Αποθετήριο Ήλιος
  1. Helios - NHRF Repository

Frequenty Asked Questions



Generally, Frequently Asked Questions

What is self-archiving?

Self-archiving is a free way for researchers to carry out open access publishing. It refers to open-access filing of a research (published in publication channel, e.g. a journal, an edited book or conference proceedings, theses, monographs, reports, working papers, etc.) to a publication archive of the organisation either an institutional or a discipline-specific repository. The filed version of the research can be either the published version or a manuscript. Self-archiving makes the research widely “visible, accessible, harvestable, searchable, and useable,” thus increasing its reach and impact, and possibly the number of citations it receives.

What are the benefits of self-archiving?

What are the benefits for the institution?

What are the benefits for the public

What is Open Access (OA)?

Open Access (OA) is a worldwide initiative for open, immediate, permanent and free of charges access to digital scientific and scholarly material for any user across the web. The aim of open access is to facilitate the exchange of scientific information. Thus, the research results can become accessible to everybody. Ιnternet users can access digital material and use it for research, educational, informational or other purposes.

How is Open Access provided?

There are two main models in providing open access:

Does Open Access enhance plagiarism?

No, it does not. On the contrary Open Access increases the detection of plagiarism and discourages it in research & higher education, since the stakeholders’ roles are known and fulfilled. The repositories usually apply certification mechanisms for controlling the documents access and distribution. If for any reason, the researcher concerns about plagiarism, it is recommended to place restrictions on the access.

What does digital preservation mean?

Digital preservation is the management of digital information over time. Preservation of digital information is widely considered to require more constant and ongoing attention than preservation of other media. This constant input of effort, time, and money to handle rapid technological and organizational advance is considered the main stumbling block for preserving digital information. Indeed, while we are still able to read our written heritage from several thousand years ago, the digital information created merely a decade ago is in serious danger of being lost, creating a digital Dark Age. Digital preservation can therefore be seen as the set of processes and activities that ensure continued access to information and all kinds of records, scientific and cultural heritage existing in digital formats. This includes the preservation of materials resulting from digital reformatting, but particularly information that is born-digital and has no analog counterpart. In the language of digital imaging and electronic resources, preservation is no longer just the product of a program but an ongoing process. In this regard the way digital information is stored is important in ensuring their longevity. The long-term storage of digital information is assisted by the inclusion of preservation metadata.

Does self-archiving increase researcher’s workload?

No, it does not. The researcher submits its work into the repository quickly and easily, following predefined steps of the electronic archive form. In any case, specialized professionals can submit the work on behalf of the researcher.

Do Institutional Repositories undetermined the existing publishing system?

Institutional repositories cannot eliminate the roles of scholarly publishers, nor aspire to do so. On the contrary they augment rather than displace, the existing system of scholarly journals in providing important new measures of academic performance and in ensuring greater leverage of a particular institution's intellectual capital.

What are preprints (or pre-refereeing versions)?

A preprint (pre-refereeing version) is the author's manuscript version of the publication prior to formal peer review that has been submitted to a journal for consideration for publication. Preprints achieve many of the goals of journal publishing, but within a much shorter time frame. The biggest benefits fall into 3 areas: credit, feedback, and visibility.

What are postprints (or post-refereeing versions)?

A postprint (post-refereeing version) sometimes called the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM), is the version of the article that has undergone peer review, including all changes made as a result of the peer review process, but excluding any editing, typesetting or other changes made by journal or publisher. The majority of publishers accept self-archiving of the post-print version while many of them allow self-archiving of the published version under specific terms.

What is E-print?

An e-print is the umbrella term for any electronic copy of a paper which can include both preprints and postprints.

What is published version (or VoR)?

Published version or Version of Record (VOR) is the official version of a work that have been formatted and posted on publisher websites. In fact, is the peer reviewed, edited, formatted and typeset version of the article, including any tagging, indexing and other enhancements from a publisher.

What is metadata and why considered important?

Metadata is cataloguing information such as title, author/creators, citation information, subject keywords, etc. They are used for providing information about each item that can then be made available for searching, external harvesting and also providing information about that item and its associated files (bitstreams). Metadata is often described as 'data about data'. It is used to facilitate the understanding, use and management of data, i.e. it helps librarians and archivists organise where an item is placed and it helps users find it! It is critical to create a metadata record for every submission. Metadata constitute a standardized description scheme de facto or de jure standard.

