Maureen Schanglen, E-scholarship and Communications Manager for the University of Dayton’s e-Commons, recently posted “eCommons: Putting UD’s Scholarly Work on the Map,” which articulates the IR’s value from faculty members’ perspectives and serves as a testament to Maureen’s successful faculty engagement. Two faculty members respond to dramatic download numbers in their monthly author reports. In Maureen’s words:
“It’s rewarding to see that people are accessing my publications though eCommons,” said Laura Vorachek, associate professor of English, whose academic papers have been downloaded more than 650 times since December 2014. “It’s especially validating when an article I had a hard time getting published is one of my most downloaded publications.”
“Academic Integrity: A Saudi Student Perspective,” a paper by counselor education and human services clinical faculty member Nasser Razek, is the single most popular paper in the repository. It’s been downloaded over 1,200 times since it was uploaded in December 2014 and was a source for a June 2015 story in InsideHigherEd about a cheating scandal at a Montana institution. Since then, he’s had new opportunities for collaboration with other leading scholars on the subject.
“eCommons has been a wonderful gateway for sharing my research,” Razek said. “The portal provides me with a monthly report of readership, so I was able to track how many readers downloaded my work. It also enabled me to connect with other scholars from Britain, the Philippines and South Africa. One of these has already developed into a bi-national study.”
Maureen adds that content in eCommons “is highly discoverable worldwide, evidence of which appears in faculty members’ monthly download reports.” We commend Maureen’s faculty engagement work and encourage others to check out the new author dashboard, which includes even more download metrics.
