents you are working on or have submitted but are not yet approved by an editor.

If your workspace is empty, you will see the button "Click here to start uploading a document." This button will add a fresh, empty record to your workspace and allow you to start the document submission process.

Your Workspace

If there are documents in your workspace, you will see a list of those documents with some option buttons. The title of each document you are uploading will be shown in the list, or its ID if you haven't yet given it a title. The option buttons include:

Delete

If you select a paper and click on this button, that paper will be removed from your workspace and discarded completely after you are asked for confirmation. Clones of any paper you delete are unaffected.

Edit

If you select a paper in your workspace and click this button, you will be able to continue submitting that paper.

Submit

If you're satisfied that you've completed uploading the paper and associated information, then you can select the paper and click on this button to deposit the paper in the archive. Note that if there are problems with the paper (for instance, if a document file upload hasn't worked, or the associated bibliographic information is invalid), you will be told what is wrong, and you won't be able to deposit the paper until those problems are fixed.

The submission process is described in a following section.

New

This button creates a fresh record and starts the submission process.

Clone

This button makes a clone of the paper you have selected from the list. This is useful if you are submitting a number of papers with similar information. You can fill out the common information, clone that paper, and then edit the clones so you aren't entering the same information twice.

Submitting Documents

The submission process is divided into a number of stages, each of which is described below. You can move back and forth between the stages by using the "Back" and "Next" buttons at the bottom of the pages. You will not lose the information you've entered by using these buttons. (Use the "Back" buttons on the DLC page and not your browser's "Back" button).

If you start submitting a document, you can decide to wait until later before completing the upload, and you can start on another document. To go back to a document that was left before the submission was completed, go to the User Area page and you will see unfinished submissions listed in your workspace. Select the document and click on the "Edit" button.

Before you can begin submitting a document, you will need to agree to the copyright statement presented. If your work has been previously published, you may need to contact the publisher for permission to submit your document to the DLC.

You have the option of adding a new document online or submitting a hard copy of the document by post. If it is not possible to submit documents electronically, the DLC staff will digitize and post documents for you.

Submission Step 1: Document Type

In this screen, you should select the one option on the list that best described your document, for example "Conference Paper" or "Journal Article." Then click on the "Next" button.

Submission Step 2: Bibliographic Information

Next you will be asked to enter bibliographic information about your paper. The exact details that are required will vary depending on the document type you selected in the first stage.

Above each input field will be a short explanation of what should be put in the field. If the field name has an asterisk, the field must be filled out before the paper can be submitted; other fields are optional.

Page ranges

Type the first page in the range into the box on the left, and the last page in the box on the right. If the range consists of a single page, just enter the page number into the left-hand box, and leave the right-hand box empty.

Authors/Editors

You can enter given names and family names. If there are multiple authors or editors, click on the "Additional Authors/Editors" button.

To remove names from a list just remove the name from the relevant boxes and leave it empty. Don't worry about leaving a blank box in the middle of the list.

Regions and/or Sectors

If your document is about a particular geographic area, select the most appropriate region from the list. See the country thesaurus

Also select the sector that best fits your document. For help on selecting sectors, go to the page on Commons Research

Once you've entered the relevant information, click on the "Next" button at the bottom of the page. If any required information is missing, you will see a message explaining what is wrong and the form will reappear so you can fix the problems.

Submission Step 3: Document Storage Formats

Click on the "Add Document" button. Then select the format of your document and click on "Next." You can now choose whether to upload your document from a local computer or from a web site, and click on "Next."

If you are uploading a document from a local computer, enter the file name with the full path or click on the "Browse" button to select the file, then click on the "Upload" button.

More help on uploading documents from the web can be found here

You will now see a filename for the document that has been uploaded. If there are additional files associated with the submission that you wish to upload, click on the "Next" button at the top of the page.

To verify that your document has been uploaded, click on the link indicated and your file will open in a new window.

When you are finished uploading the file(s), click on the "Next" button at the bottom of the page. You'll see list of the number of files uploaded and the format type. Click on the "Next" button to continue.

Submission Step 4: Submit Verification

This page will display the abstract page for your document as it will appear in the archive. Carefully check that all information has been uploaded correctly.

You should also check that the document files have been uploaded correctly, including any associated figures and links. If you spot a mistake, you can use "back" buttons on the page (not the browser's "Back" button) to cycle back through the submission process and fix any mistakes.

If you're satisfied that everything is correct and has been uploaded correctly click on the "Submit Now" button to deposit your paper in the archive. It will then be put in the archive buffer.

If you are uploading the document from a website, enter the URL of the document and click on "Upload." When you give the archive a URL to retrieve your document from, the archive stores a copy of the file stored at that URL. If the URL is an HTML file, the archive will also copy the images associated with that HTML file, and other HTML files linked to it.

You must supply the URL of the first page of document itself: NOT the URL of the whole Web site, or the URL of any contents page listing multiple documents, index page or abstract page.

http://www.myinstitution.edu/~myhomepage/paper.html AND NOT http://www.myinstitution.edu/~myhomepage/

In order to prevent the archive from trying to copy the whole World Wide Web by following every single link, some rules are applied when the system collects your document:

Only files reached by "relative" links are retrieved. For example, if the HTML contains a link to node1.html then node1.html will be copied. If the link points to http://somewebsite.edu/bar.html, then that URL will not be copied.

Only files at the same depth or deeper in the Web site file hierachy are retrieved. For example, if a link points to /index.html or ../index.html, the file will not be copied.

This method of uploading papers cannot have a guaranteed 100% success rate.

If something does go wrong, it's normally best to select "delete all files" from the "Document File Upload" screen, and try another uploading method.