New digital repository to make scholarly research available to public
To support the idea that publicly funded research should be broadly and widely disseminated and easily accessible to the general public, Florida State University has developed the "DigiNole Commons Virtual Repository for Electronic Scholarship," an online venue for the university's faculty to store and showcase its research.
What's more, the FSU Faculty Senate has approved an open-access resolution to formalize the university's support for the principle of open access.
Sponsored by the Faculty Senate Library Committee's Task Force on Scholarly Communication, the open-access resolution endorses the storage and preservation of scholarly publications. It is an expression of support for faculty who choose to use the repository and is an early step in the University Libraries' initiative to explore new models of disseminating scholarly research produced by Florida State faculty members. Florida State's Faculty Senate is the first faculty-governing body in Florida to pass an open-access resolution.
"These types of policies will be very important for the future of higher education, especially the role of scholarship in the university and in the public mind," said Micah Vandegrift, scholarly-communications project manager for the University Libraries. "Open access to scholarly works will provide valuable knowledge to society, which is something we can all support."
The resolution supports the university's mission to "preserve, expand and disseminate knowledge" and to provide broad access to institutional resources and services. University Libraries will play an important role in implementing and supporting the resolution through the development of the DigiNole Commons and will work closely with Florida State faculty members to fulfill the goals of the resolution.
"The support of the faculty will help the library as it moves forward with implementation of a digital repository," said Matt Goff, an associate professor of religion and co-director of the Task Force on Scholarly Communication. "The goal is to have a repository that will preserve and provide easy, online access to the scholarship of the FSU faculty."
In addition to creating the DigiNole Commons, Florida State has joined the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI), a recently formed group of universities that support open access to scholarly research. Other COAPI institutions include Duke University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and the University of Kansas.
At Florida State, the mission of the University Libraries is to drive academic excellence and success by fostering engagement through extensive collections, dynamic information resources, transformative collaborations, innovative services and supportive environments for FSU and the broader scholarly community.
"These types of policies will be very important for the future of higher education, especially the role of scholarship in the university and in the public mind."
Micah Vandegrift
Florida State University Libraries