Digital USD: the University of San Diego's Open Access Institutional Repository
Digital USD (digital.sandiego.edu) publishes, preserves, and provides open online access to the scholarship, creative work, original data sets, and archival material produced by or affiliated with the University of San Diego community. By curating and sharing these historical and current intellectual activities, Digital USD showcases and connects the unique contributions of the university’s faculty, staff, and students to an audience worldwide, fueling new research, discoveries, and knowledge.
Digital USD supports Envisioning 2024: The Strategic Plan for the University of San Diego, with special attention to the following pathways:
- Anchor Institution: Digital USD is an institution-wide, collaborative endeavor, featuring a wide range of projects across campus, as well as partnerships with the local community and outside organizations
- Engaged Scholarship: Digital USD shares the academic excellence of the university with the entire world, promoting the discovery, integration, and formation of new knowledge
- Access and Inclusion: Digital USD promotes free, open, unrestricted access to and discovery of its materials, and seeks to include a diversity of voices and perspectives
- Practice Changemaking: Digital USD celebrates changemaking by showcasing endeavors characterized by active citizenship, positive social change, innovation, and community engagement
Can I Post My Work in Digital USD?
Publishers vary in regards to their policies about posting published articles in institutional repositories. To help determine whether you can reuse, distribute, or archive a published article in an open access repository (such as Digital USD), start by searching the journal title in SHERPA/RoMEO. This database contains information on reusing your published works and links directly to publishers' policies.
Pay close attention to the following:
- whether the journal offers a paid open access option
- what version of an article authors are allowed to archive (pre-print / pre-refereeing, post-print / final draft post-refereeing, or publisher's PDF)
- whether there is an time restriction (embargo) between when the article was published and when it can be archived
Benefits of Posting Your Work in Digital USD
Access: Materials in Digital USD are openly accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Open access promotes global information exchange, networking, knowledge building, and a more equitable information culture.
Reach: Researchers and students worldwide will discover your work through Google searches and you will be able to see where in the world your readers are located.
Impact: Fuel the creation of new knowledge as readers discover, download and cite your work. Watch your download count grow larger every day!
Control: Retain your copyright, and assert how your work may be shared and re-used by others by applying a Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/) license.
Preserve: Provide a permanent home for your work, and share its link on your website, résumé/CV, social media accounts, etc.
Enhance: Digital USD tells the story of the University of San Diego, raising the university’s profile and enhancing its reputation.
What kinds of materials are in Digital USD?
Digital USD includes a wide variety of materials from across campus, including but not limited to:
- Faculty scholarship (e.g., publications, creative work, research data)
- Student scholarship (e.g., theses and dissertations, capstone projects, undergraduate work)
- Archival material (e.g., postcard images, yearbooks, finding aids)
- Newspapers and newsletters
- Presentations from the annual Digital Initiatives Symposium
- Publications of university centers and institutes