* General information about the archives

Our archive offers you the opportunity to publish your academic texts on the internet.
Valuable information and scientific documents shouldn’t decay in your desk drawer. We are using the internet to provide a service for you. This means taking advantage of the internet’s ease in finding information and transfering information and data, applying it as a medium of world wide communication for anyone seeking information. The number of users who visit our websites each month shows just how many people really are interested: well over one million users visit our websites monthly!

The archive isn't just for students and researchers looking for a specific theme. Our archives cater to all with a thirst for knowledge. Therefore, our interdisciplinary archive not only contains term papers/theses and presentations; all texts of scientific quality are added to our archive.

With so many scholarly documents at the tips of their fingers, students learn better paper writing skills. In addition, they can use the bibliographies of archived texts to find new sources to aid in the research and production of their own assignments. This makes it easier to find information on specialized topics that are harder to research using traditional methods (i.e. library research).

More frequently now are texts from the archive being used and quoted in articles from the press. It could be the case that a media source (magazine or newspaper) may recommend your article for futher readings of interest in relation to the theme of the article.

Additionally, every author is free to decide if he/her wants to earn money with his/her publications, receiving compensation for the hard work he put into writing and researching.

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How can I publish my texts in the free archive?

Nearly all of the texts in the archive were sent to us by users who want to support the idea of an online library. Additionally, each document you submit enters you in a prize drawing.

Anyone who has written a term paper (or something similar) and would like to add it to our archive - for-free or for-sale - may do so. The only requirement: the text must be in digital format (i.e. a data file).

You just have to fill out our upload-form, in order to send in your work. With the form, you supply us with information about you and your text and can easily attach your saved text (from your hard drive or diskette) and then click "Send File". We accept almost every data format.

Find the upload form here.

After the important specifications about the text itself (like title, author, subject, keywords from the contents), the file on your own computer can be chosen for upload using the "Browse" button. Important: You can only upload one data file. If your text is comprised one more than one data file, you need to compress the text with a Zip program (more information).

With a click on the data file, the search window will close. Lastly, send the data file and you’re finished. Just wait for your confirmation page (the length it takes to load this page depends on the size of the file you just sent and the speed of your internet connection).

You can also send your text by email to: en@grin.com

Important: Please don't forget to supply us with the relevant information: Click here!

For information on copyright law click here.

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How can I earn money with my text?

In addition to the free archive, we offer the opportunity to earn money with your text. Your text is sold over our website and you receive royalties for each sale of your text. Find detailed information about selling your text in the author info section

Click here for the upload form for marketing your text..

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* Legal / Plagiarism

Even though we have the increasing support of professors, doctors and schools in the publishing and distributing of scientific texts, we are constantly confronted with the question of plagiarism.

We strongly stress the point that we do not support cheating. Our websites serve the sole purpose of the archiving and collection of valuable, scientific information (like libraries, but online).

Should you notice any infringements of copyrighted materials in a published text in our archive, please notify us by email (en@grin.com) or telephone. The text will be removed from the archive.

Teachers and lecturers can use our websites as a medium for control against student plagiarism. We recommend that all teachers refer to our website when they suspect students of copying work. We endeavor to help avoid and stop the plagiarism of copyrighted materials.

There are a few tricks for recognizing plagiarism:

• Enter a few suspicious sentences in quotation marks into an internet search engine, such as Google.com. You can then see if these sentences have been written by other authors and published in the internet.
• Enter keywords into our search engine, preferably unusual subject keywords or keywords with spelling mistakes that appear in the suspicious text. You can then find the text in our archives if the suspicious text was plagiarized from a work on one of our websites.
• Combine different search words that are in the suspicious text and enter them (with spaces) into our search engine. This will make the results list smaller and increase the chance of finding the text in question.
• Contact us if you are sure the text has been plagiarized. We can determine the original author and date of the text - who the copyright belongs to.
• There are various plagiarism search programs such as Turnitin.com, with which you can proof copied passages of texts.

Hint to all students: Copying texts that aren't yours is an infringement of copyright law and is punishable by law!

Collaboration between teachers and students through contact and support helps avoid cheating during the writing of a paper. This allows for the verification of the paper during the writing process. In addition, teachers should encourage the use of the newest research and literature sources as well as help the student to carefully define their theme to help avoid plagiarism.

Science is promoted through the publication of scientific documents in our archive, given that it is not the goal of a university to allow students to always write about the same theme. Scientific innovation is presented in our archives and allows professors, by viewing the themes at hand, to encourage and push new topics and variations for term papers and theses. Save the fundamental topics for the final test.

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Copyright and User Rights!!!

Copyright and user rights for publication in the free archive:

By uploading a text, you are claiming copyright and user rights for the data you publish in our archive! (This means that you are the original author of the text and have not previously published the text exclusively with any publishers.) In addition, you are claiming that all included sources and quotes are properly cited.

When you make your work available, you are claiming that you understand that we have aquired and saved your text and will publish it within the scope of our project. The copyright remains with you.

You can find our terms and conditions for publication in the free archive here:
Click to open in a new window

You can find information for marketing in the author info section.

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What am I allowed to do with texts that I download?

The same copyright laws that are valid for printed materials are also valid for anything your download in electronic form from our websites. Especially valid: single reproductions, for example copying and printing, are only allowed to be reproduced for private use (German copyright law paragraph 53). The production, distribution and the making available of additional reproductions is only allowed with a printed permission of the copyright holders. The user is solely responsible for compliance with the statutory provisions. Any infringements are punishable by law.

