Content and Curation Policy

Version 1, last updated 9th October 2025 – adopted by Steering Committee in November 2025.

CASPERR serves as a repository for research outputs (e.g., software, posters, presentations, publications) and research data (e.g., data sets, protocols, code books) related to ambulance and emergency health services, paramedicine, and EMS in Canada. The community is managed by the CASPERR Steering Committee on behalf of the paramedicine community in Canada, with support from Queen’s University Library Services staff.
Zenodo’s general policies and Terms of Use apply to all outputs uploaded to the Zenodo platform; Borealis terms of use apply to all data uploaded to the Borealis platform.

Scope
CASPERR accepts digital research objects related to ambulance and emergency health services, paramedicine, and EMS in Canada (with some restrictions outlined below). Materials not related to the Canadian context are not accepted. Outputs by researchers in Canadian institutions that related to other jurisdictions or are globally focused (e.g., literature reviews) are accepted. If a potential depositor has any questions or is unsure if their content is suited to CASPERR they can contact the Administrator via email – admin@casperr.net
In line with the principle of “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” both public and restricted content is accepted. See note on how Zenodo handles restricted content.

Accepted for submission
Zenodo collection – research outputs
Journal articles of all types in peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications. In general, author accepted-version manuscripts (i.e., the final version accepted before proofing and typesetting) are accepted.
Final published versions of manuscripts are accepted when they are published under a Creative Commons licence or permission for archiving this version is clearly communicated by the journal.
For archiving information for publishers and journals, we recommend you visit Open Policy Finder: https://openpolicyfinder.jisc.ac.uk/
Alternatively, you can use https://shareyourpaper.org/ to find out how you can share your paper
Posters and abstracts presented at conferences or scientific meetings.
Educational materials including syllabi, curricula, notes, presentations related to research in paramedicine.
Audio and/or video recordings of conference presentations, educational sessions, and webinars.
Public facing technical reports that involved a research, evaluation, policy, or strategy activity.
Theses and dissertations.
 
Borealis collection – research data
Protocols
Data dictionaries
Interview guides
Participant information sheets/leaflets
Supplementary information related to output(s)
Data sets that contain data from human participants will be accepted (public or restricted) with appropriate institutional ethics board approval that EXPLICITLY approves the storage of such data in a general repository, public repository, or dataverse. All data must be deidentified or anonymous and cannot contain any identifying information.

Not accepted for submission
Data sets that contain data from human participants that do not have ethics approval that explicitly outlines permission to store the data in CASPERR/Borealis will NOT be accepted.
Data sets that represent or contain identifiable, personal and/or protected health information will NOT be accepted.
Preprints (pre-submission manuscripts) in any format (PDF or otherwise) will be declined immediately. We recommend you instead submit to http://www.preprints.org, http://www.medrxiv.org, or http://www.researchsquare.com
Audio or video recordings longer than 120 minutes will not be accepted.
Borealis has a file size limit of 5 GB per file, so big datasets and very large files cannot be deposited in Borealis.
Critically appraised topics or mini-CATs produced by learners in education programs will not be accepted – we encourage you to submit these to the existing mini-CAT database hosted by our friends at the EMS PEP Database at https://emspep.cdha.nshealth.ca/
Assignments or assessment items produced by learners in education programs will not be accepted unless they have been published externally.
Any content deemed out-of-scope by the curation team will not be accepted. The curation team have sole and exclusive discretion in such decisions. 

Content submission
All users are eligible to submit content to CASPERR. The community supports two types of content submissions:
Direct submission
Any user may submit a record directly to CASPERR via the Zenodo or Borealis platforms. The submission will be moderated for compliance with the required metadata requirements and its correctness.
Automated harvesting
Records found among Zenodo’s existing content will on a regular basis automatically be integrated if they are found to comply with the requirements. The submissions through this method are integrated into CASPERR in a fully automated way.

