HNRS: College Honors Program Thesis Guide

What are the benefits of contributing your work to CrossWorks?

• Increased visibility for your scholarship and creative works via Google and other internet search engines
• Preservation and access to content through a permanent URL
• Provide a link to your work in applications for graduate school or jobs
• Monthly download reports to monitor usage and citations to your work
• Meet grant criteria. Publishing in CrossWorks meets the data-sharing requirement of some grant-funded research.
• Learn more about intellectual property, copyright, and author rights
• Promotion of open access principles
  • Scholarly communication depends on access to research
  • Sharing your work encourages others to share
  • Providing direct access to articles and other content for users around the globe improves opportunities for knowledge exchange

Items in CrossWorks are much more visible than those only available through a journal or library subscription. CrossWorks is designed to work with search engines like Google, which increases the discoverability of publications. The more accessible a publication is, the more readership and citations it ultimately receives. 

For student or other previously unpublished works, CrossWorks provides a convenient publishing outlet. Each work is assigned a unique URL, which can be listed on CVs, resumes, applications, personal Web sites, etc.

What you do:

1.  Review and complete the Contributor Agreement Form.  If you have any questions, contact the CrossWorks Coordinator.

• Save form as permission_LastName_FirstInitial (ex. permission_Doe_J )
• Remember to have it signed by your faculty advisor.

2.  Provide the CrossWorks Coordinator with the permission form and electronic file of the project.

• Email to crossworks@gmail.com

3.   Create a Digital Commons account (optional).  This provides you with access to an Author Dashboard where you can review download and readership information.

• This step is not required, but it provides you with more flexibility and control over reviewing  your download information
• If you do not create a Digital Commons account, you will receive monthly download reports at the email address you provide.

What we do for you:

1.  If the work was previously published, review the list of publications, determine copyright/permissions for each work, contact publishers for permission on your behalf.

• Permission for images, charts, and other materials incorporated into the paper are the responsibility of the author.
• Compliance with the IRB is the responsibility of the author.

2.  Upload material to CrossWorks.  We use the bepress Digital Commons submission form  to create the metadata and citation for each work.  Access is provided in the form of a downloadable PDF file.

• Once your work is posted, you will receive an email containing a permanent and stable link to the item.