What Is It?
The ResearchCommons (RC) is the digital archive for the University of Texas at Arlington. Here you can showcase your work and expand your visibility for increased citations. The RC allows your work to be accessible not only to your college but to the global research community. You are welcome to submit research materials in almost any medium.
What Will It Do For Me?
- The RC is the perfect open access tool for members to showcase their research (you can link from your RC community to your Research Profile page thus eliminating the need for maintaining bibliographies on multiple sites). Statistics are available for each individual item in the RC so you can easily check to see how often your work is being accessed.
- There is little to no work for faculty therefore making it easy for them to participate.
- 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.
- The permanent and durable URL also preserves your work in one centralized location.
- RC communities have a higher likelihood of being cited due to increased visibility in search engines and other harvesters, both popular and scholarly, which can result in an increased interest in research collaborations. One study has shown that open access articles are cited 44% more times or higher than non-open access articles.[1]
- Fulfills the requirements of federally funded grants, such as the NIH, to publish your research in an open access repository.
- Free access since your works are not hidden behind a subscription based provider. Even though your works are freely available, you still maintain copyright to the works unless stipulated otherwise by publisher contracts.
- Immediate access to your research, no need to wait several years for an article to be published. If allowed by your publisher’s copyright agreement or through the use of a creative commons license, library staff can add your pre- or post-print article to the RC in just a matter of minutes.
- Allows you to host self-created content for your courses or your colleagues.
- All mediums of your intellectual and scholarly output can be added to the RC.
- Recruitment and public relations tool.
- -Showcase what your students have accomplished
- -Showcase your areas of expertise to new audiences
- -Showcase your works to potential funding agencies and other universities
- Inter-college bragging rights.
- Promotes the open access and scholarly communication movements.
[1] Norris, M., Oppenheim, C., & Rowland, F. (2008). The citation advantage of open-access articles. Journal Of The American Society For Information Science & Technology, 59(12), 1963-1972.
