Dr Shawn Martin, Head of Scholarly Communication, Copyright and Publishing at the Libraries, addresses what that means for diverse, global communities. “Researchers collaborate with others across the world, and those global partners often work in countries without subscription access to expensive journals. These international collaborations underscore the need for a broader readership that’s more inclusive of anyone not working or studying in large research universities.” As an example, in fields like medicine, Dr Martin says, “authors may want patients with certain medical conditions to read about the latest treatments or better understand their diagnosis,” which regularly comes at a financial cost to access.
Hosting research and scholarship on a public-access platform like the Commons provides a no-cost alternative. Though not Dartmouth’s only open-access option for sharing and publishing scholarship, the Commons is an additional space where members of the Dartmouth community can host their scholarship for anyone to access.
Benefit to Local & Non-Academic Communities
In a 2023 panel hosted by the Medical & Health Sciences Libraries on open access, Prof Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, who also has some of her scholarship available on the Commons, expressed the “ethical imperative” to share information and knowledge. As a medical anthropologist, she feels a greater responsibility to do so, particularly when that research was made possible by the communities the findings could most benefit. Bill Nelson, emeritus professor who was also on the panel, shared how ensuring public access to research is part of a larger equation. He expressed that additional options and pathways to widely share Dartmouth’s “good and important work” and “to reach new readers and communities worldwide” were critical.
For Prof Kotz, Dartmouth Digital Commons is an extension of his preferred “open” approach to publishing his research and data. Particularly related to the computer science field, sharing everything from code to data is a long-held practice and an integral part of open science and open access practices. “I’m one of those who wants to have my research available even when a federal agency does not require it. I often choose to make my work open access by paying the publishers to enable that feature.” Whenever possible, he then uploads his research into the Commons to widen its availability. He adds, “More and more, researchers are required to provide their code and data when they submit their research as part of open data.”
Cross-sharing scholarship in the Commons and other open platforms exemplifies both Nelson’s call to share Dartmouth’s “good and important work” to reach audiences worldwide and Prof Carpenter-Song’s point about research collaborators and their communities having access to the research produced by and for them.
Showcasing Student & Faculty Scholarship
Whether a tenured professor or student, Dartmouth Digital Commons provides members of the Dartmouth community a space to publish their work openly and easily. For example, Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies embedded a process where graduate students share their MS theses and PhD dissertations to the Commons. Departments like Computer Science also encourage undergraduates to post their theses. In doing so, students gain a better understanding of how the research ecosystem works when undertaking the process to publish their academic papers. By hosting theses and dissertations, the Commons, Prof Kotz thinks, gives “Dartmouth the opportunity to showcase student-led scholarship, promoting the potential for future students to say, ‘I want to come to Dartmouth because its students are doing really cool work’.”
For faculty, depositing their scholarship in the Commons can help them meet some funding requirements. Additionally, the “Share Your Paper” submission tool makes the process easier by entering their work’s digital object identifier (DOI) to start a submission. Researchers can also share symposia, proceedings, and other forms of normally unpublished scholarship, reaching a worldwide audience that normally would have been limited to people in a room on Dartmouth’s campus.
While there are limitations to the medium of academic scholarship uploaded (it supports portable document format/PDF documents) into Dartmouth Digital Commons, this open access platform is an avenue for making Dartmouth scholarship publicly available. With greater interest in public access, now is an exciting time to utilize the great resources Dartmouth has to make its scholarship available anywhere to anyone in communities worldwide.
