The Digital Commons Network – Referral Traffic Doubles for DC Repositories

Here at bepress we are thrilled that the Digital Commons Network (DCN) offers our subscribers an open scholarly resource which also significantly increases repository downloads.

We know that the Digital Commons Network provides opportunities for scholarly researchers, but it is also an enormously useful tool for public libraries, high school students, and researchers outside of academia. Even better, the DCN successfully drives all this traffic to your repository as these numbers demonstrate:

• DCN referrals as a percent of all referrals grew from 4% to 8% this year.
• Many repositories show over 92% more traffic this year from DCN referrals.
• The DCN now has over 1,187,143 total objects, up from 780,245 objects in 2013.
• Bepress has added 56 new disciplines to the DCN.

At bepress, we did outreach work to let public libraries know about the wealth of open access scholarly research available in the Digital Commons Network. Thanks to your hard work populating the Network, the public now has access to more than one million records of free, open access scholarly research – much of it funded by taxpayers. We’ve also heard from high schools and community colleges that can’t afford costly subscriptions who have adopted the Network as a valuable research tool.

The DCN also showcases the incredible work you are doing to contribute to public knowledge. If you know of any public libraries, community colleges, or high school libraries in your area that would benefit from the free scholarship available on the Digital Commons Network, give them a shout!

Learn more about the DCN in bepress President and CEO Jean-Gabriel Bankier’s recent paper.