JSU Digital Commons | Guide for Faculty: Overview

What are the benefits?

JSU Digital Commons supports JSU's mission as our institution seeks to provide a transformational learning environment that also supports regional stewardship and innovation. As JSU Faculty, sharing your scholarship, research, creative work, and other forms of intellectual output fosters scholarly communication and collaboration across the board, and supports your students, your region, and your world. Specific benefits to you as a faculty member include:

• Increased Visibility -- open your scholarship up to a global audience
• Discoverability -- JSU Digital Commons is indexed in Google and other major search engines, making it easy for users to locate your content
• Demonstrated Impact -- the metrics JSU Digital Commons offers allow you to demonstrate the impact your scholarship is having as well as provide statistics for use with tenure and promotion portfolios
• Permanence & Stability -- JSU Digital Commons is a stable platform that offers persistent URLs you can use to access and share your content
• Grant Requirements -- many grants have data-sharing requirements; JSU Digital Commons provides an easy way to meet such criteria

What services do we offer for faculty?

JSU Digital Commons offers faculty a venue to deposit and showcase their scholarship, creative work, and other forms of intellectual output. We can provide:

• Assistance with uploading and submitting your content. This guide will give you the basics, but if at any time you have questions or experience difficulties, please Contact Us. We're here to help.
• A variety of metrics on your content -- who is viewing/reading/using your scholarly and creative work, and where these users are geographically located. We can help you tailor automatic reports that can be emailed to you on a regular basis with these statistics, showing the impact of your scholarship.
• Support for a variety of file types -- while most content is submitted in MS Word, RTF, or PDF format, JSU Digital Commons can stream video for you and also host a variety of associated files with your main content (eg, data sets in Excel to go with a peer-reviewed journal article, PowerPoints and handouts to complement a streaming video of a presentation)
• A space to house and provide public access to Open Educational Resources
• An online presence for conferences, symposia, and other events (including workflows for abstract submission and peer-review)
• An archive for university events (eg, Faculty Commons lectures and development sessions)
• Hosting (including workflows for submission and peer-review) for open-access journals 
• Opportunities for you to showcase your students' work and accomplishments (eg, collections of student graphic design work, study abroad collections)

If you have a service in mind, something you were hoping JSU Digital Commons could do for you but you don't see it listed here, Contact Us. We welcome feedback and will do our utmost to evolve our services to best support and meet the needs of JSU's faculty.

Who can contribute?

JSU Digital Commons is open to submission of content from JSU faculty, staff, students, or any University department, unit or organization. Those who collaborate with the University in an official capacity may also be permitted to contribute content. 

What kinds of content can I submit and how do I do that? 

You can submit through the JSU Digital Commons website. The process is simple; see the tabs at the top of this guide for a step-by-step. Typical content types include, but are not limited to:

• Publications – Journal articles, books, book chapters, etc. These may include previously-published articles/chapters, pre-prints and post-prints.
• Theses & Dissertations – The Library seeks to preserve and provide access to all University theses and dissertations. The Library works in concert with Graduate Studies and individual departments to solicit and provide access to this content.
• Lectures & Seminars
• Conference Papers, Posters & Presentations – Digital versions of conference papers and posters, as well as video/audio of conference presentations and supporting materials (eg, PowerPoints, handouts).
• Open Access Journals – Open access journals produced by JSU faculty, staff, or students.
• Campus-based publications – Campus-based publications (eg, newsletters, institutional reports, etc.) will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
• Open Educational Resources – The repository may be used to house University course-based information and open educational resources.
• Data sets – Size and format limitations may be placed on data sets, and they must be complete, appropriately formatted for use, and cleared for access.
• Podcasts – Podcasts that fall within collection scope may be considered for inclusion.

If you don't see the type of content you would like to submit on this list, feel free to Contact Us.