Guidelines for Joining OAPS and Submitting Papers

Introduction

The Library invites and encourages academic departments to nominate outstanding student papers to the Library. The following guidelines are established to help you understand how papers will be selected for inclusion in the OAPS Project and what will be required during the submission process.

Scope

The scope of student papers includes term papers, term projects, reports and publications of all courses and levels (both undergraduate and postgraduate).

Selection Criteria

The submission criteria will be set by the academic departments and the teaching staff. To set good examples for students and to maintain a high quality, it is expected that only papers with very good grades will be selected.

Accessibility

The selected student papers will be archived in the CityU Institutional Repository and made accessible online to the University community and the general public.

Format of Papers

Below are the guides for preparing the papers to be submitted to the Library. If there are any problems in the preparation and writing process, please contact the Library.

Writing Style

The full text of the paper should include at least the following parts.

• title page
• abstract
• table of contents
• main body
• references / bibliography

In addition, different departments may have specific requirements in the writing style. Please refer to the following pages for details.

Department of Economics and Finance
School of Law (Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities)

Citation Style

Citing the source of reference materials should follow proper citation styles. Different subjects and disciplines have different practices. The most commonly used citation styles are APA (American Psychological Association) Style, MLA (Modern Language Association) Style, and Chicago Style. Students may refer to the books on style manuals kept in the Library Collection or visit the following Library web page:

Guides to Citation Styles

In addition, students should follow the guidelines and citation styles as specified by their own faculties or departments if there is any.

Source and PDF Files

Two electronic formats of the papers should be submitted. One is the source file, usually in MS Word format. Another is the Adobe PDF file created from the source.

The PDF file should be a text-embedded file and searchable. It should be created from common word processing software such as MS Word using the Adobe Acrobat software or Microsoft Office Word 2007 installed with Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in. If it is created by scanning a print copy into image format and then converted into PDF, the file will not be searchable, thus not recommended. Please refer to the following Steps for Creating PDF Files.

Steps for Creating PDF Files

1. Open Microsoft Office Word 2007 that is installed with Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in.
2. Open the file of the paper.
3. Click on the Office Button on the top left corner.
4. Select Save As from the drop-down menu and click PDF or XPS.
5. Name the PDF file according to the file naming convention as described below.
6. Click Publish. The document will be converted to PDF.
7. Review your PDF file(s) by using Acrobat Reader.

File Naming Convention

The file should be named in the following format:

[Department abbreviated code][4-digit academic year]-[4-digit course code]-[last name+first name initials][last 3 digits of Student's ID].pdf.

For example, the paper of a student in the course EF3412 of Department of Economics & Finance in the academic year 2008 whose name is Chan Tai Man and student number is 87654321 will be named as:

ef2008-3412-ctm321.pdf

Under most circumstances, the above filename will be unique. If two files have the same name, append a unique alphabet (starting from b) to the identical filename(s):

ef2008-3412-ctm321.pdf
ef2008-3412-ctm321b.pdf

If the paper is authored by more than one student, the file should be named after the first author in the sequence shown in the paper.

Personal Identity and Privacy

To comply with the Personal Data (Privacy) Issues, the Library will follow the Code of Practice not to display publicly an individual's name together with the ID. When preparing the PDF file, students are advised not to include their ID numbers in any part of the PDF files.

Submitting Papers to the Library

Documents Required

Checklist for the required documents to be submitted to the Library:

1. The source paper and any external object files linked to it.
2. The converted paper in PDF format and any external object files linked to it.
3. Approval Form
   After a nominated paper is accepted into the OAPS Collection, the student is required to sign an Approval Form in hardcopy format to declare copyright clearance of any third-party copyrighted matter and to authorize the Library to archive or possibly publish and distribute his/her paper in the future. If students have any concerns relating to the Approval Form, they are encouraged to contact the Library. If there are multiple authors for a paper, each author has to sign the Approval Form.
   

Submission

Electronic documents can be submitted as attachments to the e-mail account lboaps@cityu.edu.hk, or submitted to the Library in CD-ROM format. The signed Approval Form must be submitted in hardcopy format to the Library.

The Library will only accept outstanding student papers submitted by the departments, students who wish to submit papers should contact their instructors or departments.

Contacts in the Library

If you have any comments and questions, please contact the Library by email: lboaps@cityu.edu.hk or by phone: 3442-6404 or 3442-6401.

Copyright and Plagiarism

Copyright

While the copyright ownership of the student works remains with the students, in accordance with the University Intellectual Property Policy, the University will have a royalty-free and non-exclusive perpetual license to use the student works for normal University educational and operational purposes. If there is any third party copyrighted matter included in the paper, it is the responsibility of the student to ensure that the copyright has been cleared. Students may further assign the copyright of their papers to the Library for publishing and distribution.

Avoid Plagiarism

Papers submitted by students should be properly documented. Students should be aware that quoting, paraphrasing or summarizing the ideas of others without acknowledging the original source may commit plagiarism. Some good tips and guidelines on how to avoid plagiarism are as follows:

CityU Academic Regulations and Records Office
Academic Honesty

Run Run Shaw Library
Citing Sources of Information

In addition, one may refer to the above section on Citation Style for reference.

OAPS in CityU Institutional Repository

The outstanding academic papers submitted by students will be archived in the OAPS Collection of the CityU Institutional Repository (IR). CityU IR is a digital online database for capturing and preserving the scholarly output of the University community. Items deposited in the Repository are assigned with persistent identifiers,  allowing long-term access to the digital objects stored, and can be harvested by major Internet search engines such as Google.