If you cite a text of our archive, you have to mention the author. All documents are not to be published on other homepages or made available to the public.

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How do I browse, search for and read texts in the archive?

Browsing the archive

Our browse function lists all texts in order of subject and alphabetically. Clicking on the title of the text brings you to an online version of the text.

Which texts are free and which are for sale?

Our authors are free to decide if they want to publish their works in the free or for-sale section. On GRIN.com, you can recognize the free and for-sale documents by color.

You will only find paid content on Diplomarbeiten24, Wissen24 and Unterweisungen.de.

Orange marked documents can be viewed for free

Simply click on the title of the text to view an online version.

Many of the texts contain high quality print-versions in PDF format that can be downloaded for a small fee.

Simply click on the "ClickandBuy"-button:

Find more information about print-versions and payment towards the bottom of this page - click here!

Grey / Blue (Hausarbeiten.de) marked texts are high quality papers or theses for sale:

When you click on the title of the text, you come to a content overview of the text - if you decide to buy/download the text, simply click on the red "ClickandBuy"-Button:

The price of the text is located near the button.

Find more information about the FIRSTGATE ClickandBuy-system towards the bottom of this page - click here!

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Effectively utilizing the search engine

Our full text search engine is just like any other known search engine: the more extensive a data bank is, the longer the results list (when using only one search term). The results list must therefore be reduced and more specific. Our search results display any articles containing the words of your search term.

Narrower search terms produce better search results.

In order to work with multiple search terms, they must be entered one after the other (with a space between each word). It doesn’t matter if words are written in lower case or capital.

AND-Function

When the AND-Function is used, each document in the results list contains ALL of your search terms.

Example: history cold war
Result: When the AND-Function is used, each document in the results list contains ALL of your search terms.

OR-Function Wenn mit der ODER-Funktion gesucht wird, kommt in den Suchbegriffen MINDESTENS EINER der verwendeten Suchbegriffe vor.

Beispiel: geschichte kalter krieg
Ergebnis: With the OR-Function, all documents containing at least one of the search terms will be displayed. The results shows all texts containing one or more of the words 'history', 'cold' and 'war'.

Our results list is sorted according to relevance, meaning the texts that have a higher frequency of the search terms will be displayed first.

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How do I save a text on my computer and then print it?

Our print-version

Texts for sale are offered in PDF format and can be simply printed out.

Many of our free texts contain a print version in PDF-format which can be downloaded for a small fee.

This print-version is zipped - more infos on the zip format.

PDF files can be open with Adobe Acrobat Reader, available for free download here.

Advantages of our PDF print-version:

• The text can be viewed at any time offline.
• The format and print quality is better in comparison to the online version.
• The print version conforms to the original version: fonts, graphics, page numbers, footnotes, formatting and colors are maintained. This is often not the case with the online version.
• The data files are compact, can be viewed with all operating systems, can be leafed through and be printed with every printer.

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Buying documents / the payment system ClickandBuy

The Online-purchasing of our documents is conducted with the online payment provider click&buy.

Paying on the internet is simple with ClickandBuy: If you aren't yet registered, you can do so with an automatic registration window, offering you fast, free, and secure registration.
Once you are registered with ClickandBuy, you will never have to register again if you make another payment on a website that also uses ClickandBuy. The advantage: you don’t have to register every time with every new internet vendor. ClickandBuy is used on thousands of websites.

ClickandBuy works

• with every provider,
• with every operating system (Windows, Macintosh, Linux)
• with all common browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla).
• In the security setting of the browser, you must allow for cookies.

With ClickandBuy you can comfortably and securely pay for texts with your credit card.

Please contact FIRSTGATE directly with any further registration or security questions at service@firstgate.de.

We are also more than happy to answer any of your questions!

Under the following link you will find our Terms and Conditions for the purchasing of any text: Click here!

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Ordering a CD-ROM / by email / invoice payment

Texts can also be ordered on CD-ROM or by email if you mail or fax us the title of the article, the archive number and the author’s name:

Fax: + 49 89-550559-10 oder per
Mail: en@grin.com or per

Postal address:
GRIN Publishing
Marienstr. 17
D-80331 Munich

An additional cost of 5 EUR is required for e-mail handling costs.

An additional cost of 10 EUR is required for CD-ROM shipping and handling costs.

Please indicate if you would like to receive the text on a CD-ROM or by email!

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Zip-Version:

Our downloadable versions are saved as Zip-files. Zip files are compressed in order to make downloading faster. After downloading, the file must be unpacked before it can be viewed.

To open a Zip-file, "Filzip" or a similar program must be installed on your computer. Windows XP is able to open Zip-files without any additional programs. The Zip-program is free!

If you encounter problems with Zip-files, you can find detailed help here:

Click here!

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PROBLEMS WITH OPENING PDF FILES?

When prompting PDF data files, there are a few complications that could occur. If you are prompting with Internet Explorer, only gray or white pages may appear, or the file may not load at all. However, this problem is very seldom.

If you left click the PDF file and it opens in Internet Explorer, then open Adobe-Reader first and deactivate (under the options menu) the default setting "Web-Browser-Integration" (checkbox must be unchecked).

You can always click a link that refers to a PDF-file with your right mouse button and save the file to your hard drive. You should then be able to open the file with Acrobat-Reader without any problems.

If you encounter any other problems with PDF files, you can find detailed help at the following link:

Click here!

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Problems Downloading?

If you encounter any problems with downloading, registration, or have security questions, you can direct any inquiries to service@firstgate.de.

If you have any other problems with data files that were not mentioned above, follow this link to our detailed step-by-step help page:

Click here!

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