About MARS
What is MARS?
The mission of Mason Archival Repository Service (MARS) is to provide a stable, well-managed, permanent archive for digital scholarly and research materials of enduring value produced at Mason or by Mason faculty, staff, and students. MARS is also the platform for some of the Libraries’ noteworthy digital collections and archives.
MARS is maintained by the Library Systems Office; the Digital Repository Services Librarian is in charge of it.
Why deposit materials in MARS?
Improve your impact factor. Articles freely available on the Web are cited over 300% more than articles that are not.
Disseminate your work faster throughout the world.
While peer-review is still vital to academic publishing, some scholars (especially in fast-moving fields) have grown impatient with lengthy time-to-print. Depositing a preprint in MARS offers the best of both worlds: rapid circulation immediately after writing, and careful peer review in the normal publication process.
Get preferential treatment from Google. Your paper will appear higher up on the Google results list, and show up in Google Scholar.
Retain use rights for classroom and research use.
With more and more journal content ending up in for-pay subscription databases with unforgiving licensing, some researchers have found themselves unable to duplicate or even access their own work for use in their classrooms, labs, and offices.
Depositing your work in MARS ensures that you and your students always have fully-legal access to it. Work in MARS is easy to link to from courseware and other websites.
Preserve your work for the long term.
Avoid data loss, server maintenance, and archiving hassles.
What file formats does MARS accept?
- MARS will accept any digital file format, but with a caveat: MARS cannot commit to upgrading all file formats as technology changes.
- Generally, standard, well-documented, and/or non-proprietary formats (such as XML, HTML, PDF, and OpenDocument) will survive best.
- Proprietary, undocumented, or otherwise less-suitable formats can still be archived, but MARS commits only to keeping the original file unchanged, undamaged, and accessible. Future software may not be able to open or understand that file.
Do I lose copyright if I deposit into MARS?
- No. You retain your copyright in your work. In fact, you are far more likely to lose your copyright to your publisher. Since the MARS license is “non-exclusive,” it allows you to use and reuse your work in any way you’d like, including submitting it for publication or reusing it in a class or conference presentation.
- In order to safeguard your work properly, MARS asks for “the irrevocable, non-exclusive royalty-free right to reproduce, distribute, display, and perform this work in any format including electronic formats throughout the world for educational, research, and scientific non-profit uses during the full term of copyright including renewals and extensions.”
- In the unlikely event that an editor or other publishing professional should be concerned about a work’s availability in MARS, just contact the MARS Librarian to discuss removing the work from public view.
Where can I read more?
- Create Change
- Open Access Overview
- Scientific Research: The Publication Dilemma (by Mason liaison librarian Victoria Shelton)
Contact information
Please feel free to contact the MARS Librarian with comments and questions about MARS.