Guides: Scholarly Communication & Institutional Repository: PVAMU Digital Common Services

Available Services

Services available from J B Coleman Library at Prairie View A & M University Digital Commons include:

INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY - Digital Commons provides global access to the digital scholarly and cultural resources. Our staff regularly monitor the most popular publication resources for new research and creative work by our own faculty. When a work is located it is added to the repository along with descriptive information which will enable it to be easily located by internet users. We ensures that all copyright and publishers licensing agreements are followed. Faculty may also submit their own work and our staff will review it and add descriptive information if needed.

FACULTY PROFILES - An online presence is crucial for our faculty and researchers. Digital Commons Staff will help to create an online profile in our Faculty Works portal for each faculty author featuring their body of work along with a brief bio, their research interests and other information. Faculty have the option to monitor readership of their work, communicate with their readers and update their profiles.

RESEARCH DATA HOSTING AND CURATION - Providing access to research data is increasing important. Digital Commons provides supports all file types and formats and has unlimited storage capacity. Our staff is available to help you define you research data needs and ensure that your data is secured for the future.

ePUBLISHING - Digital Commons enables faculty, students and others create and manage online journals, books and conference proceedings. Complete publication services are available including online submission, peer-review and editorial management.

Bepress Reference Guides & Videos

Digital Commons Discipline Taxonomy

Selected Work Gallery

Digital commons University's Open Access Journal Examples

Some examples of Symposium event communities:

a) https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hpers/

b) https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/symposium/

c) https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/fulbright_symposium/

d) https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/surf/

Some math-related journals here:

a) https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/ujmm/

b) https://scholarworks.umt.edu/tme/

c) https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/

d) https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/

Some agriculture-related journals:

a) https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/rurals/

b) https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/utscience/

PVAMU Digital Commons Hosting Platform

About Digital Commons@PVAMU

Is a cloud-based Institutional Repository platform that will empower Students, Staff, and faculty members at Prairie View A&M University to showcase their expertise, research, and scholarship? These platforms offer the following services

(a) Selected Works Gallery. It showcases PVAMU staff and faculty members’ scholarly output. It is basically the staff or faculty member’s scholarly page where they can post their research publications, the research they are currently working on, etc.

(b) Theses, Dissertations, & Capstone Projects. This is a collection of theses, dissertations and capstone projects produced at PVAMU from 1939 to the present.

(c) Open Access Journals. Will help PVAMU to eliminate expensive printing costs and distribution costs of the print journals it produces; Increase worldwide usability of articles published in the open access journals that PVAMU publishes. Among the journals that will be hosted includes the Student Research Journal that is produced by the College of Agriculture and Human Sciences; Pursue: Undergraduate Research Journal; Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal.

(d) Open Education Resources (OER). This will be a collection of all Openstax (OER) in the form of preexisting textbooks or remixed by professors into a unique collection designed specifically for their class.

(e) Archives. This is a collection that includes PVAMU Yearbooks, paintings, posters, newspapers, catalogs, among other archival collections.

(f) Datasets. This will be a collection of Research data submitted to the repository after completion of research projects. This data is contributed to the repository by individual researchers.

(g) Conferences. It provides an intuitive tool to help in the planning, promoting conferences and events.

To learn more about Digital Commons@PVAMU (Institutional Repository), See our Authors FAQ for commonly asked questions about this Institutional Repository. Learn more about Author Rights for resources submitted to this Institutional Repository.

Selected Works Gallery

What is SelectedWorks Gallery?

PVAMU Digital Commons repository is institutionally focused in adding all the resources like faculty publications, grants, research that can be uploaded under Selected Works Gallery that provides faculty with a personal sites to which one may add a CV, areas of interest, and highlight scholarly publications etc.. A Selected Works Gallery profile will enhance the discoverability of your projects, presentations, and publications, whether they are deposited in the PVAMU Digital Commons repository or are available via a link to a third-party site. A SelectedWorks profile may be as brief or as thorough as you wish. You may log in to update and edit the site yourself at any time.

All authors, whether they are a faculty member or librarian publishing a monograph, a grant-funded researcher publishing a scholarly article, need to be familiar with the basic concepts of copyright and have an awareness of the options for publishing, posting, archiving and distributing their scholarship.

Advantages of Selected Works Gallery

Advantages, Functionality, and Tools

Selected Works Gallery offers an easy and authoritative way to make your scholarly activities more widely discoverable
Customizable headings for categories of scholarly and artistic endeavors
You'll receive monthly readership reports via email.
Ranking – Selected Works Gallery sites often rank higher than personal web pages in Google and other search engines because of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies employed by Bepress.

Can Selected Works be customized?
You can customize Selected Works sites in several ways. Typical options include: Your photo, an introductory paragraph (brief bio. or personal information), your CV, contact information, honors and awards, areas of expertise, courses taught and links to additional resources.

The library recommends that you have a picture, your CV and your contact information as a minimum. Please note that layout and design are not customizable, only content.

Statistics provided by Selected Works
Once there is content available on your site you will receive monthly download reports.

What happens if I leave PVAMU?
You can keep your Selected Works site up and available when you leave an institution because all content posted is perpetually available. If your new institution also has a Selected Works account, then you can change your current Selected Works account to reflect the look and feel of your new institution.

How to Begin

Faculty are welcome to take a hands-on approach, or take full advantage of this library service.
To get started or learn more about establishing a Selected Works Gallery profile, please contact Digitalcommons@PVAMU.EDU
If you'd like to create an account or log in to an existing account to update please see https://works.bepress.com/account/register/
Bepress has provided a SelectedWorks Guide for Authors that provides step-by-step instructions for creating a site on your own.

Getting Started

1. Sign Up Select the Menu button at the top of the page and select Sign Up https://works.bepress.com/login/ to create an account. Fill out the required fields starting with your PVAMU email. Select your URL (this cannot be changed later) and institutional affiliation. If you already have a SelectedWorks page, you can affiliate it to your email.

2. Add biographical information to your profile. Enter an introductory paragraph at the top of the page along with a photo. Select the About tab to include information about yourself including: positions held, your cv, courses taught, research interests, and awards.

3. Adding content. There are several different ways to add content. Begin by clicking the Add work button and select from the following options:

Upload a File -Create Metadata and Upload your own versions of your work. Always be sure to check the copyright permissions of any work that has been published elsewhere.
Add a Link - Link out to your work. This is especially useful if your publisher will not allow you upload a copy of your work.
Add Metadata - Include descriptive information only for your work.
Import works - This will search Digital Commons and identify any papers that might be yours. Click the box next to each title that is yours; choose the appropriate document type; and choose appropriate display categories. Then, click "Import." The paper will then appear on your site.

***We recommend you use the Import function when you first create your profile.***

Helpful documents and links

SelectedWorks Flyer (A flyer for Selected Works Gallery highlighted by UNF (University of North Florida) faculty.
Introduction to Expert Galleries - https://www.bepress.com/reference_guide_sw/introduction-expert-galleries/

How we check copyright

We research copyright permissions for every citation using SHERPA/RoMEO and other avenues to locate the copyright holder and follows publishers' policies before we upload any published work. See which publishers allow authors to deposit their PDFs in repositories here. Many faculty now check funders' open access polices before applying for grants or funds to see whether or when they will be able to deposit their research in their university's repository. Read more in this article, "Will They Let Me Do That? A Brief Introduction to Copyright and Institutional Repositories" by Harrison W. Inefuku of Iowa State University.

Selected Works Gallery Guide for Authors