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Boost Your Scholarly Profile: Institutional Repository

UTA ResearchCommons

The ResearchCommons (RC) is the digital institutional repository for UTA where you can showcase your work and expand your visibility for increased citations. The RC allows your work to be accessible to the global research community. You are welcome to submit research materials in almost any medium. Advantages to uploading your work to the RC include the following:

  • By providing a durable URL that can be shared with colleagues, the RC is an easy, free way to ensure that your research is permanently available to a global audience. This permanent URL also preserves your work in perpetuity in one centralized location. 
  • Works hosted in RC communities have a higher likelihood of being cited because of increased visibility in search engines and other harvesters, both popular and scholarly, which can result in an increased interest in research collaborations. 
  • It fulfills the requirements of federal funders, such as the NIH, to publish your research in an open access repository.
  • As an alternative publishing method, it provides . . .
    • Free access since your works are not hidden behind a paywall.  Even though your works are freely available, you still own the copyright to the works unless stipulated otherwise by publisher contracts.
    • Immediate access to your research with no need to wait several years for an article to be published.
  • The RC allows you to host self-created content for your courses or your colleagues.
  • It supports and promotes the open access and scholarly communication movements.

To save you time, the library will deposit your materials into the RC on your behalf.  We will check the copyright status of previously published materials, upload the materials we can legally archive in the RC, and describe the materials for you. Alternatively, you can upload your materials and curate your collection or designate a graduate research assistant to do so. We will be happy to get you started. 

What is an Institutional Repository?

An institutional repository is a single, online place where a community (in this case, the University of Texas Arlington) gathers and preserves scholarly output produced by its members and makes these materials available to the world (copyright permitting). This output may include both publications in peer-reviewed journals and materials not published elsewhere (datasets, pre-prints, post-prints, performance recordings, syllabi, theses and dissertations, book chapters etc).

 

Pro's and Con's of Online Networks Outside of UTA

Pros and Cons of Online Networks outside UTA