What is MOspace?

The MOspace Institutional Repository is an online repository for creative and scholarly works and other resources created by faculty, students, and staff at the University of Missouri—Columbia and the University of Missouri—Kansas City. MOspace makes these resources freely available on the web and assures their preservation for the future.

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Why is MOspace important?

The MOspace Institutional Repository acts as a preservation tool and contributes to the international open access movement. MOspace is our part of the international open access movement. For more information on open access, see the SPARC website.

An important part of the MOspace effort is encouraging authors not to sign away rights to their own works, as often happens when they publish in commercial journals. Retaining the copyright allows content to be made available to students and scholars without huge subscription fees. In MOspace, the author/creator retains copyright in all cases, so an author could also publish an item elsewhere, providing that the publisher allows (see this author's addendum on the SPARC website for an example addendum to a publisher's contract).

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How is MOspace different from a personal website?

MOspace allows the library to preserve and provide open access to the items in a more permanent way than posting to a website. The use of DSpace software, an open source product developed at MIT, provides permanent URLs for resources.

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Who can access MOspace?

MOspace is open access, meaning anyone can view it from the open web. By providing free access to a rich body of work, MOspace promotes research and knowledge produced by the University of Missouri.

Use of resources is guided by a license for each item. The MOspace default license is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (CC BY-NC-ND). The full legal codes of Creative Commons licenses are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.

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What types of works can be included in MOspace?

MOspace includes, but is not limited to, the following content types:

  • Audio and visual materials
  • Committee and task force reports
  • Conference papers, presentations and proceedings
  • Course materials and learning objects
  • Creative works
  • Data sets
  • Digital art
  • Journals published on the campus
  • Manuscripts
  • Organizational annual reports and newsletters
  • Pre-prints
  • Published and unpublished papers, articles, chapters and books
  • Theses and dissertations
  • Undergraduate research papers
  • Working papers and technical reports

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How are works collected for MOspace?

We download items from websites or upload items directly via author submission.

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Who can submit works to MOspace?

Faculty, students, staff, and other individuals or entities associated with the University of Missouri—Columbia, the University of Missouri—Kansas City, and the University of Missouri System are encouraged to submit works to MOspace. Co-authors need not be affiliated with the University of Missouri.

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What are the benefits of submitting works to MOspace?

For Faculty, Students, and Staff MOspace makes your works widely available and provides a permanent URL for ongoing access. MOspace fulfills the requirement of many grants for the deposit of research data.

Submitting scholarly work to MOspace offers many benefits:

  • Increased visibility
  • Author retention of copyright
  • Increased citation rates
  • Google search optimization
  • Full-text search and display
  • Perpetual access and preservation
  • Processing by library employees

MOspace allows the library to preserve and provide open access to items in a more permanent way than posting to a website. The Libraries are committed to this ongoing effort as part of the next generation of library collections.

For Users Worldwide

For the most part, MOspace resources are available for use to any web user. The exception to open access is with some theses and dissertations which have been restricted at the authors’ requests.

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How can I submit works to MOspace?

See Submitting Content to MOspace.

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How do I cite something I find in MOspace?

Each item in MOspace has been assigned a "handle," a persistent URL you can use when citing the item in publications or other communications. In most citation styles, you'll treat the MOspace item as an electronic publication.

For example:

APA Style: Schlicher, M. A. (2008). Biofuels in the US: Today and in the future. AgBioForum, 11, 1-7. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10355/32.

Chicago Style: Schlicher, Martha A. "Biofuels in the US: Today and in the Future." AgBioForum 11 (2008): 1-7, http://hdl.handle.net/10355/32.

MLA Style: Schlicher, Martha A. "Biofuels in the US: Today and in the Future." AgBioForum 11.1 (2008): 1-7. 24 Feb. 2009 <http://hdl.handle.net/10355/32>.

Vancouver Style: Schlicher MA. Biofules in the US: today and in the future. AgBioForum 2008;11(1):1-7. Available from http://hdl.handle.net/10355/32.

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What do the BROWSE options do?

Browse allows you to retrieve a list of items in alphabetical or numerical order. The words you enter in the search box are searched from the beginning from fields in MOspace and in the order you enter them. From the browse results screen you can jump to a spot in the list by typing in the first few letters of your text string or by choosing an option in the menu of letters of the alphabet.

Browse options are available for:

  • Community/Collection
  • Date Issued
  • Author – For personal names, search the last name first: Smith, John
  • Author/Contribution – For personal names, search the last name first: Smith, John
  • Title
  • Subject
  • Identifier
  • Thesis Department
  • Thesis Advisor
  • Thesis Semester

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What is searched in the general keyword SEARCH?

With a keyword search, the words you enter will be found where ever they appear in a field. The word(s) you enter in the search box will be searched against the following metadata fields:

  • Communities and collections
  • Date Issued
  • Creators and contributors, including authors, editors, and illustrators
  • Author/Contribution – For personal names, search the last name first: Smith, John
  • Corporate names and meeting names
  • Names of sponsor
  • Dates (copyright, created, issued, submitted for theses)
  • Abstracts
  • Tables of contents
  • Related works
  • Subjects
  • Thesis departments

MOspace uses the Apache Lucene search engine.

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What words are NOT searched in a keyword search (Stop Words)?

The search engine ignores certain words that occur frequently in English, but do not add value to the search. These are:

  • a, an, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, if, in, into, is, it, no, not, of, on, or, such, that, the, their, then, there, these, they, this, to, was, will, with

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How do I limit search results and use facets

MOspace uses facets to modify search results in the institutional repository. You will see the different enabled facets displayed in a "Discover" section in your sidebar, by default, right below the Browse options. Applying a facet normally reduces the original search results. Many facets can be applied on the home page but generally they are applied after an initial search. Facets show counts for each value and allow the user to "drill down" or further restrict their search results based on those facets

Our sidebar facets are:

  • Format
  • Subject
  • Date Issued
  • Author
  • Author/Contributor
  • Subect: Time Period
  • Subject: Place
  • Advisor
  • Thesis Department
  • Thesis Semester
  • Language

It's important to know that multiple metadata fields can be included in one facet. An important feature of the facets is that their contents are automatically updated based on the context of the page.

When using a keyword search in Advanced Search, you can limit your search results using the options under “Keyword search by field.” On the Advanced Search page, you can access these by choosing, “Search or Limit by Field.” This gives you the option to search for or exclude words in selected fields. After executing a keyword search, you can further limit the search results by using facets, as described above.

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What are Communities and Collections?

MOspace content is organized around Communities and Sub-communities which correspond to administrative units such as schools, departments, labs, and research centers. Content in these are organized under collections. Communities, Sub-communities, and Collections have an entry page that may include information on that community or collection.

Collections can be organized around a topic, or by type of information (such as working papers or datasets) or by any other sorting method a community finds useful in organizing its digital items.

What are Handles?

MOspace items have persistent URLs. There URLs are considered persistent, because they are registered with the Handle System, a comprehensive system for assigning, managing, and resolving persistent identifiers. The use of handles means that, unlike most URLs, this identifier will not have to be changed when the system migrates to new hardware, or when changes are made to the system.

You will note that each item has two URLs associated with it. Use the handle to ensure persistence.

  • Regular URL: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/8680
  • Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10355/8680
The Handle System is administered by the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), which undertakes, fosters, and promotes research in the public interest.

MOspace is committed to maintaining the integrity of this identifier so that you can safely use it to refer to your item when citing it in publications or other communications.

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