Open Access Week: Explore OpenBU
The BU Libraries are celebrating International Open Access Week (October 20-26) by highlighting library services that support the global reach of scholarship produced at BU and the variety of works available in BU’s digital institutional repository.
To support the university’s commitment to “disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible” as outlined in its open access policy, the BU Libraries manages a digital institutional repository OpenBU (open.bu.edu), available to all members of the university community. As BU’s digital institutional repository, OpenBU houses thousands of articles, chapters, theses and dissertations, presentations, datasets, media, and more—all authored or co-authored by BU faculty, students, and staff. This repository enables BU researchers to share, disseminate, and preserve their scholarship, and makes their research more accessible.
Learn how to contribute your own work to OpenBU and share it with the world.
OpenBU currently holds 49,485 items, and since its launch, there have been 6,654,437 downloads and 8,047,005 visits. Its collections cover a wide array of topics, and materials from numerous BU colleges, schools, and departments can be found in the repository. The scope of the repository’s materials is captured in OpenBU’s most-viewed items of the past year:
- Abraham Lincoln and Christianity.
- The concept of the soul in Plato and in early Judeo-Christian thought
- The supernatural in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Spinoza’s concept of God’s infinity.
- The effects of quicklime on the decomposition process in a tropical climate
- Evaluating the vitamin D content in sardines and mackerel
- Robert Frost: His treatment of nature and humanity
- Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities: Towards Awareness and Accountability
- Macroscopic observations of the effects of corrosive substances on bone and soft tissue when subjected to heating
- Tying the knot: a Feminist/Womanist guide to Muslim marriage in America
This list offers a small snapshot of the wealth of materials researchers can share and discover through OpenBU. This repository is a key program in the BU Libraries’ broad support of research, teaching, and learning at Boston University and it is part of BU Libraries’ deep commitment to facilitating greater access to research and knowledge.
Explore the benefits of this open access initiative by browsing OpenBU’s collections and contributing your own work. If you have questions about contributing to or exploring OpenBU, email open-help@bu.edu.