Would you like to share your scholarship, preserve media from an event, share course content with a wider audience, or start your own open access journal? The URI Libraries’ Digital Initiatives unit offers these services, and more, to the URI community.
To see some of our work, check out our full list of digital collections or go directly to the institutional repository, DigitalCommons@URI.
Questions? Contact Julia Lovett, Digital Initiatives Librarian, at jalovett@uri.edu.
Contributing to DigitalCommons@URI
University of Rhode Island faculty, staff, and students are invited to share and archive their work through DigitalCommons@URI, the University’s institutional repository (IR). Submissions may include scholarly articles, research data, creative works, University and departmental publications, course projects, documentation of URI events, and more. Some current highlights of the repository include faculty and student scholarship, theses & dissertations, Senior Honors projects, library special collections, open course content, and material from URI centers and events. To submit content or propose a new content section, email digitalcommons-group@uri.edu.
Faculty can also self-submit published scholarly works by navigating to their department’s faculty publications section, and clicking on Submit Research. New submissions will be reviewed and approved by the IR administrators. Before making a submission, please search the repository to see if a record for the item already exists. If you would like to add a full-text PDF to an existing record, please send us the file at digitalcommons-group@uri.edu.
Open Access Policy Submissions
In March 2013, the URI Faculty Senate passed an Open Access Policy. Through the Policy, the faculty granted the University a license “… to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold, and to authorize others to do the same.” Simply put, even if you transfer your copyright in an article to a publisher, the University—and in effect, you as a faculty member—can still exercise your rights under copyright and make your work openly available. Each time you publish, remember to send a copy of your author manuscript (final submitted version) to the Libraries at oapolicy-group@uri.edu.
If you have any questions about the OA Policy, contact Julia Lovett, Digital Initiatives Librarian and Faculty Senate Designate for the Open Access Policy.
URI Pressbooks
Faculty and staff can access the Pressbooks open book creation platform by logging in using URI single sign-on. This tool lets you create and edit your own digital texts — such as textbooks, open educational resources, courseware, scholarly publications, reports, accessible PDFs, and more. More information can be found in the Pressbooks User Guide, the Pressbooks Youtube Channel, and the Pressbooks Live Webinars which are offered twice per month.
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Digital Initiatives unit coordinates with the URI Graduate School to receive and deposit URI theses and dissertations to DigitalCommons@URI for preservation and open access. Graduates have a choice of releasing their work immediately, or delaying the release up to two years. Authors will receive an email when their dissertation or thesis becomes available online.
Online Periodical/Journal Hosting
The University’s repository, DigitalCommons@URI, includes a full periodical publishing platform. Any URI faculty member, staff, or student may propose a new journal or move an existing journal onto this platform. See our Periodical Requirements & Request Form for more information. For a current example, see the Journal of Media Literacy Education.
Faculty Publications in DigitalCommons@URI
Faculty who are interested in contributing their past scholarly articles to DigitalCommons@URI (anything published prior to URI’s Open Access Policy of March 2013) may send their CVs or list of citations for review. We will check the journal policies, determine what may be deposited, and work with faculty to archive the correct versions of their past articles in DigitalCommons@URI.
JSTOR Forum
JSTOR Forum by Artstor is a cloud-based platform for storing and sharing digital collections, accessible to the public through JSTOR Community Collections and the ArtStor Public Collections. The URI Libraries have uploaded approximately 2,000 unique digital images, audio, and video to our JSTOR Forum collections, which are also available through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).
On-Demand Digitization
In many cases, we can digitize and provide patrons with copies of materials from the Libraries’ print collections. Some frequently requested items include URI theses, dissertations, and archival photographs.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Creation
We can create DOIs for URI faculty, researchers, staff and students who wish to assign a permanent identifier to their work, including datasets. DOIs are created and registered through Crossref. To request a DOI, contact Julia Lovett directly at jalovett@uri.edu.