Frequently Asked Questions from Our Authors


Why post my works to Digital Commons @ New Haven?

Digital Commons @ New Haven provides an open access platform for your research to be stored, showcased, and shared. Promoting further growth in scholarship and expertise. It encourages:

  • Increased Visibility: Digital Commons @ New Haven broadens your audience and raises your profile. Offering easy accessibility of your work(s) while expanding discoverability and usability of what is posted.
  • Stability: Digital Commons @ New Haven creates a stable URL for your work(s), allowing continual sustainable access.
  • Funders’/Grant Requirements: Submitting your work(s) to Digital Commons @ New Haven may help meet some grants’ criterion for open access to results or data.
  • Journal Publishing: Digital Commons can be used to maintain and publish electronic journals, such as the recently relaunched American Business Review published by the Pompea College of Business.
  • OER Material Access and Discoverability: Digital Commons @ New Haven can maintain any self-published OER material for use in courses you teach or potentially courses taught throughout our University and others.

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How do I participate in Digital Commons @ New Haven?

Participation in our institutional repository is voluntary. However, if you are interested in posting your research on Digital Commons @ New Haven, we have made the process quite easy. There is an online Author Release Form where you can attach or paste citations. Our Digital Commons @ New Haven administrator will research all copyright and intellectual property right concerns. We will only post what we legally can or link out when required.

You can also choose to give our Digital Services team “blanket permissions,” so you would not need to fill out anymore forms. Our team will periodically check your web page(s) for new works. Any new citations found would automatically be posted to Digital Commons @ New Haven, following publisher’s policies and copyright.

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What works can I include in Digital Commons @ New Haven?

Submissions can include articles, books, book chapters, conference proceedings, working papers, and/or creative works such as images, presentations, audio and video files, and posters. Data sets and supplementary files can be posted as well. Some publishers will even allow for Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAM), to be made available in an institutional repository. This would be the final version of your manuscript, which has been accepted for publication but does not have the publisher’s typesetting. For questions about how to accommodate your original work, please contact our administrator.

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Will posting my works in Digital Commons @ New Haven go against copyright?

No, copyright for the works in Digital Commons @ New Haven remains with the individual copyright holders and is not transferred to the University of New Haven or the Marvin K. Peterson Library. Our admin use the SHERPA/RoMEO site, which provides easy access to the general publication terms of many publishers. If copyright information is not clear, our team works directly with publishers to obtain any permissions required to post your material in Digital Commons @ New Haven. For our records, in the comments section, we provide information about the work’s status along with any required notices from the publishers and/or authors.

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Why not just post my works on my own site?

Digital Commons aggregates repositories from all over the world. Search engines such as Google and Google Scholar systematically index Digital Commons repositories, which will raise your profile and works online. Digital Commons @ New Haven will increase the accessibility of your intellectual output and is designed to increase the visibility of our University’s scholarship and research, maximize your impact in research communities, and universally share your research.

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How do I revise a submission?

To revise a submission that has been posted to Digital Commons @ New Haven, please contact the Digital Commons @ New Haven administrator with the new version or any changes needed.

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Can I post a reprint from a journal?

It depends on what the journal allows, which is usually specified in the agreements between authors and publishers. If it would not violate copyright to post the reprint on your repository site, you're welcome to do so. Permissions for many publishers can be found at SHERPA/RoMEO site, by contacting the publisher directly or by reviewing the agreement you made when submitting your article to the publisher. For further help with permissions, please contact our Digital Commons @ New Haven administrator.

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I don't have electronic versions of old working papers that I'd like to include in Digital Commons @ New Haven. Is it okay to scan the printed page to a PDF file?

Yes, scanning printed pages is a great way to create PDF files for inclusion in Digital Commons @ New Haven. There are two ways to scan a page. You can use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or scan the page as an image. Making OCR scans requires careful proofreading and loses the original formatting of the documents. Image scans cannot be searched. The best solution takes advantage of both of these methods. Many software applications allow for the OCR capture of image scans. When documents are scanned this way, users see the image scan but can search the full text of the document. This is the preferred method for scanning documents for Digital Commons @ New Haven.

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A working paper in Digital Commons @ New Haven has been published in a slightly revised form in a journal. What should I do?

Many journals do not have any restrictions on working papers that preceded an article, especially if substantial revisions were made. You should check your author agreement with the journal to confirm that there is no problem with leaving the working paper on the site. Digital Commons @ New Haven would constitute noncommercial use.

Assuming the working paper will remain posted in Digital Commons @ New Haven, it is a good idea to include the citation of the published article on the cover page of the repository working paper. Please contact our Digital Commons @ New Haven administrator to request this change.

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I am having trouble with My Account or using the submission form. What should I do?

For help with your account, submission form or any other concerns you may have, please contact our Digital Commons @ New Haven administrator, Amber Montano, by email or phone, (203)-479-4197.

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