Guidelines for publishing in KartDok

 

 

1) Aims and criteria for KartDok

1.1) Content
1.2) Target group
1.3) Formal aspects

KartDok – Cartopraphy Repository (hereinafter referred to as KartDok) offers to scientists the organisational and general technical conditions for the electronic publication of scientific documents on cartography, geovisualization, and geoinformation.

KartDok is the central publishing platform of the Map Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz in the framework of the Specialised Information Service Cartography and Geodata (SIS Maps), funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation).

1.1) Content

Regarding the content of electronic documents two eligibility criteria for a first or second publication on KartDok are binding:

• The topic of the respective contribution must fall within the field of cartography, geovisualization, and geoinformation.
• The scientific quality of the respective contribution, as it is, for example, guaranteed by the academic reputation of the submitting person. The operator explicitly will not undertake any further check of the scientific quality of the submitted documents, however, in principle reserves the right not to publish contributions because of reasons related to form or content.

1.2) Target group

• As a subject-related publishing service KartDok is mainly available to graduated scientific personnel of universities and non-university research institutions as well as to independent scientists, provided that the focus of their scientific activities lies on the various fileds of cartography, geovisualization and geoinformation.
• Qualifying theses of students are only accepted in exceptional cases on the basis of a recommendation for publishing in KartDok by the supervising university professors.

1.3) Formal aspects

Regarding formal aspects the following eligibility criteria are mandatory for electronic documents:

• first publications of original contributions
• second publications
• data supplements to contributions in KartDok (e.g. maps, geovisualizations etc. – these can only be published as supplements to the respective publications in connection with these works)

In case of articles that have already been published in journals or collections, the following version is preferable:

• the self-archiving of the paginated publisher version or at least a postprint of the actually published text version (manuscripts released for publication generally do not differ from the publisher’s version)
• secondary to this is the publication of a preprint with the same content (a version submitted to the publisher, not yet reviewed)

 

2) Electronic documents

2.1) Electronic document

In these guidelines the term „electronic document” means a document, which

• is based on text, graphics, audio- or video sequences or other data,
• is stored in digital format on a data carrier and
• is distributed via computer networks.

An electronic document that is to be published via KartDok complies with the following conditions:

• It is intended for being distributed publicly.
• It is no dynamic document. If changes become necessary, the modified electronic document is saved as a new version.
• It corresponds to the technical parameters specified by the operator (see pt. 2.2).

2.2) Technical parameters

• Data formats: KartDok supports all data formats, however it prefers the use of open data formats, that are suitable for long-term preservation and can be displayed via freely accessible display programs (e.g. PDF/UA). It is possible to, additionally, archive the original format of the document. Format migrations are made, if necessary, in order to, e.g., guarantee long-term availability.
• Technical protection: The electronic document has to be free from any technical protection and digital rights management (DRM) controls.
• Layout: There are no layout requirements.

2.3) Digital barrier-free accessibility

According to the currently valid versions of the barrier-free information technology act (BITV 2.0) and the act on equal opportunities of persons with disabilities (BGG), the digital barrier-free accessibility of electronic documents is technically required. According to these regulations the operator endeavours to only publish and distribute barrier-free documents in KartDok.

• Documents in PDF Format: PDF documents should preferably be submitted in PDF standard for barrier-free PDF documents PDF/UA (see also the following notes).
• Audio files: Audio files should preferably be submitted together with transcriptions or other full-text alternatives.
• Videos: Videos with sound should preferably be submitted subtitled or with transcriptions.

2.4) Changes and deletion

• A deletion or any later modification of electronic documents published in KartDok is not planned. Format migrations are not considered as modifications to the document.
• Content modifications to documents already published in KartDok are possible, but exclusively by uploading an updated version, that can once more be published in KartDok.
• If – for any criminal or copyright reasons – the public accessibility of a contribution should not be permitted, the access to it will be blocked and a respective information will be given at the persistent web addresses.

 

3) Declaration on Open Access

The Map Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin supports – in accordance with the open access mission statement - open access to scientific knowledge and provides for this purpose, among others things, the central publishing platform KartDok as one of the numerous open access services of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (DE).

