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Documentation:Circle/Submitting UBC SHARE Projects to cIRcle

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Overview

This guide is designed to guide UBC students and instructors in cIRcle deposit of outputs developed as part of the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) project: Learning Research, Learning Reciprocity: Student Community Engagement with the Making Research Accessible Initiative (also known as the UBC SHARE Project).

It outlines the Winter 2025 Term 2 (January-April 2026) workflow for deposit of student projects (primarily infographics and videos) to cIRcle. UBC students and instructors submit required components directly to the cIRcle Office.  

Each student project will also be added to the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal (DTES RAP), which helps people find research and community materials about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It brings together reports, articles, and other resources that are available on the web, so they can be discovered in one place.

For questions about deposit to cIRcle or any information found within this guide, please contact the cIRcle Office.

What is cIRcle?

cIRcle is UBC's open access digital repository. It acts as a permanent place to digitally store, access, and share research outputs created by the UBC community and its partners. Its aim is to make this content available to anyone, anywhere in the world, and to preserve it for future generations. You can read more about cIRcle.

There are many benefits to using cIRcle such as:

  • Affiliating your work with UBC, and affirming that it is quality, vetted work.
  • Providing free and permanent access to your work, with web links that will never break.  
  • Helping others discover your content, as search engines such as Google crawl cIRcle regularly.  cIRcle also records view and download statistics for each item, so you can track interest in and usage of your work from around the world.

Before You Begin

Copyright

All submissions to cIRcle must comply with Canadian copyright law. Generally speaking, any material which was not created by you or your group may be under copyright. Some questions you should ask yourself to determine if your project contains copyrighted materials are:

  • Does it include images (including graphs or stock images) that were not made by members of the group?
  • Does it include images that were made by members of the group but incorporate images made by others (such as edited versions of other peoples' images)?
  • Does it include videos that were not recorded by group members?
  • Does it include logos or graphics of community partners?

If your project contains copyrighted materials, prior to submission to cIRcle, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder to use them. You can also use public domain or Creative Commons materials instead, or choose to omit the copyrighted material from your submission.  

For more help, see UBC Copyright’s guide for students.

Licensing

As part of your submission, you will be asked to complete the cIRcle Non-Exclusive Distribution License (cIRcle License). Agreeing to this license means cIRcle can host your work, make back-up or preservation copies of it, and distribute the work to the public.  

The cIRcle License outlines a few key agreements between the person signing the License and UBC:

  • If you have copyright, you keep it. You do not give copyright to cIRcle or UBC.  
  • If you are submitting a License for your group’s project, you have ensured that all members have read and agreed to the terms of the cIRcle License.
  • You have obtained any necessary permission, rights, or consent needed to make this content openly available online via cIRcle.  
  • You will apply a Creative Commons License (CC License) to tell others how your work can be shared and used.  

Long-term Access and Preservation

Depositing in an institutional repository such as cIRcle is different from sharing your work on a personal website or commercial platform.  

cIRcle is a permanent archive for UBC research and teaching materials. Once content is uploaded to cIRcle, no further edits or revisions to the file can be made.  Be sure to give yourself plenty of time to review and confirm the final version of your project file before you deposit to cIRcle.

Withdrawal requests are considered on a case-by-case basis. Specific reasons for withdrawal are outlined in the cIRcle Policies section 6.b. Where possible and appropriate, you should consult with your instructor and/or co-creators prior to submitting your withdrawal request to cIRcle.

cIRcle Submission Process

The cIRcle deposit process requires steps to be completed by each student project group and the course instructor.

For Students

Project Preparation

To avoid delays in your submission, ensure that you have reviewed and performed the following steps:

Remove personal information

  • Ensure no personal or private information (such as student ID numbers, phone numbers, addresses, etc.) is included in the final project file.

Ensure all important and identifying information about the project is found on/within the final project file.  

