ScholarWorks surpasses two million downloads

Researchers and students from around the world have accessed Grand Valley’s collection of scholarly works more than 2 million times since the resource became available in 2008.

ScholarWorks@GVSU is an open-access repository maintained by University Libraries that showcases and maintains works by Grand Valley scholars. All Grand Valley faculty, staff and students have the ability to add their scholarly and creative works to the repository, currently comprised of more than 9,000 documents.

Matt Ruen, University Libraries Scholarly Communications Outreach Coordinator, said this milestone presents an opportunity to celebrate the global reach of Grand Valley’s scholarship.

“The most impressive aspect of this milestone is its speed,” Ruen said. “University Libraries established ScholarWorks in 2008 and it took about five years to reach our first million downloads. That number doubled in less than two years.”

Ruen added that this milestone coincides with Open Access Week, a global celebration of the benefits of open access to scholarship.

“We create and share knowledge, ideas and culture because we believe it makes the world a better, richer place, and because we know that others will build on that scholarship to achieve things we can’t imagine,” Ruen said. “Much of the world’s scholarship is locked behind pay walls, available only to those who can afford the cost of subscriptions. Open access publishing offers an alternative model making research available so everyone can benefit from our work.”

To date, the university’s top collections and publications include:

• Online Readings in Psychology and Culture with approximately 500,000 downloads; edited by Wolfgang Friedlmeier, professor of Psychology.
• The Language Arts Journal of Michigan with approximately 350,000 downloads; edited by Robert Rozema, associate professor of English.
• “GVSU Masters Theses" with more than 200,000 downloads.

The top downloads on the day of the 2-millionth download included papers from: The Foundation Review, Honors Project and the Grand Valley Journal of History.

For more information, contact Ruen at (616) 331-9182 or [email protected]. ScholarWorks@GVSU can be accessed at scholarworks.gvsu.edu.