{"id":38286,"date":"2023-10-25T11:26:51","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T15:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/news\/?p=38286"},"modified":"2023-10-25T11:26:51","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T15:26:51","slug":"dspacemit-communities-and-the-benefits-of-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/news\/dspacemit-communities-and-the-benefits-of-open\/38286\/","title":{"rendered":"DSpace@MIT communities and the benefits of open"},"content":{"rendered":"

In celebration of <\/span><\/i>International Open Access Week<\/span><\/i><\/a>, we’re running a series of stories about open scholarship that prioritizes community-run publishing and infrastructure. Today\u2019s piece is written by Sadie Roosa, collections strategist for repository services in the Libraries.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"DSpace<\/span><\/a>, the open source and open access digital repository co-created by MIT developers in 2002, is an integral part of MIT\u2019s efforts to make its researchers\u2019 own scholarship freely and openly available to anyone in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On May 9, 2002, staff from MIT\u2019s Sociotechnical Systems Research Center deposited DSpace@MIT\u2019s very first item, <\/span>Global sourcing in the automotive supply chain:The case of Fiat Auto<\/span><\/a>, part of the <\/span>International Motor Vehicle Program collection<\/span><\/a>. There are now more than 137,000 articles, working papers, reports, books, and theses in the repository, and more than 600 collections.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The two largest DSpace communities are campus-wide and accept works from researchers across the Institute. The <\/span>MIT Theses <\/span><\/a>community is the largest with over 60,000 items, and is heavily used with over 10 million\u00a0 item downloads. The <\/span>Open Access Articles<\/span><\/a> collection, which includes scholarly journal articles and conference papers, many of which deposited under <\/span>MIT\u2019s open access policies<\/span><\/a>, is also very large (over 51,000 items) and is the most used collection with over 24 million item downloads.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because articles in the OA collection have been published in journals, often behind a paywall, we can see benefits of having open access versions in DSpace by comparing downloads from our open repository with those on a publisher\u2019s website.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, one of the most downloaded articles in the OA collection is <\/span>The thermophysical properties of seawater: A review of existing correlations and data<\/span><\/a>: There have been 25,832 downloads from DSpace. The publisher\u2019s site shows 692 full text views\/downloads of the paywalled version. The article,\u00a0 <\/span>A direct path to dependable software <\/span><\/a>has been downloaded 24,483 downloads from DSpace but only 3,738 from the publisher.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to these campus-wide communities, many DLCs run their own spaces in DSpace. CSAIL, Sloan School of Management, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, MIT Sociotechnical Systems and Research Center, MIT OpenCourseWare, Department of Economics, and Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) each have over 1,000 items in their collections. There\u2019s no fee for researchers to deposit their work into DSpace@MIT.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are more stats and info about some DSpace@MIT communities:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

OA Articles<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n