6 Reasons to Add Your Work to the JMU Scholarly Commons

Posted on: November 27, 2023

Find out how you can increase the visibility and accessibility of your work by adding it to JMU’s institutional repository, JMU Scholarly Commons. 

By adding your work to JMU Scholarly Commons:

  1. More people will read it. Posting your work to the JMU Scholarly Commons allows it to show up in a Google Scholar or Google search, and it’s not hidden behind a paywall. That means more eyes on your work from readers around the world! 
  2. More people will cite it. Studies have shown that publishing open access articles can increase citations to your work!
  3. It’s free to use! Scholarly Commons is an open access institutional repository managed by a team in JMU Libraries. That means readers don’t have to pay, and neither do you!
  4. It doesn’t have to be the only place your work appears. Some journals allow you to add previously published papers to an institutional repository. We can help you figure out if your published works can also be added to the Scholarly Commons.
  5. It’s stable. If you have conference proceedings, white papers, or academic works that you would like to make available for researchers (or to link from a resume or CV), consider putting them on the Scholarly Commons. Not only does this create a stable link, but you will also benefit from the university’s infrastructure to help manage and preserve your scholarly products.
  6. It can help you comply with funding requirements. If your research is funded by certain government agencies or funders, the resulting publications and supporting data must be made publicly accessible within one year of publication. By 2025, this mandate will expand to include all U.S. government funders and will require faster public sharing. We can help you understand what this policy change (outlined in this White House memo) means for you. Please contact Yasmeen Shorish, the Libraries’ Director of Scholarly Communications for more information on this.

Did you know?

  • JMU Scholarly Commons features over 25,000 scholarly works by JMU faculty, staff, and students.
  • Readers worldwide have downloaded items from Scholarly Commons nearly 1 million times in the last 12 months and over 4.5 million times overall!
  • The most downloaded paper in the JMU Scholarly Commons is currently Pulitzer Prize Photograph Brings Awareness-At a Price from the e-Vision Journal of First-Year Writing.

Learn More

Need help with the JMU Scholarly Commons? Request a consultation on publishing and repository services.

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