How are we promoting open access here at Connecticut College? How can you get involved in this global movement on a local level?
You already are! Connecticut College is one of a few progressive institutions that have formally adopted an open access policy. In 2013 faculty approved the “Open Access Policy of the Connecticut College Faculty” stating that the faculty “is committed to disseminating the results of its research and scholarly as widely as possible.”
In addition, Digital Commons @ Connecticut College, our institutional repository, makes participating in the policy easy for you. The repository stores your published work (if permissible by the publisher), archives the work, makes it discoverable through Google Scholar and other popular search engines, and reliably accessible to scholars regardless of institutional affiliation. Over the past year, student and faculty research papers in the repository have been downloaded 169,982 times. Who knows what new information will be created based on the research we made available? We are proud to help make your research openly available to scholars, independent researchers, students and lifelong learners around the world.
Don’t see your research in Digital Commons? Simply send Ben Panciera your CV or fill out the manuscript submission form on CamelWeb and his team will do the necessary research to determine what can be made available and post it for you. You may be surprised at what can be included – most publishers, including Elsevier, Springer, and most university presses allow authors to place a version of their article in their school’s institutional repository.
Our next post for Open Access Week will focus knowing your rights before and after publishing.
Missed our previous Open Access Posts? Read Happy Open Access Week and What is Open Access?
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