Benefits of Digital Commons
Increase your work's reach and impact
Including your work in Digital Commons will help it be accessed by researchers and users across the world via Google, Google Scholar, Bing, and other major search engines. We have consistently high Google rankings, which will help increase the visibility of your research.
You'll also receive a stable web address that you can add to your CV, résumé, or portfolio. This is particularly helpful for unpublished materials like conference posters, student capstones, and presentations, which may otherwise not be available online.
Receive personalized use metrics
Including your work in Digital Commons will provide you with rich metrics about your work:
- PlumX Metrics: Every item in Digital Commons comes with automatically embedded PlumX Metrics, which detail citations, downloads and views, media mentions, captures, and social media likes, shares, and comments. These metrics are publicly available from the item's homepage and can be access by hovering over or clicking on the PlumX widget on the right-hand side of the page.
- Author Dashboard: Emailed to you monthly, the author dashboard is a private view of how your work is being accessed. You'll see detailed information on download counts and where your downloads are coming from.
Support open access
All works in Digital Commons are published open access (OA), which means they're made freely available online for anyone to access. However, the re-use of open access works varies based on copyright status. Items protected by copyright have legal limits on how they can be used, but items in the public domain or published with a Creative Commons license allow much greater re-use. For questions regarding copyright status of material in the Digital Commons, contact archives@lasalle.edu.
Promote student and departmental work
La Salle faculty, staff, and students create incredible work, and one of the primary goals of Digital Commons is to put a spotlight on that scholarship. Digital Commons can be used not only to showcase an individual's work but also the collective work of departments and programs on campus. This approach allows current and prospective students to view past work by their program's graduates. It also allows research to be made available outside of La Salle, to potential employers, researchers at other institutions, and the general public.
