At the ACPHS Library, Ashley Hardesty, Kate Wantuch and Rob Carter show off the online Research Commons, the completion of a seven-year effort.
Have you ever wished for an easy way to share your research and promote your students’ work? Or perhaps been interested in a colleague’s scholarly activity but had no easy way to access it?
Then here’s some good news: the Research Commons has launched. ACPHS’ new online scholarly activity database is live, completing a seven-year effort and fulfilling a goal of the 2019-2024 Strategic Plan to create a digital institutional repository to archive scholarly output. It also establishes the foundation for tackling future goals in the 2024-2029 Strategic Plan currently being finalized.
“As we strive to promote breakthrough research, a key goal in our next strategic plan, Research Commons will strengthen our core research infrastructure, building on our past and present successes,” said Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Anuja Ghorpade, who has led the current strategic planning process.
The repository hosts the research completed during faculty members’ tenure at ACPHS. Student authors are also included and searchable, with an asterisk designating their status.
The benefits of the Research Commons are multifold. The archive offers an easy way to promote researchers’ work individually while also raising awareness of the volume and diversity of scholarly activity at ACPHS. It helps researchers stay abreast of work by putting the latest scholarly advancements at their fingertips, while also facilitating collaboration. Researchers additionally get access to information about readers accessing their work.
What’s more, researchers are entirely in control of the content they share. And the Research Commons was produced at minimum cost, with free, open-source software.
It did take a lot of work to make it all this easy for contributors and users, nonetheless. Led by Systems and Metadata Librarian Kate Wantuch, staff in the library and Information Technology Services have worked diligently since 2017 to bring the Research Commons to fruition. They include Network Administrator Rob Carter and LMS/Web Applications Administrator Ashley Hardesty.
While much of the labor-intensive, hands-on work of populating Research Commons was completed by Wantuch herself, she is characteristically modest about the achievement.
“Everyone who helped with the development of the Research Commons should be proud of the collective effort and the impact it will have on faculty and student success,” Wantuch said.
To date, nearly 40 percent of faculty have given Wantuch approval to include their publications on Research Commons. That’s considered a solid buy-in by industry standards, but Wantuch hopes more faculty will give their approval to add further value to the repository.
As for the site itself, expect it to grow with the times and with added knowledge.
“This is going to be a fluid site with lots of changes,” Wantuch said.