What is DigitalGeorgetown?
DigitalGeorgetown is Georgetown University’s Institutional Repository (often called an IR). It captures and preserves the intellectual output of Georgetown’s faculty, graduate, and undergraduate scholars, and makes it available for free, online, as open access materials.
Why deposit work in DigitalGeorgetown?
DigitalGeorgetown offers numerous benefits to Georgetown scholars.
Permanence
As a Library-managed repository, our system offers permanent URLs (called handles) for items hosted within the repository. This means even if our repository’s underlying systems change, the handles will continue to work (this is great for CVs). Georgetown University Library is committed to the long-term preservation of materials submitted to DigitalGeorgetown.
Reach
DigitalGeorgetown content is also indexed by Google Scholar, Google, and other major search engines; as a trusted repository managed by a university, this helps boost the visibility of scholars at Georgetown.
Open Access
Finally, by releasing work as open access, Georgetown University scholars help support their fellow researchers around the world who may not be able to afford access to such scholarship under traditional publishing models.
How can I participate in DigitalGeorgetown?
Faculty, students, and staff members engaged in scholarly publication can submit materials, or ask any additional questions, by emailing the Library’s Digital Services team at digitalscholarship@georgetown.edu.
Is my work appropriate for DigitalGeorgetown?
The Library staff does not have the expertise to assess the academic quality of materials in the IR. Hence you are free to submit any content which you think appropriate, and which does not violate any laws or local policies. Bear in mind, though, that the materials will be visible to a worldwide audience, and should enhance your own reputation, and that of your department.
What types of content or files will you accept?
The IR is an appropriate home for previously published scholarly material produced by Georgetown researchers. Some examples are:
- Journal articles
- Working papers
- Conference papers
- Theses and dissertations
- Images
- A/V material
Our system is extremely flexible, and we archive and distribute a variety of file formats. However, we do encourage submission of static, easy to download files over editable documents (for example, we would prefer a PDF of an article to a Word document). If you have particular file format needs, please feel free to contact us.
What will happen after I submit my materials to you?
The processing time depends on the type of material submitted. For all published articles, we have to conduct a rights review to ascertain that your publisher allows us to redistribute it freely (Sherpa / RoMEO is a useful tool to search for many publishers' restrictions). Publisher policies vary, but unfortunately, many have very restrictive rules, and we may not be able to re-publish your article at all.
You can help us by selecting publishers with liberal IR policies (Sherpa / RoMEO “Green” publishers), or by using an addendum (such as the SPARC Addendum or the Science Commons Scholar's Copyright Addendum) to your author agreements. Using an addendum for all works of scholarship will allow for a more simple and streamlined process when depositing your work into DigitalGeorgetown or another open access repository. Read more about publisher addendums and authors' rights on our scholarly communications webpages.
Commonly, journal publishers only allow certain versions of an article to be archived — these can be called pre-prints (the article submitted for peer review) or post-prints (the final manuscript accepted for publication). If your publisher mandates that only these versions may be archived, please send them to us if it is still available.
For items that cannot be added to the repository due to publisher restrictions, we add a citation-only record to the repository, with additional information about where to find the item in another library, or through the publisher directly.
What about my rights as an author or publisher?
DigitalGeorgetown’s license agreement is nonexclusive — you may post your content in other repositories, on your personal website, submit it to a publisher, or do whatever else you may wish with it. When you deposit materials in the IR, you simply grant the University a license to distribute the materials, without a transfer of rights.