  • This provides context, consistency, and authority to the work (and ensures the works can be accurately cited).
  • Ensure the following information is visible on the final file, at-minimum:
    • Title
    • Creator name(s)
    • Citation to original research article
    • UBC SHARE Project Disclaimer (adapted accordingly):
      • "This [under]graduate student work is a product of the UBC SHARE Project and is a collaboration between the Making Research Accessible Initiative (MRAi), researchers, [UBC Instructor Name] and [UBC Course Code] students at UBC. This student's work has been reviewed by the lead author of the original item. Revisions provided by the lead author have been incorporated into the student work with support from the UBC Learning Exchange and members of the MRAi. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student research project/report and is not an official document of UBC. This work was created [Month, Year]."
    • The applicable Creative Commons License icon. See Licensing for more information.

Confirm the complete, final version of your project file.  

  • Ensure you are submitting the final version reviewed and graded by your instructor.
  • Ensure you have gotten permission for or removed any copyrighted materials.  See Copyright for more information.
  • The version that is submitted to cIRcle is intended to be preserved long-term. cIRcle generally doesn’t support file swaps or changes after submission. See Long-term Access and Preservation for more information.
  • Ensure alignment with cIRcle File Format Guidelines, which outline preferred and acceptable file formats, as well as maximum file sizes.  
    • For UBC SHARE Projects deposited to cIRcle, only PDF and video files should be submitted; any other file formats require consultation with the cIRcle Office in-advance.
    • As outlined here, PDFs should be saved as high quality, unsecured PDFs with recognized text.

Project Submission

One student from each group completes the online cIRcle Item Submission Form.  This allows you to provide cIRcle with information about the submission and complete the cIRcle License.  

  • Only one Form per project is required (i.e. one student creator from each project can do it on the group’s behalf).
  • As part of this Form, you will complete the cIRcle License and select which Creative Commons License will be applied to your work.  See Licensing for more information.
  • Note: If your file is under 20MB, you will also upload your final project file here.  If your file is larger than 20MB, you will still complete this Form, but you will need to subsequently contact the cIRcle Office for file transfer via e-mail or SharePoint.

For Instructors

Project Selection

Only a selected subset of all produced course projects will be deposited to cIRcle.

  • Each instructor should confirm the list of student projects that have been selected from each class for deposit to cIRcle.
  • For UBC SHARE Project deposits to cIRcle, only PDF and video files should be submitted; any other file formats require consultation with the cIRcle Office in-advance.

Project Review and Approval

Each instructor is responsible for sponsoring the deposit of selected student projects from their class.  Each project identified for deposit to cIRcle should be reviewed and approved by an instructor prior to students submitting to cIRcle. Instructors are the primary contact for the cIRcle Office for consultation, should any future requests for item revision/withdrawal be received.  

Each instructor completes the online cIRcle Student Submission Approval Form. This grants instructor approval for student deposit to cIRcle, captures the course code, and provides cIRcle with a list of all selected student projects.

  • Only one Form per class is required (i.e. all student projects from that class are included).
  • To assist with submission identification, please note that the submission is in support of the UBC SHARE Project.

Review, Deposit, and Notification

The cIRcle Office directly corresponds with the instructors and/or students if there are any questions about their submitted Forms.

Upon receipt of all required components, the cIRcle Office proceeds to deposit the project to cIRcle on the students’ behalf.

  • After your project is uploaded to cIRcle, it is assigned a persistent URL that will not change. This allows you to easily link to and find your project in the future.
  • To find your project in cIRcle, you can search Open Collections, which brings together locally created and managed content from the University of British Columbia Library's open access repositories.
    • You can view statistics that tell you how often your project has been viewed or downloaded from cIRcle. To do this, scroll down to the bottom of your project's item record and click 'Usage Statistics'.

Each student project will subsequently be added to the DTES RAP.  Students and instructors will be notified by the UBC SHARE Project once their projects are available in cIRcle and the DTES RAP.

Congratulations!

You have completed your submission to cIRcle and the DTES RAP!  

If you have further questions about cIRcle, the general cIRcle FAQ is a great place to get answers to common questions. You can also contact the cIRcle Office for further assistance.  

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