Descriptive information required for submissions
Ensure that the authorship of the submission is complete, including the names, ORCIDs, and affiliations of anyone who contributed to the creation of this material (with a minimum of two points of contact for datasets).
Ensure that there is sufficient description of the individual files that they may be understood and reused by the wider community;
Ensure that there is an appropriate license assigned to the dataset on the repository.

Minimal metadata requirements
Records in CASPERR are required to comply with the following minimal metadata requirements:
Visibility: Both public and restricted (with or without embargo and/or access request)
Resource types: All resource types.
Licenses: Public and embargoed records MUST specify a license.
Funding information: Records MUST specify funding sources if applicable.
Journal articles: Records MUST specify the publishing venue (e.g., the journal the article was published in).
Creators: Creators SHOULD be identified with a persistent identifier (e.g., ORCID), and affiliations SHOULD be identified with a persistent identifier (e.g., ROR, ISNI)
Subjects: Records SHOULD specify one or more fields of the paramedicine discipline or MeSH headings
Keywords: should be aligned with existing keywords where possible, and include the geographic output within Canada where applicable (e.g., Ontario, British Columbia)

Thorough metadata and documentation aligns with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), which benefit both the users to easily understand and reuse the data, and the researcher to increase their research impact and the visibility of their data.

Review & moderation
All submissions undergo automated curation checks for compliance with the curation policy. Submission directly to CASPERR is reviewed by moderators.
Community curators may at any point edit metadata of the records in the community without notice through human or automated processing. The curators may at their sole discretion remove records from the community that are deemed not to comply with the content and curation policy or which are deemed of insufficient quality. 

Notice and takedown
The CASPERR Steering Committee is responsible for responding to requests about items in this Repository.
If you are the owner of the copyright or related rights in any of the material in the Repository and you believe that use of this material infringes your intellectual property or any other rights, or you believe that the material may be subject to a third-party ownership or another legal claim, please contact us and include the following information:
Your contact details
Sufficient information, including the full URL, needed to identify the item.
If the request relates to copyright, provide proof that you are the rights holder and a statement that, under penalty of perjury, you are the rights holder or are an authorised representative
The reason for your request including but not limited to copyright law, privacy laws, data protection, obscenity, defamation etc. 

Terms for Deposit
This document sets out the Terms under which items are deposited and held in CASPERR , including the rights and responsibilities of the depositor.
 
Material to be deposited
Only research outputs connected to ambulance services, paramedic services, or EMS/EHS in Canada can be deposited in CASPERR.
Those depositing research outputs must have the authority or permission to do so. Barring exceptional circumstances, the metadata about the research outputs will be made publicly available in line with the FAIR principles. Wherever possible depositors will be asked to make their outputs publicly available, allowing for appropriate embargoes where applicable and necessary.

Responsibilities of depositors
Depositors must ensure that any research outputs were generated in accordance with the relevant codes of practice and ethics, and in accordance with policies of relevant research funders.
Depositors must ensure that, should the output(s) contain the personal data of any third party, the output(s) and its/their deposit and publication for the purpose of archiving in the public interest will not cause substantial distress or damage to that third party. Where content to be deposited contains personal data this constitutes a transfer of personal data between two data controllers and depositors must warrant and represent on an on-going basis that they have a legal basis to process and share that personal data.
Depositors are responsible for the content and the quality of submitted files, including ensuring that if the submission contains material for which the depositor does not hold copyright, and that exceeds fair dealing permitted by law, the depositor will have obtained permission of the copyright owner to grant CASPERR the rights required to make the output available, and that such third party-owned material is clearly identified and acknowledged within the text or content of the submission.
Depositors must be willing and able to grant CASPERR the right and licence to preserve and distribute their research outputs. Members of the CASPERR curation team may deposit on behalf of the depositor.  In this instance depositors will have previously agreed to the Terms of Deposit via email exchange. A link to the deposited items will be sent to the depositor after the deposit is completed.
A licence may be attached to the research output; this will either be the licence associated with the output by the publisher, or a Creative Commons attribution licence. In the case of no existing licence, CASPERR reserves the right to select a licence for the work.
Where the research output relates to research that received external research funding, depositors must adhere to the funder’s expectations around open deposit of outputs. Funders should always be acknowledged by including the correct name of the funder in the metadata for the output.
Depositors are responsible for ensuring that submitted research outputs have an appropriate metadata description. The CASPERR curation team may add metadata records on behalf of the depositor without seeking their express permission. Abstracts and links to journal articles or publishers’ websites may be included where relevant.
Complete publications will not normally be added without the depositor’s permission, unless the item is already openly available and the re-use rights allow CASPERR to make a copy.
Where a research output authored by the depositor has one or more co-authors, the depositor is responsible for obtaining agreement by the author or co-authors to deposit in CASPERR.
Depositors have the right to request removal of the output from the repository after it is deposited, and/or changes to the metadata. CASPERR reserves the right to decide how to respond to such requests.

