This year, the Library has made great strides in supporting open access to scholarly information on campus. In contrast to the traditional model of publishing academic research in expensive journals and books, the Open Access model makes articles and books freely available online.
Open Access integrates with SCU’s mission of social justice because it allows all scholars access to high-quality research, regardless of institutional affiliation. We are proud to stand with the American Library Association and Association of College and Research Libraries by including Open Access as part of our strategic plan.
We help SCU scholars share their research globally through Scholar Commons, the university’s institutional repository. We provide a permanent online home for research by SCU affiliates. Anyone can find articles in Scholar Commons through a Google search and download them for free. Since 2015, documents uploaded by SCU scholars have been viewed over 150,000 times by users in 213 countries.
This is an effective way for faculty, staff, and students to share their research with a broad audience. For example, University Library Circulation Supervisor Abraham Negash's research paper, “The Origin and Development of Tigrinya Language Publications”, has been downloaded over 1,400 times. As a result of this visibility, a book publisher has offered to publish Negash's further research, and he has been invited to give talks on the Tigrinya language.
We are just beginning to realize the potential of Scholar Commons to amplify the reach of important research conducted at SCU, and to equalize access to scholarly information across the world.