CORE Scholar revives articles online

Jane Wildermuth, head of the Wright State libraries’ digital services says the new CORE Scholar platform offers much more to faculty and students than CORE.

Wright State faculty members have a fast new option for publishing scholarly materials, from their latest works to previously published articles.

CORE Scholar, a service of the Wright State University Libraries, went online earlier this year. It offers global, electronic access for new or existing academic works plus the opportunity to start niche journals.

“In a nutshell, what we’re trying to do is gather up the scholarship that’s happening on this campus that often is hidden,” said Jane Wildermuth, head of the libraries’ digital services. “There’s no one spot where people can look and see what our faculty are doing. You have to know where to look.”

CORE Scholar is related to CORE, the Campus Online Repository that Wright State has had for six years. CORE is hosted by OhioLINK, the Ohio Library and Information Network, while CORE Scholar is hosted by Digital Commons, a newer repository service that’s seeing widespread use by universities and other institutions around the country such as Purdue University, Cleveland State and Cornell, to name a few.

“Frankly, what’s different about CORE Scholar is that the platform is so much more robust and you can do so much more,” Wildermuth said. Through CORE Scholar, Wright State’s complete academic output can be readily available as a comprehensive campus showcase of research, artwork, conferences, books and other materials.

CORE Scholar also offers the opportunity to post older publications that are not electronic.

CORE Scholar posts citations for articles that current or retired faculty have published in scholarly journals. As publishers make more materials available on the Internet, the CORE Scholar citations often allow users to view or download the full texts of the articles.

It also offers the opportunity to post older publications that are not electronic.  The Libraries can work with Wright State authors on scanning and reformatting materials for online access, if the publisher allows.

Some faculty members are already seeing years-old articles find a second life in CORE Scholar by compiling their scholarly works into their own CORE Scholar SelectedWorks pages.

One is Carol Loranger, Ph.D., chair and associate professor of English Language and Literatures in the College of Liberal Arts. Her page contains reviews, contributions to books and selected articles.

Loranger said a 1999 article she wrote about the text of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is getting noticed again since posting a citation with a link to the publisher’s online version. She said monthly tracking reports show it was downloaded 68 times during the last term.

“It’s still getting looked at, and I still get some feedback on it,” she said.

The Libraries do the posting for faculty. “It’s so easy,” Loranger said. “You just send Jane the citations and it magically appears.”

CORE Scholar also allows faculty to start up their own journals.

“If Faculty X decides they have a niche that is not filled, and they have always dreamed of starting their own journal, they can do it now. We have three or four faculty members who are interested in starting journals,” Wildermuth said.

Loranger is working with several colleagues to revive the Mad River Review, a literary journal that Wright State faculty published for a few years in the 1960s and again in the early 1990s. She said printing costs killed it each time. “Publishing is not cheap,” she said.

CORE Scholar makes a revival possible because there are no printing costs. Loranger hopes to see the journal’s first electronic edition flash onto screens next spring.

Wildermuth said CORE Scholar won’t replace printed journals anytime soon, but it’s now possible for faculty to begin publishing what might someday become established journals. The university also hopes to create its own electronic book imprint through CORE Scholar, she said.

In the meantime, the service provides an active, permanent, central repository for all of the university’s scholarship, where anyone with access to the Internet can find it.

Eventually, CORE Scholar will provide a detailed research and scholarly picture of Wright State, Wildermuth said. “It could really showcase what Wright State’s all about.”

Current and retired Wright State faculty interested in creating their own SelectedWorks pages or starting peer reviewed journals may contact Wildermuth at jane.wildermuth@wright.edu or call 775-3927.

Visit http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu to learn more about CORE Scholar.

Visit http://works.bepress.com/carol_loranger to view Loranger’s SelectedWorks page.