NC DOCKS
UNCG'S Institutional Repository
In support of the research and teaching missions of UNCG, the University Libraries has undertaken an initiative to collect, preserve, index, and distribute scholarly works of UNCG's faculty in order to make their works available to a global audience via the Internet. The goal of the NC DOCKS is to maximize the visibility and influence of faculty research. The Repository is a form of open-access archiving, which is achieved when an author archives a personal electronic copy of an article in a disciplinary repository (such as PubMed Central) or an institutional repository (such as MIT’s D-Space, the University of California’s e-Scholarship, and NC DOCKS ). Although most of the works archived in NC DOCKS are in the form of printed words, such as journal articles and technical reports, other formats also can be included, including audio and video. Books and book chapters are rarely included in institutional repositories.
Faculty Benefits from Archiving Works in NC DOCKS
- Each work will be archived permanently with a stable server, and it will have a URL that will never break (personal Web pages can change and will eventually disappear).
- Each work will be discoverable for researchers worldwide through Internet search engines like Google, which crawls repositories like NC DOCKS and provides preferential keyword access to the full-text.
- Google is a primary discovery tool for a vast number of researchers.
- As a result of this discoverability and free access to the text, articles that are posted in repositories like NC DOCKS tend to be read by more scholars and cited more frequently.
- If a faculty member wishes, the Libraries will keep statistics on how often his/her articles are downloaded or viewed, and that information will be sent to the faculty member.
- For UNCG, NC DOCKS is a great way of validating and showcasing the value of the university’s faculty to society outside the classroom (UNC Tomorrow, NC taxpayers, and more).
Content Criteria for NC DOCKS
- Each work must be the intellectual property of a UNCG faculty member. (Exception - theses and dissertations are also included in NC DOCKS.)
- It must be complete and in final form.
- It must be a scholarly, research, or educational work.
- It must be made available for global access at no cost via the Web.
- The author/creator of each work must grant to UNCG Libraries the non-exclusive right to preserve and distribute the work in perpetuity.
- Contributions to NC DOCKS are entirely voluntary; should the author later wish to remove any contribution, the Libraries will comply with the request.
A Simple Process to Contribute Works to NC DOCKS
Any faculty member interested in contributing works to the UNCG IR should contact Stephen Dew, Collections & Scholarly Resources Coordinator, shdew@uncg.edu
