UND Scholarly Commons

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Zeineb Yousif, CFL’s Digital Initiatives Librarian. Kudos to Zeineb for doing the hard work to get the Scholarly Commons up and running, and special thanks for giving us more information about the new institutional repository!

Exciting news! Chester Fritz Library is now the proud administrator of a campus institutional repository known as UND Scholarly Commons. UND Scholarly Commons provides a space to maintain and preserve all research conducted at UND. That includes anything from copies of articles authored by faculty to campus data to texts digitized by UND Library (for example: our new digital edition of Elwyn B. Robinson’s History of North Dakota).

Questions? We’ve written a brief FAQ for you below:

What is UND Scholarly Commons? 

Scholarly Commons is UND’s new institutional repository. It is administered by the Chester Fritz Library and provides a unified institutional home for research conducted at UND.

Why should I deposit work in UND Scholarly Commons?

Do you want more eyes on your work? Would you like detailed monthly reports showing you where and when your work is being viewed?  Are you looking for a place to store grey literature, working papers, or data – scholarly work that doesn’t quite fit into traditional publishing workflows? UND Scholarly Commons provides all this and more.

I already share my work through discipline repositories such as arXiv and SSRN. Should I still deposit my work in UND Scholarly Commons? 

Yes, absolutely! Subject specific repositories such as arXiv are a great way to draw initial attention to your work among others in your field. However, institutional repositories often reach a broader readership, particularly open access repositories like ours that don’t require readers to create an account before being able to view your work.

My publisher retains copyright to my article. Is it legal for me to deposit my work in UND Scholarly Commons? 

It depends on your publisher. These days most publishers will permit authors to self-archive as part of their standard author agreements. If you have work you would like to deposit in the repository the library will work with you to confirm that you are legally able to display that work in UND Scholarly Commons.

I’m sold! What can I put in UND Scholarly Commons? 

Just about any kind of research output you have! UND Scholarly Commons is willing to accept articles, conference papers, white papers, data – if you have research work you’ve done at UND that you want others to see please contact us! Our Digital Initiatives Librarian, Zeineb Yousif is available to answer any questions you have.