PDXScholar, Portland State University’s online, digital repository, has achieved a remarkable milestone: 1 million downloads.
This means that users throughout Oregon, the United States, and around the world have, collectively, downloaded a million articles, dissertations, masters theses, conference papers, books, data sets, oral histories, projects, and more from PDXScholar. This readership map provides an overview of all downloads from PDXScholar from our launch in summer of 2013 through January, 2016.
The one millionth download happened on the evening of Thursday, January 21, 2016. Several works were downloaded that day–master’s theses and dissertations, an undergraduate honors thesis, photographs from University Archives and Special Collections, publications from PSU research centers and institutes, and faculty articles and papers–and they represent well the breadth of material in PDXScholar.
One of the articles downloaded on January 21 includes a 2005 conference paper co-authored by Portland State professor Dr. Timothy. R. Anderson from the Department of Engineering and Technology Management.
Dr. Anderson was an early contributor to PDXScholar, now with more than three dozen articles and chapters in the repository. Dr. Anderson said, “It has been almost two and a half years since my first papers were posted to PDXScholar. Back in 2013 I was pleased to hear about the service from the library to help make publications more accessible… I like that I don’t have to worry about the license or maintaining the links for the paper in the archive. I simply point my students to the archive or have them find it near the top of a google search. As a researcher, we want our papers to be read and making them available is key ‘to let knowledge the serve the city.'”
PDXScholar is the university’s centralized platform for PSU journals, conference proceedings, exemplary student research, faculty scholarship, and more. Managed by PSU Library, PDXScholar includes more than 11,000 items. Because items in PDXScholar are discoverable through Google and other search engines, the repository has international reach. This readership activity map, a real-time visualization of full-text downloads, demonstrates the continuous impact of Portland State scholarship around the globe.
Library Dean Marilyn Moody said, “We’re thrilled that PDXScholar has reached this milestone. PDXScholar serves the PSU community of researchers in two important ways: it provides a secure and central repository for storing the important academic work taking place at our institution, and it gives us a platform to share that work with scholars around the world.”
A local resident told us, “I’m a Portland community member and happen to be PSU alumni. Papers are often available for those who are in school or in research, but as an average citizen it is harder to see them. Having access to grad papers is fantastic.” And a student in Vietnam said, “Thanks Portland State University for letting me get free access to such a useful resource like this.”
In 2016, PDXScholar will continue to expand. Staff in PSU Library’s Digital Initiatives will continue digitizing older theses and dissertations, expand student collections, publish more open access textbooks, and promote services like journal hosting and data set storage and management.