About Helios Repository

What is Helios Repository?

Helios is the institutional repository of National Hellenic Research Foundation (NHRF). It is an organized infrastructure of digital content, aiming to the collection, management, preservation and distribution of NHRF’s scientific output. Helios offers free and unrestricted access to scientific content produced by the NHRF researchers. Scientific results, publications in national and international journals, research work, conference proceedings, books, training material, audio-visual material are available in a fully organized environment, according to international standards and current trends. New scientific material is being added, while the availability of full text publications is being updated.

Why is it named "Helios"?

The Helios [sun in Greek] is the emblem of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. It concerns an engraved work of Tassos and is inspired by the depiction of the sun on a tetradrachm or didrachm of Rhodes (250-190 BC).

What is the objective of Helios Repository?

Main objective of Helios Repository is the systematic collection, documentation, management and distribution of the NHRF’s scientific output to the Greek academic, scientific and educational community, to the general public and also to international & national content aggregators such as Europeana, OpenAIRE, Searchculture, Openarchives. The infrastructure and the content are hosted on the ΕΚΤ servers in secure storage and long-term preservation.

What is the contribution of Helios in the research community of the NHRF?

How is Helios organized?

Helios content is organized into communities and collections according to the administrative structure and scientific activities of the NHRF as follows:

Which platform does Helios utilize?

Helios utilizes the DSpace platform. The repository was recently upgraded by the National Documentation Centre (EKT), in line with current standards, specifications and good practices and is now running on DSpace 6 incorporating all the current features offered by the new version. Dspace is one of the most popular open-source ground breaking software developed by MIT (Massachussetis Institute of Technology) in collaboration with Hewlett-Packard. DSpace manage and distribute a wide variety of digital content implementing the OAI-PMH harvesting protocol. It captures, stores, indexes and preserves the intellectual output of the organization's research, making it available over the web. open-source platforms. The National Documentation Centre (EKT) developed DSpace technology extensions that it offers to the community.

Is access to Helios free?

The access to Helios Repository is open through the website https://helios-eie.ekt.gr . Users can search and browse for content in Helios by searching the repository directly. Access to the metadata is free under the terms of CC0 1.0 Worldwide (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Mark. Metadata may be reused for non-for-profit purposes on condition that a link is provided to the original metadata record into the repository. For any other use the author’s and/or NHRF’s permission is necessary. Users of the repository agree to acknowledge the original author(s)/creator(s), and publisher (where applicable) in accordance to repository policies and scholarly ethics.

Τι είδους τεκμήρια περιλαμβάνονται στον «Ήλιο»;

Helios contains various types of works such as:

Why self-archiving in Helios is recommended to a researcher/scientist?

NHRF researchers are encouraged to self-archiving in Helios in order to maximize the visibility and accessibility of their research, and hence the usage and impact of the work. Merely publishing it provides minimal impact: Also self-archiving also it provides maximal impact.

Do publishers allow authors to deposit published articles in Helios?

If the author has assigned the copyright of his/her work to their publisher and the copyright statement indicated that they are not allowed to deposit those materials in an institutional repository (or in another electronic source, such as a personal website) then they shouldn't submit those materials to the repository. An increasing number of publishers do now allow some form of self-archiving. Authors should check any copyright agreements carefully before depositing work to Helios to be sure of which version they are allowed to deposit.

Why do only some of the records have full text available?

Many of the records in Helios were migrated from publication databases. These records contained metadata but not the full text of the publication. NHRF staff are encouraged to attach the full text to these records where copyright allows. NHRF staff are also encouraged to provide full access to materials when creating a record. However it may not always be permitted for them to upload the full text, for example they may have assigned the copyright for a book chapter to a publisher. Alternatively, the publisher may have insisted that a researcher may only upload the full text of a publication to a repository after a pre-determined period of time, commonly referred to as an embargo period.

What is the metadata scheme of Helios Repository?

Helios Repository applies standard data formats according to the requirements adopted by international research community and openAIRE, in the frame of “open science” movement. The schema of Helios repository is based on «Dublin Core» and «Datacite» elements. The MADS/RDF ontology was applied to semantic vocabularies of researchers and NHRF publishers, while SKOS model to subject vocabulary.

Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright

Which regulations apply to intellectual property protection?

Basic copyright legislation is to be found in Law 2121/1993 and subsequent amendments thereof, especially article 81, Law 3057/2002, which harmonized Greek legislation with the community directive 2001/29/EC, as well as articles 1, 2 and 4, Law 3524/2007. According to the national legislation "work means any original language, artwork or scientific intellectual creation, expressed in any form" (article 2&1, Law 2121/1993). Greek legislation accepts the principle that the creator of a work is the predecessor in title of the economic and moral rights thereon (article 6&1, Law 2121/1993). The economic right allows commercial exploitation of the work by the creator. The powers composing the economic right correspond to the work's basic modes of exploitation. The law refers to the following powers in the form of example: the right to allow or prohibit recording and reproduction of their works, translation, adaptation, adjustment or any other modifications, distribution of the original or copies thereof, leasing and public borrowing, public performance, broadcasting, presentation to the public, as well as the import of copies produced abroad without permission, or, provided that the import comes from any country outside the European Community, if the right of importing to Greece had been contractually retained by the creator (article 3, Law 2121/1993, and (amendment) article 81&1, Law 3057/2002). The moral right protects the personal connection between the creator and his/her work and consists of the powers referred to as examples in article 4, Law 2121/1993. Such powers are: the power to claim authorship, the power to protect the integrity of the work, the power of access and the power to withdraw. For example, the copyright protection law covers several kinds of original work including musical compositions, plays, works of plastic arts, audiovisual works, scientific works, recordings, films, data bases, software programs.

What are the benefits to authors retaining the self-archiving right?

Most authors/creators are not aware that granting intellectual rights to a publisher, results to a permission request for any possible use. In such a case posting of papers in repositories or downloading papers to websites, may raise several copyright infringements. Preserving the self-archiving rights, can result to the following author’s benefits:

Which is the current publication status?

Authors/creators retain the right to post their work into a repository in a variety of versions, depending on the policy of the publisher. An increasing number of publishers do now allow some form of self-archiving. For example, Elsevier, Springer, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, have adopted "repository-friendly" policies allowing self-archiving of preprints, postprints, even published version. The authors/creators are advised to negotiate in order to retain the right of self-archiving into their Institutional Repository. Creative Commons licences and other legal tools can be applied under the rights holder permission.

Whose owns the copyright?

The Greek legislation acknowledges that the creator is in title the copyright holder on his/her work. If there is not a copyright transfer agreement in writing, the creator remains the copyright holder. Works of cooperation are the works resulting from the cooperation of two or more creators when the contribution of each one of them may not be separated from the contribution of any other creator. In this case you have to ensure the consent of the other author(s)/creator(s) in order to submit the work to the Helios repository on their behalf. If the contribution of each creator to a certain work is separable (collective works and composite works), then each part of the work is protected separately by the law and each creator holds the copyright on his/her own work, unless otherwise agreed. It is clear that a work may contain material which copyright does not belong to the creator of the work but to another person (e.g. a scientific article contains photographs taken by third parties). Please make sure that you have the consent of the owner of the copyright to deposit documents using third party's work.

Which regulations apply to intellectual property rights on images or audio-visual material?

Regarding photographs, the photographer is the predecessor in title of copyright thereon. However, pay attention to the fact that a special permit from the Ministry of Culture has to be obtained, in order to take and distribute photographs representing ancient monuments of the cultural inheritance. As for audio visual works, the director is considered predecessor in title of copyright thereon. Performers or actors, producers of photographic and audio-visual works, radio and television organizations retain related rights on the works. Related rights protect those who assist the creators in presenting their intellectual works to the public.

Which approval steps should be followed for copyright-protected material?

If you haven't signed a copyright transfer agreement with a publisher, then, according to the Greek law, you are the owner of the copyright on your work. Publishers usually ask the authors to sign some kind of copyright transfer. Before posting your work into the Helios repository, check the publisher’s self-archiving policy. In most cases self-archiving of scientific articles is allowed. If you wish to post a book, please check your publishing agreement to find out whether book's self-archiving is permitted. If there is no such term, you should contact your publisher in order to request permission. In order to make sure that a scientific work may be submitted to the repository, please follow the steps below: