The Ouachita Baptist University's Scholarly Commons is an institutional repository (IR) and publication platform that brings together all of OBU's research, intellectual and scholarly works, and creative material under one umbrella. Its goal is to collect, preserve, and disseminate digital copies of these materials produced by OBU faculty, students, staff, and affiliates. OBU's Scholarly Commons is an excellent repository for faculty working papers or copies of published articles and conference papers. Student presentations, senior theses, and other works, including images of artwork, music recitals, and digital videos of performances can also be published in the Scholarly Commons. To learn more about institutional repositories, please visit IR Research.

OBU's Scholarly Commons makes your scholarship available in a single place online, enabling global access. Research indicates that articles are cited earlier and more often if they are availabe lin an open-access repository like Scholarly Commons@Ouachita. This visibility creates awareness that benefits both you as the creator and Ouachita Baptist University.

What are the benefits to contributing to Scholarly Commons?

• Your scholarship receives high visibility in a centralized, online location where researchers can easily discover and cite your work (via searches in Google Scholar and other search engines).
• The Scholarly Commons provides you with monthly readership reports for immediate feedback on your work and for inclusion in tenure and promotion portfolios.
• The Scholarly Commons creates a digital archive of all your academic work, including previously unpublished work, conference presentations, and creative works.
• Your scholarship is provided a context side-by-side with the scholarly and creative contributions of your colleagues.
• Your academic work is included in the full range of research, which provides you with institutional recognition.
• For your unpublished works, you retain copyright ownership and control your intellectual property rights while granting OBU's Scholarly Commons permission to include your materials in the repository.
• For previously published materials (e.g. journal articles, books, chapters, etc.), the library makes every effort to obtain clearance from the copyright holder, thus enabling an electronic copy to be archived in the Scholarly Commons. Continuity assures that your work has a stable online location that can be cited now and in the future.
• Every work deposited is assigned a unique, persistent URL so users can cite work freely without concern for broken links.
Who can submit?

OBU faculty or staff may submit content to Scholarly Commons. This includes alumni, and former faculty and staff affiliated with any OBU school, department, center, or program. Additionally, non-affiliated scholars may submit material if they are co-authoring with Ouachita authors, have close ties with the university, or are submitting via a Ouachita-sponsored publication, conference, or event.

Students may also contribute their works to the Scholarly Commons. Some professors and/or programs may require students to submit their class papers or program projects to the Scholarly Commons. These may include honors theses, Scholars Day documents, and images of artwork. Faculty may also recommend and encourage students to submit work they deem outstanding.

If you are an OBU student, faculty, staff member, or affiliate, and wish to submit to the Scholarly Commons, please contact the coordinator, Autumn Mortenson, for more information.