Frequently Asked Questions

Digital Commons @ IWU (DC@IWU) is a university-wide endeavor to share our accomplishments and record our history. If you have any questions about DC@IWU, please contact ().

What is Digital Commons @ IWU?

Digital Commons @ Illinois Wesleyan University (DC@IWU) reflects the nature of the intellectual, creative and scholarly culture of our campus. DC@IWU serves as the central location for outstanding student work, University records, and campus history. Our goals are to:

  • Promote and disseminate academic and creative achievements of students
  • Ensure preservation of and persistent access to said work
  • Increase discovery of IWU scholarship and artistic expressions
  • Document and record IWU’s history and progress

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What is IWU Scholars?

IWU Scholars is a collection of articles, chapters, citations of published work, and more by Illinois Wesleyan faculty. For more information, please contact Chris Sweet (csweet@iwu.edu), Information Literacy & Scholarly Communications Librarian.

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What are the benefits of DC@IWU?

There are several major benefits to contributing your research to Digital Commons @ IWU:

  • Highlights exceptional student achievement, such as student journals, Honors Theses, artwork and performances
  • Significantly increases visibility and findability of IWU accomplishments through search engines
  • Provides one-stop searching for key documents related to the university
  • Provides unlimited space for data, audio, video and other formats
  • Contributes to the Open Access movement, which seeks to share scholarship in a collegial global environment
  • Support is provided by the library

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Who can contribute to DC@IWU and IWU Scholars?

Students, staff, university offices, and academic programs, departments and schools are welcome to contribute to DC@IWU. Faculty and staff can share their scholarship or creative work via IWU Scholars. More details are below:

Students: Student work deemed outstanding will be included in DC@IWU. These include honors theses, work presented at the John Wesley Powell Undergraduate Research Conference, works published in peer-reviewed IWU student journals and outstanding creative works as determined by faculty in a sponsoring department. Acceptable formats include text, images, video and audio files. The student retains copyright to all items that they contribute to the DC@IWU, unless they have previously transferred copyright to a third party. Students are required to submit a non-exclusive license agreement before their work is added to DC@IWU. The library and university do not claim any copyrights. When depositing into the DC@IWU, the student agrees to allow the library to make any necessary copies for preservation or future conversion needs. If an item deposited into the DC@IWU contains copyrighted material, the author should request the appropriate permissions. Please see below for information about access restriction and withdrawing an item from DC@IWU. For more information, please see The Ames Library’s Copyright website, or contact .

Faculty/Staff: For more information about IWU Scholars, please contact Chris Sweet (csweet@iwu.edu), Information Literacy & Scholarly Communications Librarian.

University Offices & Academic Programs: Please see our guidelines for more information; you can also reach out to Liz Bloodworth (ebloodwo@iwu.edu), University Archivist & Special Collections Librarian.

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What kind of content can be found on Digital Commons @ IWU?

DC@IWU includes a wide range of materials including text, images, video and audio files. Please contact us at with any questions about what can be posted in DC@IWU.

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What are my intellectual property rights?

We will ask that a contributor gives us permission to post their work by filling out a non-exclusive license agreement, which outlines their rights and responsibilities as creators. If you’d like a copy of the agreement, please contact .

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Can I restrict access to my work?

The Digital Commons encourages free and open access to the research and creative collections that it contains. The University encourages depositors not to place access restrictions on deposited items. Nevertheless, situations can arise when depositors need to restrict access to items in the Digital Commons.

Access restrictions can be imposed at the collection, publication or item level. Access may also be limited to a specific person or group. Anyone who wishes to restrict access must contact () for assistance in establishing these restrictions.

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Can I withdraw an item in the future?

The Digital Commons has been established as a permanent repository and strives to provide persistent access to all deposited items. "Essential to the institutional repository’s role both within the university and within the larger structure of scholarly communication is that the content collected is both cumulative and maintained in perpetuity." (http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/ir_final_release_102.pdf)

Nevertheless, it may be necessary under some circumstances to withdraw items from DC@IWU. Triggers for withdrawal may include discovery of a copyright violation or publication of an article with a publisher that does not allow previous versions to be available; factual inaccuracy, or plagiarism. Withdrawals may be initiated by the depositor or, in the case of a copyright violation, an internal or external entity.

All withdrawal requests must be addressed via () for review. If a withdrawal is requested due to a copyright violation, we will notify the depositor and withdraw the item. Illinois Wesleyan University is not responsible for resolving copyright disputes, but will refer questions to our University legal counsel.

Items may not be withdrawn because the depositor or author is moving to another institution. The depositor has the right to give additional copies to other institutions under the non-exclusive agreement.

When an item is withdrawn, a citation including original metadata will always remain, but the work is noted as withdrawn, i.e. “removed at request of author, or removed at the discretion of X, or removed by legal order.” Withdrawn items are not available for harvesting by services such as OAIster or indexing by search engines.

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Can I include a link to my work on Digital Commons @ IWU on my CV, resume, LinkedIn page, etc.?

Yes, absolutely! We can also set up monthly download reports to be sent to your email; please contact () to inquire.

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How can I get more information or make suggestions for DC@IWU?

Please contact () for information or assistance using Digital Commons @ IWU.

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updated June 14 2024