
On Monday, March 26, 2012, Washington University Libraries announced the launch of Open Scholarship, an institutional repository providing access to the scholarly output of faculty, staff, and students from Washington University in St. Louis.
The purpose of Open Scholarship is to enhance access to the academic work of WUSTL scholars, gathering items in a single digital place. Developed following the Faculty Senate’s passage of an Open Access Resolution in May of 2011, Open Scholarship is a further step in the university’s commitment to make scholarship and creative works freely and easily available to the world community.
"Our Open Scholarship site enables us to highlight intellectual achievements of our students and faculty," says Shirley K. Baker, vice chancellor for scholarly resources and dean of University Libraries. "While initially we are featuring recently completed theses and dissertations, we will also add to the site publications that faculty and students would like to have made freely available on the Internet."
Even prior to the official launch of the service, the public site tallied more than 1,200 downloads of papers—roughly two downloads per item. Currently the site contains all of the electronic theses and dissertations completed at Washington University in St. Louis since 2009, as well as undergraduate honors theses and the winning essays from the Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition back to 2003. More collections are soon to follow.
Open Scholarship is available at http://openscholarship.wustl.edu. Those interested in submitting scholarly works to the repository will find helpful information in the Author Corner section of the site, which includes frequently asked questions. For more information, contact Tim Lepczyk, digital repository-metadata librarian, at tlepczyk@wustl.edu, or Digital Library Services at 314-935-6349.