Institutional Repository: ODU Digital Commons

Research is meant to be discovered!

ODU Digital Commons (digitalcommons.odu.edu) is an institutional repository where the scholarly and creative works of the Old Dominion University community are captured, archived, and showcased. Materials can include journal articles (preprints, postprints, and publisher copies), book chapters, research projects, technical reports, conference papers, university publications, datasets, theses/dissertations, multimedia presentations (PowerPoint presentations, podcasts, images, video) and more.

With ODU Digital Commons, you can:

• REACH broader audiences as access to your scholarly work is expanded. Digital Commons offers powerful dissemination that complements traditional publishing and expedites immediate access to your scholarly work. The open-access platform is optimized for visibility through Google and other search engines, making your work more frequently cited, more visible, and more likely to have greater impact.
• DEMONSTRATE your research impact with monthly usage statistics provided by Digital Commons. This can facilitate the tenure and promotion process.
• ARCHIVE your scholarly and creative work, so that you know where you can always find it.  You retain all previously-held rights to your works. The Digital Commons accepts your copyright ownership and allows you to freely and legally link to your research output.
• HOST a peer-reviewed journal or conference with built-in publishing tools (NOTE: As of August 2024, we are not accepting new journal requests until further notice).

BENEFITS TO THE UNIVERSITY:

1. Increases the global visibility of ODU research along with scholarly and creative output
2. Supports student success
3. Provides long-term archiving and preservation of ODU research and other works
4. Can be used in recruitment opportunities for new faculty and students

BENEFITS TO FACULTY:

1. Provides online open access to published and unpublished works (24/7; in all formats) from a centralized system
2. Showcases and promotes faculty scholarly works and research through Google and Google Scholar
3. Provides online access to ‘grey information resources’, resources that are "not controlled by commercial publishing" (UPenn Libraries, Grey Literature in the Health Sciences: Overview)
4. Satisfies funder’s mandate for faculty to provide open access archiving for sponsored research
5. Allows access to monthly readership reports and an author dashboard
6. Provides online infrastructure for faculty to self-deposit works
7. Provides the infrastructure to host conferences and symposia