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Group Participation Policy and Guidelines

Important Information:

Group Definition

"Groups" a recognized assembly from any professional setting where nurses* work or learn.

*Nurses (includes retired nurses and nursing students) must hold a degree from, or currently be enrolled in, an appropriately accredited BSN program or above.

Participation Definition

Participation is informal. Groups participate in the Sigma Repository by asking their members, staff, students, faculty to submit eligible materials to an appropriate repository collection, and by submitting corporately-authored materials.

Groups that officially partner with Sigma or formally work with Sigma (or a nurse on staff at Sigma headquarters in their staff capacity) on a project or initiative, may be eligible for other participation options not listed. These groups should contact their existing Sigma staff nurse liaison if interested in pursuing group participation in the repository.

Sigma does not offer a repository hosting service.

Participants utilize Sigma's repository as a reputable dissemination and publication venue to further nursing knowledge, professional growth, collaboration, and innovation. Participants benefit from quantifiable global impact and usage/download statistics that may be used in funding applications, tenure dossiers, annual reviews, and annual reports.

Participants retain copyright to materials posted in the repository, but they do not own a part of the repository.

Group Settings

  • National/international membership organizations (includes consortia and other member-driven groups)
  • Academic
  • Clinical
  • Health-related businesses that employ nurses

Eligible Submissions

  • Committee reports
  • Research studies
  • Patient-centered outcomes
  • Quality improvement tools/projects
  • Best practice guidelines
  • Position papers
  • Faculty-created educational materials
  • Nurse-authored patient education materials
  • Continuing education materials (peer-to-peer; expert-to-novice)
  • Instructional resources
  • Classroom projects and papers
  • Theses/dissertations
  • Posters, presentation papers and/or slides†

† PowerPoint presentations that lack substantive content and do not qualify as stand-alone submissions will not be eligible as submissions to the repository.

Note to participating schools of nursing: DNP capstones in the form of manuscripts that will be submitted to journals for traditional publication are not eligible for submission due to publisher/journal prior/simultaneous publishing restrictions.

Ineligible Submissions

  • Materials for which the group or its individual members do not own copyright
  • Previously published journal articles
  • Manuscripts that will be (or have been) submitted to journals for publication
  • Corporate records/archives
  • Marketing materials
  • Materials that provide information on a group's activities
  • Materials that do not stand alone (e.g., posters and presentation slides without sufficient content that will suffer in value when the presenter is not present to talk over the slides)

Who May Submit Materials on Behalf of Groups

Submitters must be the copyright holders to the material they are submitting. Students should submit their own work - theses, dissertations, capstones, etc. Faculty members and nursing staff, if not submitting works-for-hire, should submit their own materials, and so forth.

If the copyright holder is the organization, business, group as corporate author or work-for-hire, the group may select a member/employee to submit on the group's behalf. Contact the repository staff at repository@sigmanursing.org to set up a proxy submission.

Communities/Collections Available for Group Participation

Most materials submitted under the umbrella of participating groups will be located in the Open Dissemination Materials - Groups and Individuals community. The collections are divided into settings and item types.

This community shares space with individuals submitting materials that do not qualify for peer-review.

Exceptions to the rule:

  • Traditionally formatted, completed and defended theses and dissertations will be located in the Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) community.
  • Faculty, clinicians, and student materials in the form of previously unpublished manuscripts, evidence-based practice and educational materials will be routed through the repository's peer-review journal portal, upon request.

Vetting

Evaluation. Materials that are submitted to the Open Dissemination and ETD communities do not undergo traditional peer-review. Instead, they are accepted as reputation-based submissions or degree-based submissions.

Peer Review. Acceptable manuscripts and educational materials submitted by faculty, clinicians, leaders, researchers, and exceptional students will be routed through the repository's peer-review journal portal, upon request. This is the exception and not the rule for group participants. Submissions from individual members of a group participant does not guarantee acceptance and publication via the peer-review portal.

Note to participating schools of nursing: DNP capstones in the form of manuscripts are not eligible for peer-review as large classes of students will overwhelm the repository's review system.

Group Participant Recognition within the Repository

Groups will be recognized with a mention on the Sigma Repository Group Participant Page (visit example page here).

Requirements and Action Steps:

Group Participation Requirements

Submitters from a participating group must complete the Author Affiliation field in the repository's submission form using the group's complete and formal name. Consistency in (1) the use of this field and (2) the group name placed in that field, across all group submissions is a must.

Participation Steps

  1. Decide what to submit. Use eligible submissions as a guideline.
  2. Decide who will submit. The choice will be dictated by the item type and setting.
    1. Staff member(s),
    2. Individuals belonging to the group, or
    3. Individual nursing staff, organizational members, presenters, etc.
  3. Notify the repository staff with any questions and/or your decision to participate so that they may anticipate an increase in submissions.
  4. Send submitting staff/students/employees the link to the repository's author policies and guidelines page: https://www.nursingrepository.org/author_info/.
  5. If a participating group has formatting requirements in additional to those required by this repository, the group is responsible for conveying those requirements to their submitters. They should also make it clear that the additional requirements are not governed by the repository.

Getting Started

Email the repository staff at repository@sigmanursing.org to let them know you are interested in this participation option.