CASPERR’s rights and responsibilities
CASPERR:
May make copies of the outputs (including the abstract(s)) available worldwide, in electronic format via any medium for the lifetime of the repository, or as negotiated with the administrator, for the purpose of free access without charge.
May electronically store, translate, copy, change or convert file formats, or re-arrange the output(s) to ensure its/their future accessibility within the lifetime of the repository,  that is, to ensure it can be read by computer systems in the future, unless notified by the depositor that specific restrictions apply
May incorporate metadata or documentation into public access catalogues for the output(s)
Shall not be under any obligation to take legal action on behalf of the Depositor or other rights holders in the event of breach of intellectual property rights or any other right in the material deposited
Shall not be under any obligation to reproduce, transmit, broadcast, or display the output(s) in the same format or software as that in which it was/they were originally created
May share usage statistics giving details of numbers of downloads and other statistics with relevant organisations and external stakeholders
May create a persistent identifier for the output in the form of a DOI.
Reserves the right not to accept material which does not directly relate to research related to ambulance services, paramedicine, or EMS in Canada, or for any other reason deemed reasonable
Reserves the right to remove outputs without notice for technical, administrative or legal reasons. In such a case, metadata relating to the output may remain visible
While every care will be taken to preserve the output, CASPERR  is not liable for loss or damage to the output(s) or associated data while it is stored within the repository
Full text publications placed in CASPERR are covered by copyright law and clear conditions of use are displayed on the page associated with each document.
Use of your items deposited in CASPERR – end user access
Research outputs are made available in CASPERR on terms agreed by you on deposit. End users may use an item only if they abide by the licence or other terms under which it has been released, e.g. the terms of a specific Creative Commons Licence.
Unless indicated otherwise, items made publicly available in CASPERR are protected by copyright with all rights reserved.
To ensure licence compliance and good research practice, research outputs also need to be properly acknowledged, including citing their author(s) and full bibliographic details.

Preservation
How material deposited with CASPERR is being managed:
Items will be retained indefinitely.
The repository will try to ensure continued readability and accessibility.
Items will be migrated to new file formats where necessary.
Where possible, software emulations will be provided to access un-migrated formats.
The repository regularly backs up its files according to current best practice. Full details can be found for Zenodo at: https://about.zenodo.org/infrastructure/ and Borealis at: https://borealisdata.ca/preservationplan/

Items may not normally be removed from the repository. Acceptable reasons for withdrawal include:
Proven copyright violation or plagiarism
Falsified research
National Security
Legal requirements and proven violations

Withdrawn items are not deleted but are removed from public view.
Withdrawn items’ identifiers/URLs are retained indefinitely
URLs will continue to point to a retaining citation, to avoid broken links and to retain item histories.
Changes to deposited items are not permitted.
Errata and corrigenda lists may be included with the original record if required.
If necessary, an updated version may be deposited.

In the event of the repository being closed, the database will be transferred to another appropriate archive.

Updates
This policy is subject to change by the CASPERR Steering Committee at any time and without notice, other than through updating this page.

Sources
This curation policy was informed by the policies of the AMBER repository: https://amber.openrepository.com/pages/amber_policies/en and reviewed by Queen’s University Library staff for technical accuracy.