Notice and Takedown procedure for the IFLA Library

General procedure

For all requests to remove an item from the IFLA Library, please see the general IFLA Notice and Takedown procedure and submit the web form. Please note the additional information below concerning takedown of items from this IFLA Library website.

Additional information for the IFLA Library

The IFLA Library is a digital archive and the intention is that deposited content should not be removed. If a request to remove an item is granted, the paper will be retired from the IFLA Library which means it will no longer be visible to the public. Once a work has been deposited in the IFLA Library and subsequently retired, metadata to the deposited content will always remain to avoid loss of historical record together with a note explaining the reasons for removal.

Acceptable reasons for retiring an item include:

• Proven copyright violation or plagiarism;
• Legal requirements;
• National Security;
• Falsified research.

In the specific cases of papers submitted for presentation at the IFLA World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) an author may request that a paper is retired from the IFLA Library for the following reasons:

• The paper was never presented at the conference to which it was submitted;
• A publisher requests removal because they intend to publish the paper. In this case the author must send to IFLA the journal title, and indicate the volume, issue, and date of publication, so that a link can be made from the item’s metadata.

In these cases, there are also other options available rather than a removal of the file from the IFLA Library:

Paper submitted for, but not presented at the IFLA WLIC

The author can request that the paper remains in the IFLA Library. In this case it will be indicated as withdrawn in the metadata for the item, and a reason for its withdrawal may be indicated. The paper will still remain accessible.

Publisher requests removal because they intend to publish the same paper

The CC BY 4.0 license attached to the paper in the IFLA Library does not prevent a publisher from publishing your paper, and indeed is non revocable, meaning that anyone who has already accessed the work may continue to use it under the terms and conditions of the original license.

It might be possible to negotiate with the publisher before removing the paper from the IFLA Library:

1. The author can ask the publisher if removal of the CC BY 4.0 license from the paper would be sufficient. In this case a new version of the paper with the new copyright indication can be uploaded.
   or
2. The author can revise and submit a newer version of the paper to the publisher. In this case, the original version in IFLA Library is a different version of the paper.
   or
3. The author can refuse the publishers conditions and insist that the preprint version remains in the IFLA Library. The publisher may choose not to publish your paper in this case.
   or
4. Depending on the agreement with the publisher in question, the author may be able to archive the original paper (or indeed the publisher’s version of the paper) in their own institutional repository. In this case, the copy in the IFLA Library might be retired, but a link made to the version held elsewhere.

Please get in touch with IFLA HQ staff if you wish to discuss any of these options.