 

4) General legal conditions

For publishing in KartDok the following general legal conditions apply:

• Registration: Before publishing an electronic document in KartDok a one time registration by the applicant is required. After the registration the applicant can at any time log in at the server of KartDok and publish as many electronic documents as possible in open access according to these guidelines.
• Copyright: The electronic document is submitted by the applicant to KartDok in compliance with the valid German Act on Copyright. The applicant is responsible to fully comply with this act.
• Transfer of rights to the operator: When uploading the electronic document on our server as well as on the basis of the written publishing agreement, the applicant grants to the operator the non-exclusive (simple) right of use, to copy the above work as well as all supplementary descriptive data (form and content), to copy and store them electronically on the servers of KartDok in a permanent way, to distribute and create a free open access to it as a digital publication on the Internet. In connection with the public availability, third persons are allowed to use and copy works published in KartDok exclusively for scientific, private and other personal use (§§ 53, 60c, 60d UrhG). Especially for purposes of long-term archiving the operator is entitled to make technical changes to the format of the submitted electronic document and also to comply with the the obligation to deposit net publications with the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (§ 16 DNBG). All other exploitation rights and also the right to grant an Open Content Licence remain untouched by this.
• Publishing agreement: The transfer of rights must be declared in written form (publishing agreement). For the electronic document the applicant sends the fully completed and digitally signed publishing agreement in PDF data format via email to: kartdok@sbb.spk-berlin.de.
  • Publishing agreement (PDF, 945 KB) (DE)
  • Information on the publishing agreement (PDF, 1 MB) (DE + EN)
• Rights of use and distribution rights: The applicant decides, whether and under which Open Content Licence the electronic document will be published in KartDok. The applicant is responsible for ensuring that no copyrights or third-party rights are violated – for instance in the context of a joint publication (for this see also the information on the general copyright conditions of open access publishing in KartDok).
• Reservation of the operator: The operator reserves the right to decline, in justified exceptional cases, the registration and publication of particular electronic documents in KartDok.

 

5) Technical features of KartDok

• The electronic documents will be assigned individual and persistent addresses, which allow direct access to the documents. The addresses are registered in cooperation with the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB) as URNs (Uniform Resource Name). Administration and management of the URNs is guaranteed by the operator. In addition, DOIs (Digital Object Identifier) are provided in cooperation with the DOI Registration Agency DataCite.
• It is possible to find the electronic documents by searching in library catalogues (e.g. K10plus and StaBiKat), specialised bibliographies (e.g. Bibliographia Cartographica), and by research in bibliographic metadata, alphabetic and thematic classifications as well as dynamically created lists and indices.
• The formal and content-related metadata of the published contributions can be transferred via a standardised interface (OAI-PMH 2.0) to etablished scientific search engines (e.g. BASE and OAIster). In addition, special support is provided for searchbots for special tags on the websites and for a sitemap, for example, in order to augment the visibility in Google Scholar. This guarantees a global visibility of data submitted to KartDok.
• The archiving period of the formats depends on the availability of the format, the viewing software and the converting possibilities. The archiving period of a minimum of 5 years is guaranteed by the technical operator of KartDok, the Verbundzentrale des Gemeinsamen Bibliotheksverbundes (VZG). Furthermore, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), because of its collection mandate, is responsible for the long-term preservation of digital media items and net publications, which also covers content published in KartDok.

 

6) The collection mandate of the operator

• The collection mandate of the operator comprises the storage, cataloguing and archiving of all electronic documents published in KartDok. This refers to both purely electronic publications and electronic versions of print documents.
• Copyrights of authors are retained. A publication in KartDok does not prevent further publishing of the same document in specialized journals, monographs or on other servers.
• Authors or editors of the electronic documents are responsible for the compliance with copyrights, exploitation and third-party image rights.

 

7) Organisational regulations

• The operator of KartDok is the Map Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The technical maintenance of KartDok relies on the software framework MyCoRe and is organised by the Verbundzentrale des Gemeinsamen Bibliotheksverbundes (Repository-Service of the VZG) (DE).
• For scientists the electronic publishing of their publications is free of charge.
• Additional operations necessary for the publication as, for example, the processing of the electronic documents or their conversion into other formats are supervised or carried out, after prior consultation, by staff members of the operator. Should these works require a significant extra effort, authors may be charged for it.
• For all KartDok-related questions are available: the contact form and the Email address of KartDok: kartdok@sbb.spk-berlin.de.