Policies
Code of Practice for Online Publications
Purpose
Publications should be related to University work and activities, and of clear benefit to the University. University activities may include social and sporting activities which are organised by a recognised club or society at the University. Personal information and activities are not appropriate items for publication using University facilities, with the exception of a brief statement of biographical information.
Publication Categories
- Official Information.
- Controlled Access Information.
- Other Information.
Responsibility
Publications in all categories have one person (the 'publisher' or 'information provider') who takes responsibility for the structure, content, and maintenance of the information. All information providers must have read and signed the Loughborough University Computing / IT Acceptable Use Policy and this Code of Practice for Online Publications. They must abide by them and any further guidelines or policies that the University imposes.
Domain
Prior to publication, the publisher should carefully consider which domain is most appropriate. Category 1 information may have a marketing role, and is likely to be of general interest to a wide audience. Category 2 information will only be seen by members of the University, and is thus for internal uses only. Category 3 covers a wide range of information, and is likely to be split between centrally managed services and those run by groups within the University. The latter are likely to be specialised and have a relatively restricted audience interest.
Category 1
Official Information will be published on the Information Gateway.
Category 2
Controlled Access Information will be published as part of centrally managed services. For example, online teaching materials should be published on a central teaching materials server.
Category 3
Other Information will be published in a variety of ways. Individual home pages for staff and students should be published on centrally managed services.
Specialised information which is not suited to any of the centrally managed services might require a separate information service to be run by the publication group. For example, a research group which needs to use the WWW as part of its work might find that centrally managed services are not sufficiently well suited to its needs.
In any case, non-centrally managed servers must be registered centrally using a Pro Forma. An annual report on the information held on such servers should be produced according to the guidelines (available with the pro forma).