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Policies

Philosophy

The Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst strives to demonstrate that students and their voices are at the heart of what we do in our writing classrooms. Sharing the Best Text Collection is one way we highlight and circulate texts created by University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) students for writing courses at all undergraduate levels.

Who Can Submit?

All students enrolled in University of Massachusetts Amherst Writing, Identity, and Power (ENGLWRIT 111), College Writing (ENGLWRIT 112/112H) and Junior Year Writing courses, fall or spring semester, are eligible to submit to that year’s Charles Moran Best Text Contest.

General Submission Rules

Submissions are accepted via the best text contest entry form found on the Writing Program website.

Essays must have been written for an assignment in ENGLWRIT 111, ENGLWRIT 112/112H, or a Junior Year Writing course.

All submissions from the Spring semester will be due by the end of May that year; submissions from Summer and Fall semesters will be due by the end of December that year.

Formatting Requirements

Projects should be submitted in the final format provided for each course project. Authors will be contacted by the editor with requests for any further information as needed.

Rights for Authors

During the submission process authors review the options for online, digital publication of their work. They may select to be reviewed by the committee for contest purposes but are not required to permit publication of the final project in order to place in the contest.

All work submitted must be created for an assignment in ENGLWRIT 111, ENGLWRIT 112/112H, or a Junior Year Writing course and meet citation expectations appropriate to the project and course requirements.

During the submission process authors also select an appropriate Creative Commons license structure for re-use and attribution of final work. They select from one of these two options:

      • Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY): This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered.
      • Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC): This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, as long as it is not for commercial use, as long as they credit you for the original creation.

Attribution & Usage Policies

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium, requires permission of the author with appropriate attribution.

Personal-use Exceptions

The following uses are always permitted to the author(s) and do not require further permission from ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst provided the author does not alter the format or content of the articles, including the copyright notification:

      • Storage and back-up of the article on the author's computer(s) and digital media (e.g., diskettes, back-up servers, Zip disks, etc.), provided that the article stored on these computers and media is not readily accessible by persons other than the author(s);
      • Posting of the article on the author(s) personal website, provided that the website is non-commercial;
      • Posting of the article on the internet as part of a non-commercial open access institutional repository or other non-commercial open access publication site affiliated with the author(s)'s place of employment (e.g., a Phrenology professor at the University of Southern North Dakota can have her article appear in the University of Southern North Dakota's Department of Phrenology online publication series); and
      • Posting of the article on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author.

General Terms & Conditions of Use

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium, requires appropriate citation to the Writing Program Best Text Collection as the publisher of record. People who have questions about use, should contact the editors.

Users of the Writing Program Best Text Collection and ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst website and/or software agree not to misuse the ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst service or software in any way.

The failure of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Non-Exclusive License Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Non-Exclusive License Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Non-Exclusive License Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Non-Exclusive License Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst and the Author(s) regarding submission of the Article.