Copyright

Copyright is a protection for the legal rights of the creator of a work. The creator can decide how to use and reproduce their work and also decide what permission to give others regarding using and reproducing their work. Copyright and fair use are important elements to understand in the educational setting of an institution.

The library offers copyright resources to help you make the best decisions about how to abide by the law. Please note that our librarians are not trained lawyers, and their advice is not intended to replace legal counsel.

To learn about Copyright basics and Fair Use, please refer to this research guide.

For information on copyright related to open access and digital repositories, please refer to the Copyright Help tab on this research guide.

Data Management

Data management is a new initiative from the Brown Library aiming to help researchers in all stages of the data lifecycle. In the Spring semester we hope to here information on creating a data management plan, software available for working with data, as well as information on saving and sharing your data.  In the mean time check out our Data Management Research Guide.

For a more detailed look at managing and sharing data, the UK Data Archive has created a best practices guide for researchers.

Data Visualization

Data visualization allows a new aspect to data analysis by allowing the researcher to view their data in a new light and to force the data to be understandable to the average viewer. Because data can take on so many different modalities and is used in some form in every discipline, it is important to utilize all of the tools available to you. Charts, graphs, timelines, tables, and box-and-whisker-plots are just some of the more recognizable ways to visualize data, but there are other options and tools out there for you to choose from.

Through the Innovation Foundry ACU students, faculty, and staff can get assistance with:

• Data Concepts for Teaching and Learning
• Visualization for Poster/Session Presentations
• Software Tools for Research such as:
  SPSS, Tableau, BI, Adobe Illustrator, Excel and Google Sheets

Linkedin Learning courses on Data Visualization and all software listed above are available to all students, staff and faculty.

Publishing

The ACU Library houses ACU Press, increases the discoverability of faculty and student publications, and supports Open Access publishing.

ACU Press and Leafwood Publishers

ACU is one of only seven faith-based institutions to sponsor a university press. ACU press publishes academic titles in the humanities, theology, church history, and Christian education. Its trade imprint Leafwood Publishers reaches general Christian readers with memoirs, Bible studies, devotionals, and more. The ACU Press is located on the second floor of the library.

Institutional Repository and Open Access Publishing

The ACU Library hosts student theses and dissertations and many faculty publications in ACU’s institutional repository: Digital Commons @ ACU. Resources hosted in the repository are free for everyone to access. More information about Digital Commons and open access, in general, is available in our Open Access and Scholarly Communications Support Guide. For technical support with Digital Commons, contact DC@ACU.edu. For general inquiries about scholarly communications or open access publishing, contact the Scholars Lab at scholarslab@acu.edu.

Hosted Journals

The ACU Library hosts several peer-reviewed open access journals in our repository. We offer the platform, training, and expert consultation to create or migrate academic journals to Digital Commons. To get started, contact Laura Baker at bakerl@acu.edu.

Archival Materials

The institutional repository also houses many archival journals, manuscripts, images, and other resources relating to the history of ACU or Stone-Campbell studies. These resources are curated by ACU’s Special Collections. We also partner with other libraries and publishers to host digital content, such as with the Stone-Campbell Teaching Archive. Special Collections is located on the first floor of the library.