Institutional Repository

The development of institutional repositories (IRs) is tied to the "Open Access" movement in higher education. As subscriptions to important scholarly journals continued to soar throughout the late 1990s and into the next decade, faculty, and librarians sought ways to exercise greater control over the access and dissemination of their institutional scholarly work. The idea of each institution providing free and "open access" to the work of their own scholars was thought to be an approach that, not only would be more cost effective than subscriptions, but would allow the work to enjoy wider visibility. (from ProQuest Libguides)

Mission 

ScholarsCommons is FGCU's portal for showcasing scholarship, expertise, and activities by our community of scholars. ScholarsCommons aids in the transmission of knowledge by allowing the public to have a window into our community and its work.

Content 

ScholarsCommons collects unique scholarly content produced by the FGCU community. Our current collection includes FGCU theses and dissertations dating back to 2001 and a growing collection of research papers from campus institutes and departments. ScholarsCommons accommodates both born-digital materials and items that have been converted to digital, including text, images, audio, video, 3D data, and will add other formats as they become relevant in the future.

Faculty can deposit their research and scholarship (either via linked citations or files) into their respective faculty profiles by signing into ScholarsCommons. Deposits can include: 

• Peer-reviewed publications (journal articles or book chapters) 
• Research materials 
• Curriculum materials (course syllabi, multimedia instruction, etc.) 
• Conference papers 
• Research posters 
• Music scores 
• Performances 
• Capstone projects 

If you have any questions about what works are appropriate for deposit/permitted by copyright in ScholarsCommons, please contact Scholarly Communications Librarian Kaleena Rivera at krivera @ fgcu.edu.