A new online service led by the IUB Libraries promises to increase the visibility of the university's research by providing a permanent digital home for scholarly materials.

IUScholarWorks, launched this year, empowers IU researchers to post their research, such as peer-reviewed materials, conference and working papers, and research data on the Internet.

Because the service guarantees a permanent Internet address and provides worldwide accessibility via search engines like Google, materials are more easily discovered by other researchers.

"This service showcases the work of IU scholars and increases its impact," says Julie Bobay, director of scholarly communication initiatives for the IUB Libraries.

"Libraries have a longstanding commitment to preserving and increasing access to information," says Bobay. "And now in the digital age, faculty members who want to preserve their scholarly work and make it accessible to the world continue to rely on our support and leadership."

The overriding goal, Bobay says, is to create a repository for research materials generated at Indiana University and to give individual researchers easy-to-use tools to ensure that their scholarly output is both organized and always available.

The service provides a way to increase visibility of not only published materials, which can be posted if the author has the rights from the publisher to do so, but also unpublished materials known as "gray literature," which may include conference papers, working papers, and primary evidence.

IUScholarWorks is a service of the IUB Libraries and the Digital Library Program.

The Digital Library Program is a collaborative effort of the IU Libraries and the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, through the Research Computing Division of University Information Technology Services, and the university research faculty with leadership from the School of Library and Information Science and the School of Informatics.

For more information: scholarworks.iu.edu