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Digital Commons at Otterbein

Digital Commons @ Otterbein is an institutional repository of a collection of digital materials that captures and preserves the intellectual output of the university community.

How do I get started?

Other Opportunities for you:

Promote your research

  • Articles deposited in repositories are more visible and get cited more often
  • DigitalCommons@Otterbein is Google optimized
  • We will help you check your rights to your published work

Disseminate Research Results

  • Get help with data management plans
  • Store reports and other materials in the Digital Commons
  • Get advice on the best places to store datasets

Collect and Share Images and Sound

  • You can create oral history collections in the Digital Commons
  • You can create collections of photographs in the Digital Commons, including publicity photos, theatre production photos, historical, etc.

Start a Journal

  • Editorial capabilities for full online journal management, including peer-reviewed assessment.
  • There is no direct cost to use DigitalCommons@Otterbein to start an electronic journal.
  • http://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/howl/

Digitize Existing Journals that your class or department have created

Encourage Student Publications

Host a Conference

Publish other Materials Including

  • Teaching Materials (Open Textbooks and educational materials)
  • Gray literature (Reports and Papers)
  • Work of Institutes and Centers

Connect to Your Disciplines Globally

  • Explore 1,993,676 works from 460 institutions
  • The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.
  • http://network.bepress.com/

Pre-Print & Post-Print

Pre Print and Post Print:

The terms pre-print and post-print are used to mean different things by different people. This can cause some confusion and ambiguity.

One usage of the term pre-print is to describe the first draft of the article - before peer-review, even before any contact with a publisher. This use is common amongst academics for whom the key modification of an article is the peer-review process.

Another use of the term pre-print is for the finished article, reviewed and amended, ready and accepted for publication - but separate from the version that is type-set or formatted by the publisher. This use is more common amongst publishers, for whom the final and significant stage of modification to an article is the arrangement of the material for putting to print.

Such diverse meanings can be confusing and can change the understanding of a copyright transfer agreement.

To try to clarify the situation, this listing characterizes pre-prints as being the version of the paper before peer review and post-prints as being the version of the paper after peer-review, with revisions having been made.

This means that in terms of content, post-prints are the article as published. However, in terms of appearance this might not be the same as the published article, as publishers often reserve for themselves their own arrangement of type-setting and formatting. Typically, this means that the author cannot use the publisher-generated .pdf file, but must make their own .pdf version for submission to a repository.

Having said that, some publishers insist that authors use the publisher-generated .pdf - seemingly because the publishers want their material to be seen as a professionally produced .pdf that fits with their own house-style.

This listing tries to separate out the differing definitions and conditions implied by the use of the terms within each publisher's copyright transfer agreement and categorizes the permissions and conditions accordingly. All information is correct to the best of our knowledge but should not be relied upon for legal advice.

What is the Digital Commons@Otterbein?

What is the Digital Commons@Otterbein?

The DigitalCommons@Otterbein promotes discovery, research, cross-disciplinary collaboration and instruction by collecting, preserving and providing access to scholarly work created at Otterbein. The repository also provides access to journals, reports, conference proceedings, student scholarship, primary source materials, and relevant documents created by administrative offices, departments and programs.

What can it do for me?

The Digital Commons Supports Faculty in the following ways:

  • Tenure and review
  • Research and publication and data sets
  • Grant requirements
  • Scholarly reputation
  • Citation and download counts
  • Collaboration with other colleagues
  • Promote Your Research
  • Articles deposited in repositories are more visible and get cited more often
  • The Digital Commons is Google optimized
  • We will help you check your rights to your published work
  • Often you can put a post-print manuscript in the repository
  • Learn about open access publishing
  • Negotiate with publishers for your rights to deposit your work in the institutional repository