The Leatherby Libraries is pleased to announce that Chapman University Digital Commons has just achieved its latest milestone: one million downloads!

What is Chapman University Digital Commons? Launched in Fall 2014, Chapman University Digital Commons is Chapman University’s institutional repository. In simpler terms, it is an open access platform for the scholarship, publications, archives, and creative expression of Chapman University’s faculty, students, and staff.

Through Chapman University Digital Commons, we have made over 27,000 articles, book chapters, dissertations, theses, undergraduate student works, conference materials, data sets, and a large portion of the university’s special collections and archives freely available to readers in 226 countries and territories around the world (and growing!). In a time when so many people are working and studying from home, and yet a lot of important research is otherwise locked behind expensive commercial paywalls, the importance of openly sharing these works for learning, teaching, and scholarship cannot be overstated.

 

How Did We Get This Far?

The entire Chapman University community shares in the success of Chapman University Digital Commons! We have made it this far because of faculty sharing their publication histories and new article alerts,  undergraduate students sharing their Student Scholar Symposium posters or final papers, graduate students sharing their dissertations and theses, and the diligent staff in the Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections and Archives digitizing and sharing materials about the university’s history and numerous other photograph and manuscript collections. Below is a timeline of some other Chapman University Digital Commons milestones and a list of interesting facts about the content we’ve been able to share through it.

 

Chapman University Digital Commons Timeline of Milestones

 

Interesting Highlights of Chapman University Digital CommonsReeves Hall at Chapman College in 1964

 

Want to Be Part of the Next Million?

It’s never too late to get involved in Chapman University Digital Commons! Making your work open access through this platform not only benefits the university and our wider communities, but you as authors and researchers as well! Among other things, depositing your work in Chapman University Digital Commons can help you comply with funding mandates, and open access leads to higher citation rates.

Faculty need simply to send their CVs or research announcements to the Coordinator of Scholarly Communications & Electronic Resources, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker, at laughtin@chapman.edu. We can host a wide variety of materials besides traditional articles, including data sets, conference materials, audiovisual files, and more.

We can also host exemplary student work to showcase the great students who make this university what it is. If a space does not already exist for student work in your discipline, then please contact the Coordinator of Scholarly Communications & Electronic Resources, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker, at laughtin@chapman.edu.

And if you have any other ideas as we continue to grow Chapman University Digital Commons toward our next one million downloads, please reach out to us with those as well!